In the land of copycats

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Arriving in Vietnam was a bit of a culture shock if that's at all possible at this point. After the seemingly quiet and peaceful Laos (yes even Vang Vieng was considered "quiet") Hanoi seemed like Lao's loud, obnoxious cousin. However, we quickly fit into the fast paced city and explore all the vibrant things it has to offer. In Hanoi, drivers like to..no, love to HONK. They will honk to warn you they are behind, beside or infront of you. They will honk when they want you to move..or they will just continuously honk. This, combined with the amount of people, small crowded streets, and colourful shops makes it an interesting base from which our Vietnam adventure begins.

We spent only a few days in Hanoi exploring our surroundings. This included seeing Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum (though we weren't able to go inside as it was closed), a quick and humurous visit (for me) to Lenin Park which included a giant statue of the stern faced Commy. And basically walking the streets all surrounding the 'Old Quarter' in the city. After 2 days we booked another sleeper bus to Sapa.

Sapa is about a 10 hour bus/train ride north west of Hanoi and it is famous for it's gorgeous green rice paddies and the Black H'mong tribe that inhabit the villages in the surrounding area. This sleeper bus happened to have double bunk beds and so we got to sleep side by side. After doing a 25 hour bus ride, a 10 hour seemed like childs play, and so it was. We awoke in the fog covered town of Sapa! The village is perched on a mountain and so the views from pretty much any direction were just sensational. We booked a room at Grand View Sapa ($14 with breaky) and had a gorgeous patio that faced the valleys and the infamous Fansipan mountain.

From what we understand, several years ago Sapa consisted of a few dozen guesthouses, some restaurants and loads of trekking outfitters ready to take you on a mountain trek through the rice paddies. Today Sapa is a boistrous village filled with nice pricey restaurants and even pricier hotels, cattering to bus loads of seniors and families. Although the budget-consious can still find plenty of food/entertainment and accom options, times are definitely-a-changin'.

We booked a trek with Sapa Sisters that would take us on a 2 day trek with an overnight village homestay. It was the highlight of our trip. I happened to get a horrid stomach bug the night before and pretty much spent the night curled up to the toilet. Come morning I was not a happy camper to be going trekking on a mountain! But alas, I sucked it up and dosed myself with some meds and was good to go. Our group consisted of...just Dave and I and it was great. We had a 19yr old H'mong girl called Little Chi as our guide and as the name suggests, she is about 4'9 and weighs no more than 90lbs, soaking wet. She was the most resilient, adorable, gorgeous, strong girl with long hair that reached the back of her knees. Little Chi was dressed in traditional H'mong clothing which was all long sleeved and black with colourful emboidery. She moved with precision and ease that only by living in this region is one able to master.

Some of the H'mong women like to attach themselves to a group that's beginning a trek. They trek with you the whole way and when you arrive at a village for lunch they "attack". By this we mean that they ask you to buy their handicrafts and trinkets. When you kindly decline, they say "but I follow you all day!" to which we reply "Sorry, but we didn't ask you to follow us at all..!" We have absolutely no problem purchasing local trinkets. In fact we've made a point of buying atleast a small bracelet at almost every place we like. However, when they approach it in this manner, they play on our heartstrings and we felt cheated by it. So we decided not to buy anything. Also the small children will run up to you and not leave you alone as you eat, to try selling you their small bracelets. It's been explained to us that these kids skip school and get the bracelets at their market, then sell it to trekkers returning a percentage to the market vendors. People shouldn't buy from them as this promotes skipping school and not getting a proper education! So yes it was very difficult looking at a small dirty faced child's eyes and telling them NO! However, we felt like it was the right thing to do.

As we continued to stroll through the neverending rice paddies, Chi told us about her life and her pre arranged marriage a few weeks earlier. How she doesn't like her husband but that he's a "nice boy who takes care of the farm". How the H'mong people farm and build their villages and much much more. We trekked 15km the first day until we arrived at a local village to stay the night. At our homestay we were joined by a family from Vancouver and had a nice time talking about home and our travels. We shared a fantastic dinner and even drank some "happy water" provided by our lovely host. The next morning we said goodbye to her and trekked another 12km through villages and rice paddies with our new canadian friends.

The natural beauty of this region is difficult to describe in words and even harder to capture in pictures. At one point after climbing a mountain for about an hour, we arrived at the summit and all we could see were rice paddies in every direction. We were pretty much at cloud level and felt as if on top of the world. We could see farmers and their buffalo all around us. Truly amazing!

Due to lack of time we decided to book a few things back to back. Right after the trek ended at 5pm on the second day we hopped on a bus to go to the city of Lao Cai where we would catch the night train back to Hanoi. We arrived back in Hanoi at 5am and had to catch another bus that would take us to Halong Bay. We needed to get from the train station back to the travel agents office where we'd be picked up but unfortunately none of the 'hundred' taxis' would take us for a reasonable rate so instead we opted to walk the 2km. Strolling the quiet streets of Hanoi devoid of any cars/people was a bit surreal. Usually the city is bustling with life so this was a bit refreshing.

After our 4hr bus ride from Hanoi to Halong we boarded a "junk" which is a big boat with about 12 rooms, a restaurant, sun deck etc.. We would spend the next 2 days, 1 night here with about 20 other people.

Halong Bay has been added to the New 7 Wonders of the world and it absolutely spectacular. Since this new title, the government decided to paint all the boats hospital white. They used to be a nice decadent looking chocolate brown but the gov't wanted to be able to distinguish the tourist boats from other international boats (Halong Bay is an international port) and so this decision was made. It is definitely not as impressive to look at as all the boats just look dirty and rusted. This area in the Tonkin Bay consists of about 2000 limestone karsts looming out of the emerald green waters. Our "junk" took us on a cruise all around the area with several stops to see a cave, a beach to swim in and an amazing view point atop a karst. The experience was breathtaking even though there are about 300 boats out on the bay at the same time.

We were a bit nervous booking this tour as we've heard there are many ilegitimate companies selling tours for crappy old boats that look nothing like the brochure pics.

This is an example of how business works in Vietnam:

Person A opens a shop..let's say a tour shop called Vietnam Tour.

Person B sees Vietnam Tour is doing well..

Person B opens The Vietnam Tour right next door to Vietnam Tour

Person C catches on and opens Vietnam Tours across the street..and so forth...

We've seen sooo many similiarly named businesses scattered all around the same area in Hanoi (tour agencies, restaurants, hotels) that I don't think there's even a way of distinguishing the originator of them all. So the task of selecting a reputable agency was daunting. We just asked around and chose one that looked ok. The lady was nice, spoke great english and although we didn't get a huge discount on eveything we booked (bus, train, Halong Bay and then another night bus to our next destination of Hue) everything turned out satisfactory.

After our overnight at Halong Bay we made the 4 hour mini bus ride back to Hanoi to take yet another sleeper bus down south to the city of Hue which is located on the central coast of Vietnam. The bus ride was nice and both of us got a decent amount of sleep. We arrived in Hue at 8:30am and quickly found the guesthouse we booked on Agoda, dubbed Google Hotel. This place is amazing! We booked a double AC room for 14$ with breakfast. They offer FREE BEER, yup that's right FREE between 5pm and midnight. Other than that it's just a really funky little hostel right in the centre of Hue. We're going to spend the day walking around a bit to explore and then fill our bellies with free beer 😊

Love,

D&A

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Comments

[Kris]

You had me at free beer!
Pictures are amazing, cant wait to see you guys