Advertisement
Published: June 21st 2013
Edit Blog Post
After months of being in Vietnam we were looking forward to the Tet holiday, the main holiday of the year when most people get time off to travel and see friends and family. Thankfully this also meant that schools were off for two weeks and we had the opportunity to relax and travel a bit.
My housemate Nadine's family arrived in Hanoi at the very start of our time off, it was so good to see familiar faces from home, and even better to see the shock on their faces at the different sights in Vietnam. I always wondered what my face was like watching 4 people drive past on a motorbike, or looking at the street stalls serving food; i'm guessing it was just like the expressions they were walking around with.
Showing them around the Old Quarter in Hanoi was fantastic; we stopped and had a few drinks, watching the bustle of the street, and because of the late hour they arrived we had no chance to ease them in to Vietnamese food in a restaurant, but to take them to a little street stall. The months i've been here has made me comfortable sitting in the
street with rats running around and rubbish in the gutter, but it was surprising to them. They made a better effort than I had using chopsticks for the first time, and really enjoyed the traditional Vietnamese Pho Bo.
After returning to Hai Phong we joined our teaching assistant Dung at her family home for a traditional Tet meal. Her house was a small, very traditional stone cottage, with three rooms shared by the whole family. It was slightly outside the city, surrounded by rice fields. When we arrived we found Dung's whole extended family out to meet us, and although only 2 of the family members spoke English, everyone did their best to make us welcome. We sat on top of a large table with too many different dishes to try. The ones we did were lovely, though the texture of some was strange.
Tet holiday was also the first time we visited Cat Ba island. 45 minutes on a high speed ferry and we were there. The whole island seemed deserted because during Tet holiday most Vietnamese visit their family, not tourist spots like this. The weather was grey but we still loved exploring the 3 glorious
beaches, collecting shells and climbing rocks like the big kids we are. On our second day there we hired motorbikes and traveled all over the island, the empty roads allowing us to build up quite a bit of speed. On our way to the national park we stopped to see one of the famous caves from the Vietnam War.
The Hospital Cave was a facility built directly inside the mountain. The work that must have went into building it is insane because of the sheer size of the construction and the amount of rooms within. To get to the Hospital Cave we had to climb up a narrow stone stairway, and then climb a rickity wooden ladder (we were later told it was the original ladder from the war that they would pull up if American soldiers were too close). The entrance to the cave was a rusty bunker door. It was closed when we climbed up, and just as we were about to give up and go back down, a strange Viet man jumped out dressed as a soldier and waving a gun at us. It appeared that this tour guide had possibly spent too long underground and
had went a bit nuts. The tour was fantastic seeing the different rooms for patients, the cinema rooms, and my favourite part - the swimming pool for physiotherapy (which doubled up as an escape route - they could jump from the top floor down a chute into the pool).
When we got to the national park I was originally disappointed because there was not a lot to see, however after the climb to the top of the mountain the view made the trip worthwhile. We met a group of backpackers at the top and stayed for a while to savor the view, and laugh as one of the backpackers stripped for the world to see.
Our time in Cat Ba was just what I needed, a nice relaxing getaway from work. It is definately one of the most beautiful places I have been and in the summer season I will be going back as often as possible.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0398s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb