Ninh Binh, Huè and Hoi An - Nice, Nicer and Nicest

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Unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for the transport…

Over the last week and a bit we’ve been making our way down Vietnam and stopping off at quite a few places along the way. I’ll update you on the locations in the title, and in a few days Helen will update you on everywhere else we visited before reaching Saigon for Christmas.

Sorry, but I think this is going to end up being a long one. Probably best you read it once you’ve made yourself a cup of tea…

Transport 1

After Halong Bay, our next stop was a pretty small city called Ninh Binh, a couple of miles south of
Hanoi. We therefore had to travel back to Hanoi (which was a shame as I’d been looking forward to not ever having to go back) and get on a different bus from there. The bus we’d booked was a ‘tourist bus’, though once we arrived turned out to be what’s known as a ‘sleeping bus’. Essentially, a large coach that’s converted inside so that it contains 3 rows of bunk beds (which are 2 beds high). It might all sound very luxurious but I can assure you it’s quite the opposite. I’d guess that there must have been about 50 ‘beds’ crammed into the coach - clearly it had been designed to fit as many people as possible in, rather than give the people on board a pleasant ride. Add the fact that it was so full that some people were having to sleep on the floor, that the beds were made of a slippery plastic material (that meant you slid forward whenever the bus stopped) and that 50% of them were far too small for a 4 foot Asian lady, let alone me, it made the 2 hour journey pretty unpleasant. Still, we were lucky, after 2 hours we reached our destination and got off, feeling very sorry for the remaining passengers who were going to have to stay on it for the next 8 hours to get to where they wanted to go.

As we got off the bus the driver asked me where our bags were. Helen showed him and he went to open up the hold to get them out. Now, I’d noticed on the way down the driver was driving particularly aggressively (even for Vietnam!) and seemed to dive into oncoming traffic a lot. However, it soon turned out that this aggression wasn’t limited to his driving. When he opened up the hold our bags weren’t there, so we opened up the next door - still no bags. The driver didn’t take this too well and started to get very angry at me for not knowing where they were. After a few minutes of us opening up doors and having the driver shouting at me and (I can only assume) not saying very nice things to me in Vietnamese, we found the bags. Turns out one of the crew had moved them to make way for our some different luggage…

Ninh Binh

When we got the bags and got away from the coach, we vowed not only to never use ‘Camel Travel’ (the bus company) again, but to never ever get on a sleeping bus. In fact, it’d been quite a useful trip, we managed to experience the unpleasantness of the sleeping bus, but without actually having to sleep on it. Following this we checked into a nearby hotel and when we woke up the next day I went to book the train to get to Huè (our next stop). Ninh Binh clearly doesn’t get quite as many tourists as the other places we’d been to. In the 30 minutes it took me to find the train station I must have had about 15 people say ‘hello’ to me. It wasn’t the usual “hello” followed by “you buy something?”, it was a pure and simple, ‘look, there’s a foreigner, let’s say hello to him’. Which was quite a nice change.

When we got to the train station, we booked a train to Huè for the following day. As the journey was so long (600ish km - 11 hours), we had to book a ‘sleeping train’. This sounded much better than the bus, though we were a little nervous as the ‘soft sleeper’ cabins were full, so we had to book a ‘hard sleeper’ cabin instead. For the remainder of our time in Ninh Binh, we booked a tour. It was a motorbike tour where we each had a driver who took us, on the back of his motorbike, to several different locations in the local area. The main reason we wanted to do this was that our guidebook had told us there was an area called ‘Tam Coc’, which rivalled Halong Bay in terms of beauty. The done thing here is to get in a boat and then be rowed for 2 hours down a river and through 3 large caves. It was good, but the whole experience was ruined by the fact that, yet again, it turned into an opportunity to make money from tourists. Once we’d got half way we were interrupted with loads of boats selling food and other goods. As with all things like this the conversation went as follows:

“You buy something?”
“No thanks”
“You buy coke?”
“No, we don’t want anything thanks”
“Banana?”
“No…nothing at all”
“I have postcard”
“No”
“Oh ok”…………. “You buy coke?”
“No, No, No, nothing thank you!!!!”

