Hanoi & Halong Bay, Vietnam - 28 to 31 March 2013

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We had really enjoyed our time in the mountains of Sapa and before we left our guide drove us to the border of Vietnam and China near Lao Cai where a bridge across the river separated the two countries. We then proceeded to the railway station to catch the sleeper train back to Hanoi - and guess what, we did have another sleepless night rocky and rolling on the narrow gauge railway, but our memories of Sapa were so worth a couple of sleepless nights - well in my view anyway........





We had more time now in Hanoi to view some of the city’s main attractions. Ho Chi Minh was a well known figure of 20th century history in Vietnam and as well as the rest of the world. He was recognized by UNESCO as the one who ‘devoted his whole life to the national liberation of the Vietnamese people.....’ He was a communist revolutionary leader, Prime Minister and President between 1945 to 1969 of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam). In his Will he stated that he wish to be cremated, and to have his ashes buried on the hills of the north, the center, and the south of Vietnam. Yet, in his honour the successor Communist Government decided to preserve his body so that he could see the country’s reunion and the following generations could come and visit him.



We arrived at his Mausoleum to be greeted with huge queues of people circling the building waiting to enter. Lines of visitors, including visiting foreign dignitaries, pay their respects at the mausoleum every day so we were told that there would probably be a long queue so were not surprised to see it snaking around the building.



The mausoleum was inspired by Lenin’s Mausoleum in Moscow but includes very distinct Vietnamese architectural elements. The exterior of the three storey building is built of marble and gray granite whilst the interior is gray, black and red polished stone. The mausoleum's portico has the words ‘Chủ tịch Hồ Chí Minh’ (Chairman Ho Chi Minh) inscribed across it in red which stands out from quite a distance. There were strictly enforced rules regarding dress, legs must be covered and visitors must be silent, and walk in two lines without stopping. Hands must not be in pockets and nor arms crossed. Smoking, drinking, eating, photography, and video taping were not permitted anywhere inside the mausoleum and cameras had to be left at the entrance. We joined the queue which included hundreds of children (some very young) and entered the building after just under an hour, one of our fellow travellers was even told to remove his sunglasses before entering and if anyone paused for just a second they were urged to move on by the guards.



The embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh (Uncle Ho) is preserved in the cooled, central hall of the mausoleum, which is protected by a military honour guard on each corner of his body. The body lies in a glass case with dim lights and as we walked past it was quite eerie as it looked just like he was asleep dressed in the simple clothes he had worn when he was alive.



The huge plaza in front of the mausoleum was divided into squares separated by pathways and the neat gardens around contained many different species of plants and flowers, all from different regions of Vietnam and all neatly trimmed. We were able to take pictures outside of the building from Ba Dinh Square, where Ho Chi Minh first declared independence from French rule in 1945. In the same complex we visited his home from which he ruled Vietnam until his death in 1969 and the nearby ochre painted Presidential Palace (formally Indochina’s General Governors Palace of the French) that he refused to live in, preferring to live in a small wooden house instead. The Government had this simple house on stilts built for him and inside the furniture was left as it was during his lifetime. The sparsely furnished house had two floors, the ground floor was used for meetings with 12 chairs around a large table and upstairs was his study and bedroom which had a single wooden bed, a small blanket, a rush mat and a fan. On display was also a cotton bonnet he used to wear when alive and some books and periodicals he was reading when he died were still left on the table. Displayed in the grounds were several cars used by him and the peaceful gardens contained a huge pond as well as many fruit trees. Directly behind the house was a grassed over bunker used by Ho Chi Minh during the Vietnam War.





Also in the complex was the One Pillar Pagoda constructed by Emperor Ly Thai Tong in AD 1049 and as the name suggests was set on a single stone pillar.According to legend, the king, who had no son, had a dream in which he was visited by a Goddess of Mercy. She was sitting on a lotus flower and presented him with a baby boy. Soon after the dream he married a new young queen who bore him a son. To show his gratitude the emperor ordered the construction of a single-pillared pagoda representing a lotus flower. Over the centuries the Pagoda has been damaged and reconstructed on numerous occasions and although very small was worth the visit.





