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After finishing my job, I went to Borneo for a few days, and was planning on travelling through Vietnam when I got back. Whilst I was there, my girlfriend called me to tell me that she had managed to get a week off work, and would like to go away somewhere with me before I left, which was great. So I arrived back in Saigon first thing in the morning, and had the day to sort my life out (saying goodbyes, mailing stuff home, packing my bag etc.), before catching a flight up to Danang in central Vietnam with Dung. We spent a day or two relaxing at the beach in Danang (there’s not a great deal else to do there), before heading down the coast a little bit to everyone’s favourite place in Vietnam – Hoi An. This is a pleasant little town set by the river, and despite the huge numbers of tourists it has still retained its charm. We cycled the few kilometres to An Bang beach, where I was surprised to find a half-decent wave, perfect for a bit of bodysurfing. It felt so good to be doing some form of surfing again after such a long
break away from it! After a relaxing afternoon at the beach we headed into Hoi An for some food in the evening. By night, Hoi An is lit by hundreds of colourful lanterns, and as there is no traffic, it has a real tranquillity about it. Such a nice change from Saigon’s hectic lifestyle! We asked a local boatman to take us for a ride up and down the river to witness it all from the water. I was expecting him to do all the work but he quickly had me working an oar as well! Turned out he was really drunk, and kept asking us the same questions over and over in Vietnamese. But I liked him, he called me handsome over and over again so I can deal with that. The food in Hoi An is also excellent, with plenty of local dishes to try out. Dung spent the whole time buying random little snacks from the street food vendors which was great as we got to try loads of new things. We also did a day trip out to the Cham Islands, which involves a pretty exhilarating 25 minute speed boat ride. After padding out the tour
with some fairly boring things such as the land crab museum, we went for a little stroll around the island to look at the temple, rice paddies and local market, before heading to the beach for some lunch. They served up an absolute feast – the dishes just kept on coming and it was such great food. Normally the lunches on these kind of tours leave a lot to be desired, but this one did not disappoint! We spent the rest of the day relaxing on the beach, which had to be the nicest beach I’d been to in Vietnam – (almost) white sand, palm trees, and turquoise blue water. Hoi An was a great place just to relax and enjoy good food and great company. Cycling round the town and hitting the beaches was exactly what I needed after working so hard for the past six months. We headed back to Danang, where Dung and I had to say our goodbyes. It was really tough, and I felt terrible leaving the airport alone that evening.
In typical Vietnamese fashion, my bus from the airport taking me to my next stop Hue, decided it wasn’t going to leave for
another hour and a half as it needed more passengers. So with the help of a kind Vietnamese girl who spoke some English, I managed to share a taxi with a few of the other passengers up to Hue. Hue is the old capital of Vietnam, and as such is a hotbed for temples, pagodas, tombs and important historical buildings. I booked myself on a full day city tour, which would take in all the most important sights in Hue, such as the Citadel and Forbidden Purple City where the Emperor lived. This was heavily bombed during the war by the Americans, as the Viet Cong were known to be hiding there, and so it has been majorly reconstructed and a lot of it is no longer there. We also visited many of the royal tombs around the city, which I have to say were pretty amazing. They’re set in the most beautiful locations, surrounded by lakes, parkland and intricately designed temples. One of the most breathtaking was the Khai Dinh Tomb. Whilst not set in quite as beautiful surroundings, you climb the many steps up to the mausoleum at the top, where you are greeted by a life size
golden statue of the emperor himself, sitting in a room ornately decorated with thousands of fragments of multi-coloured ceramic pieces. Looking at all these amazing tombs and pagodas, you feel like you are being transported back hundreds of years. In reality, a lot of it was built in the early 1900’s, as Vietnam was still ruled by Emperor’s well into the 20
th Century. Vietnam must have been an amazing place to travel during those times, so far removed from the industrialised West. It was a packed day, stuck on the tourist conveyor belt – ‘OK get off here, take some photos, you have 20 minutes, get back on the bus and we’ll go to the next place’. But still it was enjoyable as we got to see most of the things in the local area!
