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Published: November 4th 2009
After spending 10 days in the UNESCO heritage city of Luang Prabang, Loas where no one was allowed to beep their horns we took a flight with Loas airlines on a plane which looked something like a WW2 bomber, propellers on the outside... that kind of thing. Luckily inside was brand new. After a quick, calm hour long flight we landed in Hanoi to begin the next leg of our journey.....Vietnam. The calm, continued when we got off the plane, a hassle free jaunt through customs, visa checks and hardly the hordes of taxi drivers - known here as the taxi mafia that we were expecting. This would be the calm before the storm and after ten minutes crammed in a minibus with the other fresh white-faced arrivals we began to hear the horns and grimace as we expected impact from any and all kinds of vehicles heading towards us on our side of the road and just squeezing into the opposite lane before screeching away. The open windows were closed as the din and smog began to creep into the cab. We had definitely arrived in Vietnam and one word to describe it would be chaotic. This chaos would turn
into a sort of charm as we spent a few days hanging around the streets and cafe's of the capital - Hanoi. Our first night was spent wandering the streets almost like deers literally caught in the headlights of thousands of scooters.
Elli: "Hanoi feels strangely like Paris", I've never been but what i can say is that it's very cosmopolitan, there are hundreds of art galleries from the tacky tourist to the decadent with huge canvases. Our hotel was set just off a small but busy square with St Joseph's Cathedral overlooking it and tapas restaurants and Parisian deli's all round it. When you take in a little more of Hanoi you get a sense of confused irony about it, in that you can buy expensive art and top end designer clothes for thousands of US dollars and then walk out of the shop and sit on the corner of the street drinking home brewed draught beer for 50p a pint and eat noodle soup for even less. The afternoon found us making our way around the cultural attractions of Hanoi including the Museum of Ethnology, which was huge and gave us a thorough and in-depth background on
all the tribes in Asia, followed by the Temple of Literature which is a very symbolic celebration of past royal family educational achievements. However it wasn't the grand attraction we were expecting. Next up was the Hoa Lo Prison known by the American pilots who were imprisoned there in the Vietnam war as the Hanoi Hilton. A good museum with plenty of artifacts and background info, they even had US Senator John McCains flight suit from his capture and imprisonment during the Vietnam war. The days interesting and cultural activities were only spoiled a little bit by the inevitable ripping off we received by two consecutive taxi drivers with rigged meters. Later we learned that if you get a taxi in Hanoi only get Mai Linh Taxi's they're a little more expensive per kilometer but they have uniformed staff and meters that aren't rigged, which makes up for any possible ripp offs and un-wanted confrontation. After a long day seeing the sites we found our way through the neon lit back streets of Hanoi to a little bar called "Pinky Moon", happy hour at sunset in a bar that's practically someones living room knocking back 30p a pint draught beer,
listening to The Doors, trying not to stare at the full size cobra pickled in a three foot jar on the bar and watching the Hanoi night go by is a memory that will stick with us. What a wonderful city.
We made up our minds to do a two day tour of Halong Bay, home of the 1969 limestone karsts, which jut out of the sea to provide stunning scenery. The Karsts are 30 million years old and have only been above water for 30,000 years. After hearing many unconvicing stories about trips to Halong Bay we're very glad to say that our trip was wonderful, the boat was very nice with lovely cabins and our guide for the trip was great and spoke near perfect english. We were lucky enough to get a clear day to sail and this made for a picturesque jaunt through the bay and we even stopped off for kayaking at sunset.
After returning from Halong Bay and spending another night in a Hanoi hotel, trying to sleep through the thousands of moped and car horns that never stop along with the hotel owner coughing his lungs up from 4am onwards and
the hotel pet cockerel howling both barrels we decided to move on to Hue. From the second we arrived we had hotel touts following us down the road barking dollar amounts in our faces and telling us the hotel we have arranged to go to is now closed down and theirs are closer and much better of course. After almost having to physically remove one particularly persistant tout we managed to shake clear of them, find our way to our hotel drop our packs and head out for the city's major atttraction - the citadel. The Citadel consists of three enclosures sorrounded by a huge wall with several gateways to enter. The wall and the outposts were fairly interesting and worth photographing but once you get inside we found it quite underwhelming and the museum and display peices were shoddy at best, some of the historicl pictures were displayed slanted with duct tape. There was also construction work taking place throughout the site. To add insult to injury after twenty minutes the heavens opened and we were caught in a huge downpour, needless to say we made our escape in a taxi and that was the end of the days activities. The rain kept beating down, so much so that the alley to our hotel was flooded knee deep with dirty water and when the power went out there was only one thing for it...... We ordered takeaway pizza, raided the hotel fridge for refreshing Huda beer and settled into a card game in reception. This turned out to be an inspiring plan and within half an hour several groups of guests had adopted the same plan, the poor pizza delivery girl had to keep scootering up and down this knee deep flooded alleyway with pizza orders, she made out like a bandit in terms of tips though.
After our disappointment the previous day we were fairly apprehensive of the next days bus tour to the various sights around Hue. It turned out to be great and we took in three Mausoleums of previous emperors of Vietnam, a cruise up the perfume river by boat, a fine pagoda, a village where they make incense and conical hats and a buffet lunch squeezed in the middle, all accompanied by a comical guide with some strange views on English people (we love to breed apparently). A great day, that is pretty much all you need in Hue and the next day we caught a three hour bus to Hoi An home of the tailors.
We were told that Hoi An is "one house, one shop" and it turned out to be correct, there's a thousand dress, suit and clothes makers side by side with restaurants and craft shops and shoe shops and to add to all that there's a river running through it with fish markets and boats for hire. Its bustling in a quaint, pretty way. The streets, though busy with bikes are still quiet comapred to Hanoi and other towns. The French architecture and colourful boats make it a very attractive place to stay whilst waiting for your custom made clothing. The whole town has a slightly laid back appeal and it's no wonder we spent a good while here wandering the streets taking it all in. Within a day of being here i had some new hand made leather flip flops, much needed and Elli and Suze had discussed and been measured for dresses, tops and trousers. There really is no place in the world, I don't think, for this particular kind of shopping, you can practically get anything you desire made for a very very reasonable cost, prehaps that's why there's so many tourists here. Unfortunately after being here a day or two I managed to get a throat infection which put me up in bed for four days, luckily I had Elli to bring me meals in bed and antibiotics and strepsils and all manner of things to make me feel better. After my recovery and all shopping needs had been taken care of we headed out for some well earned beach time in Nha Trang. Well that was the plan anyway, we had one day on the lovely beach with the sun beating down. Only disturbed by woman coming past, trying to sell us anything and everything... even a huge lobster. Yes, not quite sure what we were to do with it if we had purchased it. The next day was terrible, overcast with spots of rain, not the best for the tan and so we made do with our new favourite past time - walking around the town we're in, asking in all the posh hotels if they have a pool and if we can swim in it, always the same result...no, no, no...oh yes but you can't swim in it as you're not staying here. It's a great way to see the town if nothing else. There was talk of a Typhoon, a little wind and rain we were told. We booked our tickets out of Nha Trang for the next morning at 7. When we woke we were told the buses wouldn't run because of the typhoon and that we would be stuck here for days, an hour later we were wading almost hip deep in water up the main road, through town until we could find our bus parked on a spot only six inches deep. We headed out on what turned out to be a nine hour journey instead of the scheduled four, which included a two hour stop as our driver let the battery go flat. Try to imagine ten english, french and german lads of about twenty five in $1 ponchos at the back of a bus trying to push start it through the hurling rain in flip flops to the count of "un...duex....trois". Evenutually the cafe we stopped at ran an electrical wire through the rain to the back of the bus and charged the battery, we made it to Da Lat in time for tea. That's where we currently reside, high up in the central hills in a place that was made out to be a kitchy swiss alps esque honey moon retreat. To say it's not quite what it was made out to be is a bit of an understatement. It's basically a Vietnamese town much like any other, there's not really anywhere good to eat. The main site we went to see - the crazy house was, well..... rubbish. A half finished alice in wonderland style house with concrete blobs everywhere and fairly horrid little rooms you can stay in. Tomorrow we're off for some more beach time in Mui Ne, hopefully no more typhoons.
Until next time
A & E
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Dad
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Strewth!
Just wondering how you're ever going to get used to ordinary life again! Glad you're better, Andy!