After lunch we visited the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, opened by the government to help preserve as well as present the cultural heritage of the ethnic groups. Vietnam is a multi-ethnic country, which is composed of 54 ethnic groups belonging to 5 ethnolinguistic families and the museum has displays on their traditions and languages. The museum displays detailed information on the many ethnic groups of Vietnam, from the hill tribes of the north as well as the tribes of the centre to the more populous Kinh. The Viet (or Kinh) make up almost 86% of the population of Vietnam. We learned a lot about the minority peoples we had encountered earlier on our trip in the mountains of Sapa as mentioned in our last blog.



Informative displays showed the varied and elaborate dress styles of each minority tribe, along with exhibits of their way of life such as weaving, fishing and making tools and baskets. This was particularly interesting with the variety of dress styles demonstrating the skill of the makers, and the colours were vivid and eyecatching. The artifacts were well documented, though the written content could have been written larger as we had difficultly reading some of it. The highlight was the outdoor area, spreading throughout the grounds were samples of traditional housing used by the many minority tribes, quite different and some with extremely steep pitched roofs. Most had been relocated to the museum and rebuilt in the grounds by local craftsmen. You could enter the buildings and take a look inside at the layout and marvel at how cleverly they created all their housing needs from simple available materials. Also in the grounds on a small lake was a water puppet show house although this was closed.



However later that evening we enjoyed a performance of the famous Water Puppets at the Thanglong Theatre. Vietnamese Water Puppets were invented thousands of years ago by farmers in the Red River Delta region near Hanoi, as a means to entertain themselves when the rains flooded their paddy fields. The show included a musical prelude, descendants of the dragon and the fairy, production and struggle (fishing, toiling in the rice fields and fighting with tigers), pan-pipe dance, fan dance, tay nguyen highland dance, cham dance and the national festival dance. It was a very interesting performance and unique to what we had ever seen before. At the end of the show the puppeteers appeared from behind the curtain, wading in the water with their puppets.



The next morning we drove to the area that is regarded as the 'Jewel in the Crown of Vietnam', Halong Bay. This province shares a common border with China in the north and harbours some of the most stunning scenery in Vietnam. It extends along a coastline of 120 kilometers with more than 3,000 irregular limestone islands emerging from the deep blue waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. Halong Bay has been compared with the landscape of Guilin in China and the limestone islets of Krabi in southern Thailand and we noticed the similarity as soon as the karst landscape came into view. We had visited Krabi a few years ago now and loved this region of Thailand so were looking forward to our visit to the bay.



The Vietnamese call this place the Bay of the Descendants of the Dragon. According to the legend, during the time of the Emperor, the Chinese invaders wanted to seize the land of the Vietnamese empire. The Emperor asked for help to a family of dragons that launched pearls and jades in order to sink the enemy ships. Once finished the battle, due to the beauty of the place, the dragons and their descendants decided to stay.



Upon arrival in Halong Bay, we boarded our boat, the Marguerite for an overnight cruise around the bay. To be honest we were rather disappointed in the boats as they were not as we had seen from photographs before our trip. Our guide told us that someone had seen the uniformity of the white boats in Venice and thought they all looked good together. However whether this story was true or not in 2012 the People’s Committee of Quang Ninh Province had ordered that tour boats operating on the bay be painted white in order to renew their image following the bay’s designation as one of the new Seven Wonders of the World. Most boat operators were opposed to the decision but under the provincial order, 500 tour boats operating on the bay had to be repainted white and fitted with a brown sail if the boat used a sail - apparently boats which failed to comply would lose their permission to operate on Halong Bay so they were all painted white.



I must say that the charm of the traditional wooden junk is what appealed to us as the earthy colours would blend in well with the nature all around. So we were disappointed and also surprised at the number of boats operating in the bay, although many were anchored as tourist numbers were down. We thought that the junks looked awful, the paint was a murky off-white (some looked battleship grey) and most had already starting to peel from the hulls. However nothing could detract from the beauty of Halong Bay itself and we still thought it to be a stunning region. We also thought that as much of the paint had already started peeling off they would all soon revert back to their original timber - as long as they do not have to be repainted white again.....we can live in hope. It will be interesting to see in a few years time.........



After a very enjoyable seafood lunch on board we set sail and cruised around the bay stopping to explore some fascinating caves on one of the islets. While some islands are nothing more than large rocks, others are much more important with dense vegetation clinging to the rocks and some contain caves and grottos. The cave we visited was huge and had good paths leading through the centre with large stalagmites and stalactites, some shaped into statues and one that looked like a giant turtle.