My next stop was the Phong Nha caves – supposedly the biggest caves in the world. The caves are accessed by boat, which was a nice change as I have seen plenty of caves on foot in the past couple of years. Unfortunately the Vietnamese have a tendency to light caves with multi-coloured lights, making you feel a lot like you are in some
kind of strange disco. As anyone who has ever been to an Asian cave before will know, the whole time was spent by the guide pointing out the various animals that could be found if you squint your eyes and use your imagination as creatively as possible whilst looking at a rock. In fairness to them though, there’s not much else to say about it, and no-one wants a guide that just walks around and says nothing! We had a few hours to kill in the town of Dong Hoi before the sleeper bus picked us up to take us to Hanoi, so we walked around the town and found absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever. The people however were incredibly friendly. I assume they don’t get too many tourists coming through the town, as every single person we went past excitedly said hello. It was like being back in Korea again! Ah I love being the centre of attention! The sleeper bus to Hanoi was a couple of hours late, and was so uncomfortable for me. As I’m so tall, I just don’t fit in the beds, and there is no way for me to get comfortable, as the
box that you’re supposed to put your feet in just digs into my shins. So it was an uncomfortable 11 hour trip for me!
In Hanoi, I met up with one of my friends from Korea, Rich. As Dung is from Hanoi originally, she gave me a huge list of the best street food places, so we set off trying to find them. I loved Hanoi. It still retains that Asian feel that I think Saigon has lost. Saigon has become so Westernised now that you can easily stay in your own little Western bubble. Whilst Hanoi has its fair share of tourists, it hasn’t lost its identity, and I really enjoyed exploring the city and trying out all the local foods. Hanoi is set around a number of lakes, which nicely offsets the busyness of the city itself. That is something else that I feel Saigon lacks – somewhere to go to get away from it all. I believe Saigon did have a lake at one point in the past but it was filled in to make more room to build. We booked a two day one night trip to Halong Bay, and set off the following morning.
Halong bay is beautiful, only slightly marred by the hundreds of tourist boats setting out every day to explore the thousands of islands. It’s low season at the moment so it wasn’t too bad, but I can only imagine what it must be like at its peak. We headed to another cave, and this one was actually a lot more impressive than the ones at Phong Nha. It was a cavern on a grand scale, again full of multi-coloured lights and hundreds of elusive animals. The cave had been creatively named ‘Surprising Cave’. It was really nice just to relax on the boat whilst we sailed through the islands, and do a bit of swimming. The next morning we did a bit of kayaking around one of the fishing villages, and learnt how to make spring rolls, before heading back to Hanoi that afternoon.
We had heard some rumours about a few restaurants just outside of Hanoi that served snake, and so on our return we decided to go and check it out. We caught a taxi out to Le Mat Village, about 20 minutes outside of the centre of Hanoi, and got the driver to take us
to a snake restaurant. No one there spoke a word of English (another thing that I liked about Hanoi!), and through some acting that my old drama teacher would be proud of, established that we wanted to eat some snake. Well, the menu they brought to us was something from a different world. It had every animal that you would never think of eating in it. Raccoons, geese, crocodile and of course snakes, and many other pictures of strange looking animals that I couldn’t work out what they were. The guys on the table behind us were drinking a liquid out of a plastic bottle full of maggots. This place was just wild. So they bring out a table and put it on top of a tarpaulin, and then pull a long snake out of a black bag. Taking a knife to the underside of the snake, they slit it open alive, and pull out its heart. They squeeze the blood into one glass, put the heart (which is still beating) into a shot glass, and then find the gall bladder and slice it open to squeeze the bile into a third and final glass, before taking the snake away.
Of course, this is all good for your stamina, which always seems to be the excuse in Asia for eating weird stuff. Although it was definitely the weirdest thing I’ve ever put in my mouth, I didn’t find shotting the beating heart or the blood too hard to do. The bile however was something else. All I could think about was the stuff that you throw up when you have nothing else left to give, and how I was about to drink that same stuff from an animal. But I did it, and it wasn’t too bad to be honest. They mix it with a bit of spirit so it takes the edge off it a little bit. Anyway, that was definitely an experience I won’t forget!
The next morning we got up early to go and visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. This meant queuing in the unbearable heat for about 40 minutes, and by the time we got to the front of the queue I looked like I’d just had a bath with my clothes on. Two lines are formed, and you walk around the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh in absolute silence. No photos are
allowed to be taken either. It was strange seeing a dead body like that, everything is preserved just the way it was when he died. He takes a little trip to Russia for 3 months every year to be serviced apparently. Slightly eerie place, but worth going.
