A taste of Vietnam...

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VIETNAMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoa what a trip, From Guatemala to Mexico, Mexico To Santiago, Santiago to Vina del Mar, back to Santiago, Santiago to Auckland, Auckland to Sydney. Pull an all nighter with our besties in Sydney then fly out to Kuala Lumpur, Kuala Lumpur to Hanoi.......... In 5 days. I tell ya the guy who went round the world in 80 days had it easy. We are meeting my Mum and Dad in Hanoi to travel with them for the next 2 weeks. We were 5 hours earlier so we thought we’d go for a cruise through the city. Hanoi makes the cities of Sth America seem like peaceful country towns. Scooters, scooters and more scooters, they travel like a hive mind, it’s incredible. It took us quite some time to learn the method of crossing the roads, quite technical really. It involves calculated movement on to the road and through the swarms of motor bikes and relying on the riders to know exactly where you are and how to swerve around you. After our first attempts which involved closing our eyes and running full pelt through the traffic with arms flailing wildly we started to refine it a little.

We made our way down to Ho Hoan Kiem lake in the middle of the old quarter, on the lake was a long run of shops aimed at grabbing the tourist eye. Coley of course was pulled in the direction of the ice cream shop, not that I can blame her after a rainy couple of May days in Sydney the heat and humidity of Hanoi was a bit of a shock to the system. Coley found the ice cream shop called “Fanny” he he he. It was the most decadent ice cream and for only a couple of bucks. Immersing ourselves in the Vietnamese culture can wait a day, today after our massive 5 days of travel we are content with extra helpings of ice cream.

Mum and Dad arrived around half past 8 in the evening and recalled to us that their trip had an interesting twist already. Their direct flight to Hanoi ended landing in Saigon and transferring them to a domestic flight then once they arrived at Hanoi airport they nearly took the wrong taxi driver. After dinner we were all ready to put our heads down for rest. We have a big day tomorrow, Vietnam here we come!

This is the first time my parents have been travelling overseas since I was born nearly 30 years ago. The crowded conditions of Hanoi were a bit of a shock compared to the peace and quiet of their rural setting of the Promised Land. However they took the challenge up and revelled in the interaction with the Vietnamese people even if they were on the sell. Dad nearly had his shoe pulled off his feet by a shoe shiner trying to make a buck. We spent 3 days in Hanoi, we spent most of our time eating drinking and of course the girls went shopping while Dad and I went exploring. We were amazed at the working conditions, Key cutters and shoe shiners working on the foot path in a space smaller then a dining table with pedestrians nearly kicking them all day long. At one point we had to step over a mechanic pulling apart an engine block. We were ready to get out of the city and see some of the Vietnamese countryside and beautiful oceans. Halong Bay here we come, a junk booked we start the 4 hour trip to the world heritage site that all 4 of us have been waiting to see.

I would love to say that we became best friends with our captain and the service and food were great and everything went perfectly according to plan. This however would be a blatant lie, we found out later that our experience is one of many in Halong Bay. However I will not dwell on the negatives of our side trip (whoever would have thought that SPAM and tomato sauce could be a main meal.. especially when we had told them Coley was a vegetarian). I would prefer to focus on the positives, Halong bay is beautiful, the limestone in the water creates a green luminescence dotted with thousands of limestone monolithic islands creates a landscape which needs to be seen to be believed. We travelled to Hang Dau cave and were met by steps that were almost vertical travelling up the side of the island about 70 meters up. To our surprise the old Vietnamese couple sitting next to us on the boat didn’t even blink, they would have been about 80. We offered our help and instantly made some friends even if there was a small language barrier, I was blown away by their tenacity, I tell you if I have as much go in me at their age as they do then I will be one happy pensioner. The cave was amazing; it went in so deep is the coolest looking cave I have ever seen. As we were walking through we noticed that people were setting up tables and food, we found out that a wedding ceremony was being held there later that afternoon, what a cool place to get married.

Back on the boat we were running too late to go kayaking so we all stripped down to our togs and started diving off the side of the junk into the emerald waters of Halong Bay. A wakeup call at 6am to go kayaking (another surprise) and we got shipped off to another boat because ours was going back (further surprises) and we were off to Cat Ba island. We jumped on a bus and were escorted through plantations of lychee trees to the start of Cat Ba national park and the beginning of our trek which turned out to be more of a mountain climb. The rest of our group were all young backpackers and flew up the mountain, Coley and I have been through a lot of treks on our trip and were not phased by this one. However we forgot that mum and dad have a good 30 years on us and with heat and humidity it was a challenge. We will always remember this trek though because of one local fellow who helped us the whole way and made us laugh at the same time with his monkey man antics, it was such a refreshing change from having the Vietnamese constantly asking for money, he was great and he totally made our day. The view from the top was magnificent and one I will not forget anytime soon. Our guide took us down the “quick” way, in other words we went the path that was almost vertical, I think my parents were very glad to be at the bottom. We offered our guide a tip because he was so good to us but he refused, he was a really cool guy.

