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Published: July 19th 2008
Note to reader, this post is extremely long as I have not written in a while.
I left you in Nha Trang the day before I went diving. The diving was fun, nothing out of the ordinary, some of the cast of "Finding Nemo" things of that nature.The only glitch I had there was that apparently I have the most sensitive fingers in the world because I managed to blister three of my knuckles pulling my wet suit on and off, and on again (the guys on the boat insisted I was wearing it back to front cause the zipper was forward, although I was right to begin with). By the way, Nha Trang was host to the Miss Universe contest this year. Clearly they did not receive notice of my participation as it was held two weeks after I left.
From Nha Trang I hoped on my open bus on to Hoi An, another of Vietnam's world heritage sites. Unfortunately, the city was and I imagine still is under construction, making it hard to navigate its streets easily on a bicycle. I did manage to see some of the sites, included in my personal tour was the bridge
featured in "The Quiet American". Aside from that, I took advantage of the extremely inexpensive, fast and excellent tailors the city is known for and had a pair of pants, a pair of shorts and five pairs of underwear made for about $30. I also met up with my Irish and Swiss travel buddies and we explored the beach, a couple of kilometers out of town.
From Hoi An we moved on to one of the hottest places I have ever visited, Hue. Hue was neither the nicest or the worse place to visit and the walled city does host some beautiful gardens and yet another war museum. I indulged in what has become my new guilty pleasure, a KFC every once in a while (I know, gross, I never eat the stuff in the States but sometimes all you need is a little fried chicken and some french fries).
From Hue we moved on to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. In Hanoi I continued my China visa drama that began back in Cambodia. Lets just say its more than complicated to get a visa at the time and my photoshop skills came in very handy at the
time. We stayed in a nice little hotel in the old quarter, which is riddled with small streets that change name every block or so. The architecture was amazing and I loved just walking around even though there are motorbike offers every few hundred feet.
One of the "groups" last trips together was to Halong Bay. A three hour minibus ride took us to a port where we got on a Boat that sailed us around the gorgeous gorges of the north east Vietnamese coast. Here we walked around some beautiful stalactite and stalagmite caves and later kayaked. Oh, and I jumped from the top of the boat twice, quite an achievement given my history of chicken-ness.
We returned to Hanoi where the Irish moved on to Thailand and Leo and I had our own little adventure to Sapa. The trains to Sapa, the north west of Vietnam, famous for its rice terraces and tribes people, were fully booked except for the hard seats. Adventurous as we are, Leo and I decided a 10 hour train ride on hard seats would not kill us and purchased them anyway, We arrived at the train station as the ticket woman
had suggested a good hour before we were to depart only to be left in an enclosed waiting room with what I estimate to be 300 other people. When it was time to board the train we were let onto the platform only to have to wait another 45 minutes in the rain while they readied the train.
We realized the gravity of our mistake of purchasing the tickets when we got on the train and the hard seats were in fact wooden benches, not only that, there were 6 people where we were only supposed to be 4. So we took a deep breath and sat down, dripping wet with the bags on top of our seats dripping on us as well. Leo looked like he was going to have a nervous breakdown, I had never seen such a scared, or scarred for that matter, Swiss person in my life.
As soon as things settled, people around us started making make-shift beds on the floor between the seats and I followed suit. I extended my sleeping bag, lay my head under my seat and my legs under the bench in front of me and in my best
narcoleptic Salas way fell asleep, only to wake the next morning to a child vomiting a couple of inches from my face. Beaten and exhausted we mounted a minibus for an hour, up the mountain and arrived in Sapa where we promptly booked a room and took a five hour nap. As a karmic redemption Leo and I got lucky and a couple gave us their first class sleeper seats for the return as they would not be using them. It's the small things in life. Oh, and we got a call an hour before leaving that we had left our passports in the hotel which would have been a disaster for many reasons had we left them in Sapa.
Of all the places in Vietnam, I think Sapa was my favorite, the scenery is amazing, the tribes people are extremely nice and stylishly dressed. It was a pleasure to be in cold weather for a bit and have a hot chocolate to warm myself. The trekking was an awesome experience and I think one of the best activities I have done so far. Sapa, highly recommended. Here I would like to remind myself in the future of the
pain in the ass lady on our trek and how I told her she had to stop complaining or else she would need to refund my ticket as well as the bargaining I did with the tribes woman which got a frenchman a 70% discount from the original price. Haggling is an art I believe I have mastered.
I stayed on in Hanoi for a couple of days and saw Sonja, who was traveling in the area. From Hanoi, I mounted a 45 hour train to Beijing, my next stop. The train was fine, actually better than fine, the down comforter was amazing and the bed so comfortable I ended up catching up on my sleep instead of reading Crime and Punishment which I thought I would get through on the trip. Immigration was the worse, it took 3 hours and a lot of me trying to explain why there was one line in the back of my passport saying it is not in fact expired. But I got through it and in the process "learned" a Vietnamese card game from a man that did not speak English and seemed to get angry and determined when I kept beating
him. In the interest of foreign relations I tried to lose, but as the rules were not clear to me, managed to keep winning.
I arrived in Beijing on a Sunday in the waits of Felipe, his brother and his sister-in-law. They arrived on a Monday and on Tuesday I had the good fortune of moving rather sneaking into the Beijing Hotel near the forbidden city, courtesy of Andres who had two of his pieces in the Beijing biennial. In the mean time I left my passport at the Indian Visa processing center and explored the city. On that Friday, we had to move out of the hotel and back into the hostel. No problem, except that I learned that one cannot register in a Chinese hotel/hostel without ones original passport in tow. Not even a copy, stamped by the Indian embassy will get you in. Clearly I was in a pickle, until I remembered my friend Prema had sent me one of her friend's number in Beijing.
With my tail between my legs I called Marc and asked him and his wife to take me in. Kindly, and I will be forever grateful, they did. And not
only that, they touted me along everywhere they went which was great because I got to see the life of an ex-pat in Beijing which is always better than just seeing it as a tourist. the day after I arrived we celebrated San Fermin, the running of the bulls, Beijing style. Check out footage of last year's by following the link:
I purchased my ticket from Hong Kong to Delhi for the 5th of August.
I wrote this blog on a night train I took from Beijing to Pingyao. Note to self, no matter what, DO NOT take hard seat overnight train in China. Although not wooden benches, the isles are filled with "standing" (more like sprawled all over the floor) passengers making the trip to the bathroom extremely difficult. For the woman across me the walk to the bathroom seemed too much with her young daughter so she had the child squat in the aisle and let it flow. Picture me then carrying my small backpack on my lap the WHOLE ride. I arrived at four in the morning and have not yet had a chance to check out the town but will write all about
it in my next post!
That's all for now, hope to hear from you soon.
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muma
non-member comment
about time!!
what a wonderful entry! we had missed you!~