After Rich left to travel south through Vietnam, I decided to head up north to Sapa, close to the border with China. This is a beautiful little town, right up in the mountains overlooked by the biggest mountain in Vietnam, Fansipan. The weather was thankfully much cooler up here, giving a nice respite from the intense heat and humidity of Hanoi, which was now at 40 degrees celcius and almost 100% humidity. Sapa is famous for its hundreds of rice paddies, stepping their way down the steep mountainsides. There are a large number of Hmong tribes people in the area, and they are great. They run around after you everywhere, so that they can accompany you on any treks you might do. I went on a one day trek as I didn’t have a huge amount of time, and was accompanied by a young pregnant Hmong girl, who kept me company and
made me some animal shapes out of the local plants. I was waiting and waiting the whole time for her to try and sell me something, but nothing so far. We trekked down through the rice paddies, with beautiful views across the valley. By lunchtime we reached my new friend’s village, at which point the hit came. ‘You should buy something from me because I followed you the whole way’. I tried to explain that if we started paying people to stalk us then life might begin to get quite scary, but I ended up buying a purse for some reason. They know how the guilt trip works! I also explored the botanical gardens in Sapa, where there wasn’t a single other foreigner, and offered great views of the mountains and Sapa below. I caught the day train back the next morning, which is an 11 hour train journey back to Hanoi. I ended up sitting next to the biggest comedian on the train and his gang, and he had everyone in stitches. Which was hilarious until he turned to me and was clearly making fun of me in some way, which again everyone found funny. But eventually I befriended
the group, who were continually coming over to me with a glass full of an unidentified liquid poured out of a jerrycan. The kind intended for petrol, and the liquid could well have been petrol, as it was pretty potent! Anyway, every time they would come over, say ‘Hello, I love you’, and then get me to do the glass in one shot. Every time I did it, the whole carriage would erupt in a cheer! By the end of the journey I was feeling pretty worse for wear to say the least…
When I returned to Hanoi that night, Dung had managed to get a couple of days off work, and had flown up to Hanoi to come and see me. We spent the next few days going to all of her favourite food spots, and visiting her family. Time spent at her house was normally filled by her mum absolutely stuffing me with the best home-cooked Vietnamese food, and filling me with beer. Hundreds of photos of were taken. Then the microphone and karaoke comes out…I’m really intrigued as to how both the photo taking and karaoke culture has come about in Asia, as it is certainly
not limited to just Vietnam, in Korea it was extremely popular too as you might remember from my previous blogs! It was great to spend time with Dung and her family, and get to see where she was brought up as a child, and have some real home-made food! Once again, it was so difficult to say goodbye when we parted ways again, as this time I knew it would be for longer.
The rest of my time in Hanoi was spent trying to get my visa for Iran. Never have I experienced such difficulties! A month or so ago I arranged a reference letter through a travel agency, which gave me permission to go to Iran. I was under the impression that once I had this, it was just a case of going to the embassy in Hanoi, pay my money and get the stamp. When I looked online, the cost for the visa for most countries was between around $20-$70. The British on the other hand had to pay $140. So already I was feeling a bit hard done by. On arriving at the embassy, the secretary collected my application, and told me to come back later
as I would have to speak with the ambassador. On my return, she told me that the ambassador didn’t want to speak to me because I was English and in a bad mood. Well, I wasn’t entirely sure what to do, as to get the visa I needed him to interview me, but he was refusing to speak to me. So I arranged to go in the following Monday morning first thing, hoping he might be in a better mood after a relaxing weekend. On my way home from the embassy I got a phone call from the secretary telling me the ambassador would speak to me if I paid 180 euros. Well that was absolutely crazy, I wasn’t going to pay a huge amount of money just for him to reject it! So I said I would come in on Monday morning and speak to him face to face. Well, Monday morning comes around and I’m told that he hasn’t appeared at the embassy and he’s flying out of Vietnam that afternoon. I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to go to Iran, and began to leave. Once again, I was summoned back
before I’d even left the gates, as the ambassador had appeared once again. After a 15 minute wait, the secretary came back in and told me that he was willing to give me the visa for 270 euros (I needed to pay 50% extra as I needed it done by the next day before I left Hanoi – as it turns out 180 euros is actually the going rate for a British person). Well, I decided in the end to just pay it. I can earn the money back, but who knows when I would get the chance to go to Iran again, and I knew I would always regret not going. So finally I have my Iranian visa! Let’s hope that the elections all go peacefully.
That afternoon, I caught the sleeper bus to Vientiane in Laos. This is the longest bus I have ever been on, a monster 24 hours…I’ll continue the story in my next update.
Hope all is well at home!
Love Ross x
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hanoi restaurant recommendations
HI Ross wondering if you have any restaurant / street food recommendations in Hanoi as mentioned in blog. NOT the snake restaurant, I dont think I could cope with that !