We were taken to our hotel and had lunch before hitting the road once again to visit Monkey Island. As it turns out we discovered that the monkeys are not native to the island but put there by the Vietnamese so that they could create extra tourist trade. However the beach on the island was beautiful and we stripped to our togs once more and enjoyed the water. I challenged dad to see if we could get to the top of the island, the girls decided that sunbaking on the beach was a better option so we left them to it. We didn’t quite make the top due to crazy sharp rocks and the fact that our thongs didn’t quite cut it, however we saw something really distressing. We saw that on the other side of the island a boat had dumped all it’s waste, this wasn’t the first time we had seen littering in Halong Bay by the locals and it is really disappointing that an amazing place like Halong Bay, a world heritage site to boot can be treated in such a way and by the people who earn a living from it. Tomorrow back to Hanoi and down the coast to Hue.

It took us 14 hours on the train from Hanoi to Hue, Coley and I took it as another cross country trip, no sweat. I awoke from my chair bed and turned to see how my parents enjoyed the ride. Again I forgot that what we are used to after our time travelling is not what my parents were ready for, they didn’t sleep a wink. I felt so bad, I assumed that the way we were used to travelling they would have no problem with. Sorry guys. The scenery from the train was amazing, all the locals are up before dawn and working hard in the rice patties and all the Vietnamese in our cab were so lovely, we gave the kids lollies and fruit and they shared their breakfast with us. Again it is such a relief and thrill to meet ordinary Vietnamese who are loving and helpful. One of the cheeky little girls even tried to take a sneaky picture of us strange white tourists as we got off the train!

Yay! We have arrived in Hue, we check into a hotel and spent the day relaxing after our epic trip, we headed out that night and had a great feed and a good number of beers to welcome the new part of our adventure. Next morning with heads like lump hammers we hopped on a pair of bikes and off to the Perfume River. They put us on a dragon boat and off we went, we saw a marshal arts display then down to Thien Mu pagoda. The pagoda was really cool and I ended up getting into about 5 different photos with locals and other tourists. For some reason this happened to dad and me a bit through Vietnam. We moved onto the Royal tombs, The best was the Tu Duc tomb. We had to climb a bucket load of stairs in the crazy heat but it was worth it, the whole room inside the tomb was one enormous mosaic! It was far out, check the pictures out for yourself I can’t describe only one part of the mosaic as it was all amazing.
On our way home from the tombs we stopped in a town where they manufacture incense. The lady had a huge, soft pile of incense and rolled the empty incense sticks in the goop a few times and hey-presto, a perfect incense stick. We didn't know that was how it was made!

That night the ladies spotted some tailors and went shopping so dad and I hit the pub and mixed it up with the locals, we had a great night and Coley and mum were stoked with the clothes that were made for them. Tomorrow Hoi An!
We arrived in Hoi An after a long and stinking hot bus ride and immediately rented a motorbike. During our trip in Vietnam we had a bit of trouble with pretty much every tour we have been on, it felt like we never got our monies worth and there was always a pitch, a mate who sells this or another mate with a hotel we could stay in. Once in Hoi An we immediately wanted this part of our trip to be more independent. We loved Hoi An, the food was great and the shopping was even better. We were hoping for a tropical beach for the next couple of days but unfortunately the beaches were exploited. We saw kilometres of coastline that used to house the countries fisherman and now has resort after resort the whole way along the beachfront, it was sad to see, those fisherman now grow grass so that they can sell turf to the big resorts. The 4 of us decided that the beach was not where we wanted to be and we found a little hotel closer to town that had the best staff. The next 4 days we shopped and went exploring into the country towns near Hoi An with the motorbike and ate good food and drank and swam and met as many of the Hoi An locals as we could. Coley would have spent her life savings in the shops here if I had let her get away with it. We all got custom made clothes that were amazingly cheap. Actually, we spent a bit too much time at the tailor shops! We all felt as though we could spend a lot longer in Hoi An, however after 4 days Coley and I had to head off to Saigon and on to Cambodia. It was a bit sad saying goodbye to mum and dad but there was no way we were going to miss Angkor Wat. We flew into Saigon and couldn’t believe that there were more motorbikes here then in Hanoi, they moved like a school of fish it was amazing. We even saw one scooter carrying a family of 6, no road rules here. We would have loved to see more of Saigon and south Vietnam but unfortunately we didn’t give ourselves the time so it was a quick one night stay. Tomorrow the border and into Cambodia!!!!!!

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Photos

Halong Bay
the boat we SHOULD have been on