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Published: February 10th 2010
Hanoi
So arriving on Christmas day we found a nice restaurant in the Old Quarter overlooking Boan Kiem lake which is one of many lakes dotted around the city, though how jealous I was of your lot’s Crimbo feasting! The lake itself is home to a couple of temples and a stuffed turtle from the lake measuring in at a whopping 2.1metres. There is plenty of folklore around the turtles, this lake is actually named after the legend of one of these turtles delivering a sword Excalibur stylee. Everything closes at 12am so we were just about to give up on the Christmas drinks and we found Lollipub. The guys here were wicked and the owner Duc took us to a club on a boat until the early hours. Upon returning by taxi to the lake at about 5.30am amidst the morning yoga and exercise clan we then wandered the identical looking streets (due to lacking the night time neon for reference) for an hour and a half looking for our hotel! Panoy thought it was hilarious, must say bed was a very welcome one that morning.
At this point I should mention the motorbikes, Hanoi is mental! I
am not over exaggerating when I say that you will not get a break for as much as five seconds from hearing horns beeping, you soon become numb! One night when we were all off out this girl just threw me the key to her motorbike as apparently it has to be girl on the back otherwise you look like a muppet. What a crazy old experience, I loved every second of it and thankfully am still alive to tell the tale! Check out my vid of the chaos on Facebook, it has to be seen to be believed!
We spent the next couple of days seeing the sights and went to pay our respects to the big man Ho Chi Minh in the mausoleum. For those who don’t know he was the saviour of Vietnam and they LOVE him here rather unsurprisingly, even at the footy in Laos they were carrying around framed pictures of him, what a guy. Panoy then headed back to Laos en route to France and I went on a two day boat trip around Ha Long Bay.
Ha Long Bay
You may remember Ha Long Bay as the place on Top
Turtle
2.1 metres!Gear where they ended their Vietnam trip with a drink at a floating bar. It is incredibly touristy and there can be up to as many as 350+ boats around the bay at any one time. It really is beautiful though, it’s a shame that the weather was cold and a little wet as the sun deck on the boat would have been gorgeous. We first visited ‘The Amazing Cave’ and with a name like that expected it to be rubbish but it actually turned out to be pretty amazing. The boat was awesome, sweet little cabin and the food was abundant and of the highest quality. Met some nice people on the boat and ended up playing Vietnamese Ludo with the crew in the evening., learnt a bit of Vietnamese but it is extremely difficult as one word can mean 6 different things dependant on the tone you use! Next day it was an early morning kayaking session which was great and there were loads of monkeys at the shores who provided some entertainment. Our tour guide had been doing this trip for 9 months and never seen the monkeys before so we were fortunate indeed.
It was
Ghost Bike
Panoy in Hanoi! then back to Hanoi and I moved my stuff in at the Lollipub with my mate Duc and the crew and awaited NYE. There was a massive flower show on in Hanoi which is quite a big event with lots of live music and various other performances. I managed to sneak my way past security through a shop to get some pics before the masses were let in! Duc’s girlfriend was performing as part of a girl band in front of an audience of about 2000 people so we went to give her and the girlies some support and then went out with them all afterwards, hotpots on the street and vodka red bulls, and they paid for it all!
NYE was expectedly a messy old affair, it wasn’t quite so special considering I party like it’s 1999 almost every night, party at Lollipub then went clubbing with some Aussies, don’t remember much!
I bought an open ticket in Hanoi to Saigon (sorry Ho Chi Minh City!) at the south end of the country for a bargain $40 whereby you can hop off where you like and hop back on when you like. The sleeper buses have seats
that recline back into beds but the roads are so bumpy it’s kind of ironic that they call them sleeper buses.
Hué
I arrived in Hué first thing in the morning and decided to get a tour around the temples and war bunkers on the back of this guy’s motorbike. He was hilarious, he was very proud about the fact that he had been married for 15 years and still has ‘boom boom’ with his wife 5 times a day! It was a good day and we managed to bash out all of the main sights so I went for some pool and drinks in the evening and then headed straight to Hoi An the next day.
Hoi An
On the bus to Hoi An I met a guy called Craig who I had been playing pool with in Laos about 3 weeks beforehand, we shared a room together along with this Swiss girl and she was so incredibly annoying! Hoi An has these lovely little streets much like an old European city, it’s kind of a cultural capital of Vietnam with an abundance of fabric shops, art galleries, museums, courtyard cafes and the like. As
ever I got a motorbike for a couple of days, day one I went up to Danang and the famous China Beach which was where most of the American war landings were made and it also acted as their R&R spot, met a couple of nice Italian girls on the beach who had been volunteering with the orphans in Hanoi so had a bite to eat and some beers with them and headed back via the Marble Mountains. That evening I returned from the bar to my ‘24hr’ guesthouse at 12.30 am only to find it locked up and nobody home! After 30 minutes banging and shouting I conceded and headed back to the bar that I was in as it was the only place open in town! I told one of the bar staff that I had been chatting to my dilemma and he offered me a bed at their family home, what a relief. This was a real adventure as my ‘bed’ was in a corrugated iron hut with mud floors along with the rest of the family all together in one space, they were so good to me, really lovely people. The next day I did the
50km ride out to the ancient ruins of My Son, go on My Son! A ride in a US jeep and a very peaceful stroll around, though a bit ‘templed out’ it was a good ride and a nice day. Next stop Nha Trang.
Nha Trang
Now this is what I had really been looking forward to for the last couple of weeks, especially during the cold (I mean 15 degrees!) in the north. Nha Trang has a sweet city beach, diving, decent bars, booze cruises, the works. I’m finding travelling is all about mixing up your culture with your fun and I was ready for some fun! I met this top guy Jack and we basically just played pool and hit ‘The Sailing Club’ which is this really nice bar on the beach for dancing each night, my god this kid had some moves, he was a legend around town for it and meant that I got in everywhere for free! Hangovers were recovered on the beach and I think about 5 days were lost here.
Saigon (HCMC)
So my Dad had emailed me a few days before as a friend of his has an
Irish mate with a bar/guesthouse in the heart of the backpacker area in Saigon. Incredibly of all the places the bus could have dropped me off at 6am that morning (Saigon is huge!) I stepped off only 5 yards away from the front door, result. I mosied about in the day and sat and had a few drinks with Karl and his wife in the evening and then headed out the next day to the war museum which was very interesting. They call Saigon ‘Land of The Motorbike’ and for good reason, I have never seen so many in my life! It beats Hanoi hands down though the roads are about 10 times as wide as in the Old Town so think Hanoi still gets the prize for the hardest ride! It was then off to the Cu Chi Tunnels out towards the Cambodian border, this is the 250km tunnel network that the Viet Cong lived in and fought from during the war. They were a really sneaky lot, it was amazing to see all the tricks they had up their sleeves! One of the highlights was at the end of the trip when we got to the shooting range
and you had the choice of 6 weapons to have a pop on, it was a tough choice between the M16 and the AK47 but I went with the AK and it was awesome! Missed more than I hit but was cool watching the massive clouds of sand shoot up as the bullets slammed in to the bank behind.
So that was it for Vietnam, I had a really good time and it was really interesting though not quite as fun as Thailand and Laos hence it only took me about 3 weeks to travel. The people in Vietnam are a tough old bunch (moreso in the north) but once you get through the initial barriers they become really welcoming and friendly. There is more to see but I was quite excited about getting to Cambodia as everybody had told me it’s the shizzle.
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Jules
non-member comment
Nice one my son, some cracking pics there, I am extremely jealous, to say the least.