A new twist was that this time they tried to guilt trip us into buying something by saying that the driver of our boat would like a drink and we should buy her one. As we suspected that any drinks bought for the driver would just be given back to the seller at a later date, we didn’t buy the driver a drink and offered her some of our water later (which she didn’t seem to want) instead. This wasn’t the end of the selling though. About two thirds of the way through, the driver of the boat opened up a large metal box and tried to start selling things herself (slightly strange things like T-shirts and doilies)… Finally, when we eventually got to the end, the woman barked “tip!” at us. Tam Coc was pretty nice and the poor lady had been rowing us for 1.5 hours by the end, but all the hard selling didn’t seem necessary seeing as we’d already paid a fair bit for the boat trip in the first place.

The rest of our motorbike tour was very good. We visited a couple of nice locations (including a place with 460 very steep steps - typically, my camera run out of battery when we got to the top) but the highlight had to be just driving around the countryside. We saw water buffalo in rice fields, tons of goats crossing the road, plenty of locals going about their daily business and some great scenery.

Transport 2

The following evening we went to the train station to get a train to Huè. At the station we met a very friendly Swiss couple who had been on the Halong Bay cruise with us - the travelling world isn’t a very big one. In fact we met a lot of nice couples at the station… all of whom had booked into the soft sleeper cabins… it was pretty much just us that had a hard sleeper cabin… Nevermind, we thought, it should still be fine. Or maybe not… Turns out that ‘hard sleeper’ and ‘soft sleeper’ were literal descriptions of the cabins. In the soft sleeper cabins there were only 4 beds, each very new with a mattress. In the ‘hard sleeper’ there were 6 beds (2 bunk beds that were 3 high) - which were literally just a plank of wood with a thin mat covering it. Despite this, the journey wasn’t too bad. In our cabin there was us, a (slightly pretentious) British bloke and two Vietnamese men. It took a while to get to sleep, but both of us did and slept through until about 6am. At 6am our sleep stopped. Clearly this is the time Vietnamese people get up. An alarm or a phone sounded, both of the Vietnamese men got up and started smoking in the cabin (I’m not aware of anywhere you can’t smoke here). To make matters worse they opened the cabin door and talked at a normal level, clearly not worried by the other 3 people wanting more sleep.

Hue

When we arrived in Hue, slightly dazed, we were mobbed by people trying to get us to stay at their hotels. One bloke seemed to be so desperate that when we told him we weren’t going to stay at his place he looked only a couple of seconds away from crying. Eventually we did go to a hotel with someone and it was a good choice. The room was very big, had a balcony and even it’s only PC with Internet (actually in the room!) - only cost us £8 a night too. The main difference between Huè and other places was that we encountered something that we previously hadn’t on the whole trip… Rain! And lots of it. Aside from that Huè was nice. We didn’t achieve much on our first day there as we were so tired, though we did meet a very friendly man who, having explained he was an English teacher and introduced us to his family, offered to take us out for a drink or take us to his house so he could practice his English. Unfortunately, we were too tired to take him up on the offer, but it was nice to feel wanted. Again, as with Ninh Binh, the only touristy thing we did was to take a motorbike tour. This time we went to a tomb (which was set within very nice grounds), saw a large pagoda, a temple, some American bunkers from the Vietnam war and tried our hand at making incense - which neither of us were any good at. The tour was good, though by the time we got back there the main tourist attraction of Huè (a large citadel in the centre) was closed. Which was a shame, as we had to leave early the next day. Oh, and the food we had in Hue was hardly great… One evening we went to a restaurant to get something to eat but when we arrived they had run out of everything we wanted, so we just stayed for a drink. Whilst having the drink we saw a massive rat run across the floor… Phew, we thought, at least we didn’t eat here. The next place wasn’t any better though. We both opted to have a burger and it was probably the most horrible food I’ve eaten. When I bit into my burger I felt something very hard. Upon taking it out of my mouth I dropped it on my plate and it made a fairly loud ‘clink’ sound when it hit the plate. I can only assume it was a bit of bone or tooth (or at least I hope so). Helen’s burger wasn’t any better, when she bit in she found herself with a mouth full of grizzle. Needless to say I haven’t had a burger since.

Transport 3

This part of transport is hardly worth mentioning, expect for one reason. Our two hour bus trip to Hoi An had a stop at a beach in the middle. When we’d booked it up, we’d been told that it was only a short stop and not time to swim. He was clearly having a laugh. When we got to the ‘beach’ it was little more than a rubbish dump set within the water. In fact, there was no sand, leading up to the water was just a string of old tires and beer cans… I was obviously gutted that we didn’t stay there longer.

Hoi An

Hoi An is probably the best place we’ve been to so far. Lovely people, great food, easy to walk around and a very relaxed atmosphere. Hoi An is well known for being the place in Vietnam you get tailored clothes. So, not to break the trend, we got some tailored clothes of our own. We went to a recommended tailor and bought a suit, winter coat, 2 shirts (for me) and a top and trousers for Helen. It cost us about $215 but considering that the suit was cashmere and all the clothes were tailored to us, it was a pretty good price. The whole experience was good, we got to choose the fabric, colour and exactly what we wanted everything to look like. For me it was slightly marred by the fact that at one point they needed to take my leg measurements. This meant I couldn’t wear my trousers and had to change into a pair of shorts they provided. These shorts came in 2 sizes; ‘Super fat American Size’ and ‘Tiny Anorexic Asian Child Size’. Neither fitted. So I had no choice but to go into the shop and be measured in just my (very unattractive) boxers. It wouldn’t have been too bad but most of the time this was happening I had 3 people (Helen and the two employees there) laughing at me, it seemed to take longer than I should, and I swear they moved me as close to the front of the shop as possible so that passers-by by could see. We went back a couple of times to get a few little adjustments to our clothes and by the end they looked very good. The only problem might be that we sent them back to England with a few other purchases, including some (maybe not 100% legal) DVDs. We have since found out that it’s illegal to send copied DVDs out of the country and that the government are really cracking down to stop it happening. So, I might not see that suit after all…

Not too much else happened in Hoi An, we saw some more nice buildings, the manager of a bar beat me 3 times at connect four and we saw some traditional dance. This time was much better than in Laos. Though just as confusing… We saw a bloke that looked like Father Christmas dance with 2 girls and a woman who seemed to go slowly insane on stage, rather than actually dance…

Transport 4

Transport hadn’t been great so far, but this was, by far, the worst! There isn’t a train station in Hoi An, so we were back with our good friend, the bus. But we had a problem, we had set our hearts on being in Saigon for Christmas so we needed to get moving… Also, the only buses running from Hoi An to Nha Trang were ‘sleeping’ night buses… So that’s what we got…. Here’s a run down of the journey:

8:00pm - Got on the bus and found that the only beds free were those at the front, so we got in them.
8:02pm - Noticed that the people behind us were the Swiss couple from the Halong Bay Cruise and that we’d seen at the train station - very small world.
8:04pm - I noticed that the reason the beds at the front were free was because they were half the size of the rest of the beds - and the normal beds aren’t big.
8:30pm - They turn on some Vietnamese music that lasts the whole night.
8:35pm - We hit some potholes in the road which shake the whole bus around - these also continue all night.
10:00pm - We stop off at a service station to go to the loo.
10:10pm - Helen runs out of the loo to get my camera and then goes back in again. Nothing kinky going on, she just wanted to take a picture as the toilet is full of large spiders.
10:30pm - The bus starts to leave
10:31pm - We hear someone crying “Hey!, Hey!”. Turns out the bus was leaving without someone. Don’t know if anyone else was left behind.
11:35pm - The bus breaks down. Looks like there’s a problem with the clutch.
12:15pm - Problem seem to be fixed, so off we go.
1:00am - Still no sleep, more potholes.
1:30am - One of the crew on the bus starts smoking near us (again - you smoke everywhere here!).
2:00am - The bloke sleeping below Helen blows snot from his nose on the floor. Disgusting yes, but at least we weren’t the girl asleep opposite where he was doing it…
3:00am - I start to doze.
3:30am - More massive potholes - end of dozing.
4:45am - We reach our destination. I get out of my tiny cramped seat and, again, vow to never ever get a sleeping bus.
5:00am - Tired and weary we check into a hotel and go to sleep.

I think that’ll do for now. If you’ve managed to read this much then well done! All that’s left for me to say is Merry Christmas! Hope everyone has a great day tomorrow! Think of us when you’re having your Christmas dinner, ours won’t be anywhere near as good…

More updates soon,

David and Helen.

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