We moored at Titop Island to enjoy a swim on one of the beaches, although we opted to climb to the island’s pagoda-styled lookout point at its peak. After climbing the 427 stone steps winding up the mountain we were treated to the most incredible 360 degree view of Halong Bay. This tiny island had the honour of receiving a visit from cosmonaut Ghermann Titop, a hero of the former Soviet Union, accompanied by President Ho Chi Minh. To mark the significance of their visit, Uncle Ho named it Ti Top Island. Dinner on board was as good as lunch but we were supposed to enjoy watching the sunset over the bay but the mist had settled in and the sun was nowhere to be seen....... Luckily we anchored for the night as our cabin was next to the engine room and it would have made it really noisy.........



At first light we changed from the junk to a row boat and rowed through an amazing tunnel carved under a limestone mountain. Once inside it opened out in a circle with the mountain all around us and stretching upwards we were completely surrounded. The silence with just the lapping of the oars was so peaceful as we rowed around before returning back through the tunnel where our junk was waiting. Back on board the junk we cruised past floating fish islands butsadly the mist remained and closed in on us even more so that you could hardly see anything until it was right in front of you. This turned the bizarre rock sculptures jutting so dramatically from the sea and the numerous grottoes into an enchanted, timeless world, it was like being in the middle of a fairy tale - Paul will say that’s my vivid imagination in overdrive....!



We returned to Hanoi passing huge rice paddies on the way, with farmers out tending their fields and water buffalo grazing nearby. Many of the houses in the towns and villages reminded us of those in France but with rice growing in the surrounding fields rather than grapes. The French influence throughout Vietnam was really noticeable and our guide told us that they had gained four main things from the French rule;

Architecture: with lots of turrets and balconies - some houses though were very tall and narrow with different generations living on each floor. These detached houses stood out as there was usually a large gap between the next building. Those with no windows on the sides apparently did not own the land on that side making them stand out even more with the large gaps between the next building.Baguette: these small bread sticks were being sold all along the roadsides, even on the main roads where they were covered in plastic because of the exhaust fumes one presumes.....Rubber: plenty of large plantations around the countryside.Latin Writing: the alphabet in Vietnamese is similar to the alphabet in English because they were both created from the latin alphabet and many letters seem to be exactly the same. It is not until you try to read the letters that you realise you cannot read the script.



The French also built the narrow gauge railway which we had travelled on when we went to the mountains of Sapa and which continued on into China. On our journey back to Hanoi we passed two large coal plants, one built with Chinese money and the other with Japanese money! We asked out guide why this was and he just said, ‘because Vietnam has no money of its own’.



We have really enjoyed our travels in Vietnam, particularly the friendliness and spirituality of the people. We will take with us many pleasant memories of our time in the country. In particular we will remember watching the Vietnamese squatting alongside the pavements getting on with everyday life, eating, sleeping, working, laughing, crying, shouting, resting and playing. As well as the vast number of scooters carrying just about anything, including up to five people - all sandwiched together on one seat. We will never forget the first time we saw a young girl of about three in the front with hands on the handlebars like she were driving, before we noticed dad, mum and brother sitting behind. We saw many scooters transporting animals and even live fish in huge plastic bags as well as young girls balancing the scooter with high heels as they swerved around the traffic chaos. Women in the markets and street with heavy laden ‘carrying poles’, selling goods from the baskets on each end. Just crossing the road was always crazy - you just had to start walking slowly and not stop, bikes and cars would then avoid you, quite daunting at first but you soon got used to it - no point in waiting for a gap or looking for a crossing point! Throughout Vietnam everywhere you looked people were always busy doing something. The children were savvy and so streetwise, even toddlers would be walking and playing alongside busy roads on their own and they all seemed happy and contented.



Last but not least we will remember our Vietnam guide Kha, shouting 'clean Happy House', make sure you 'go now' as there might not be another opportunity for quite a while........... his other favourite saying was ‘Sticky Rice, Sticky Rice’, NO, not time to eat but to keep close to him - particularly when crossing the road............Tomorrow we leave Vietnam and fly to Luang Prabang in Laos another new country and culture we cannot wait... - see you there.

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