Hanoi - India with out the bad smells

We liked Hanoi, we hung out at the Beer hoi street corner drinking 2000 dong (7 pence) beers sitting on small plastic chairs, people-watching.

It was such a noisy hectic place, it reminded us of India with scooters flying around and with no room on the pavements for walking, what with the parked scooters, the food stalls and the building works going on, we had to walk on the side of the road and pray that the scooters saw you before you saw them!

But all this made the town seem better rather than worse and people were so friendly that it was a nice, if tiring place to walk around.

Highlights:

• Drinking Beer Hoi too fast and too early and then not being able to find the hotel, trooping around half drunk thinking it was funny and after the feet started to hurt not finding it funny at all and then the relief of seeing the hotel sign after Eleanor came through in the end... go map reader.


• Eating at KOTO: know one, teach one. A restaurant that teaches street kids to be waiters and chefs, so we got to eat fantastic food and support charity... super!


• Visiting Ho Chi Min's preserved body, the strange thing was the gaurds that looked too young to be holding rifles, strutting around the place, keeping the crowds in line, plus Eleanor thought that the yellow light really did not suit him!


• Getting another couple of things made for Eleanor and them turning out OK with no stress or tears!


• Fanny ice-cream! mmm just what you need at the end of a long day!

Halong Bay (Cat Ba island mark 2) - incredible jagged scenery

We made it back to Hanoi and found a nice enough hotel. Our instincts were right and we quickly found a really good sounding tour at a much cheaper price that included buses, boat and a number of other activities that would pick us up from our hotel and drop us back after 3 days: perfect!

Our boat for the first night

After a pretty good sleep we were collected as promised and took a minibus to Halong City (not far from Haiphoung but much nicer) where we picked up our boat at lunchtime. It was a triple decker: bottom level were AC bedrooms with en suite, middle floor was a restaurant/sitting area, top deck was a sun deck. The boats all have sails in the pictures but in reality none of them ever use them. We started off by having an amazing seafood lunch and we knew we'd done the right thing choosing the luxury trip!

View from the cave entrance

The scenery was fabulous, albeit full of tourist boats, but still wonderful and everything that you imagine it. Again we took tons of pictures and one just doesn't do it credit so do click on the picture and check out our flickr site for more. We stopped after a few hours at a nearby cave - "Amazing cave" - which was interesting but amazing is pushing it a bit! Great view of the bay though. There are 1969 islands in a sort of arc surrounding the Vietnam coast, and including Cat Ba island which is the biggest of them all and the only inhabited one. We had a quick swim as the sun went down and then moored up in a beautiul bay for the night.

Our fellow tourists were a mixed bunch: 2 Italian dudes of whom one spoke broken English, a French couple (broken English), some Korean girls, some Vietnamese boys and a group of very stuck up English students (Cambridge Med students). We tabled with the Italians and despite us not being able to speak each others' languages, they proved to be fun companions (Francesco and Deluca)!

El gets some R&R

The next day had us up early to be picked up by a smaller boat and taken to Cat Ba island (but the nature reserve side of it) for some cycling, a short walk, and then a bit of kayaking. It was incredibly hot but it was quite interesting to see a local village and have a coke while being amused by a mud hut next to a concrete house complete with the compulsory cable TV!


We ended up back at Cat Ba town but at the nicest hotel. Well actually although the room was ok the bed seemed to have some kind of crater in the mattress so it wasn't as comfy a night's sleep as we'd hoped. The hotel also had a DVD system where you could choose a DVD and they'd play it for you. Out of their crappy selection we choose Pride and Prejudice and it came on as expected then after 2 minutes stopped. White noise! After about 2 calls to reception it was replaced by "10 years of Celine Dion" AAARRRGGGHHH noooooooOOOOOOO!!! In the end, after the 5th phone call we gave up and had an early night!

The 3rd day had us go back to a big boat via the small boat, and then back to Halong City. Kieran had accidentally left his swimming trunks on the previous big boat and our tour guide, Chien, was dubious that we'd get them back as they never know which boat will be used. We rolled up to the big boat and Lo and Behold but one of the crew was wearing the shorts! We told Chien and the guy disappeared and a still warm pair of shorts were pressed into our hands as we boarded! Typical!

The landscape here is totally amazing: really the stuff of magic and legends. You really do expect dragons to rise up out of the water, and the bay is actually called "Descending Dragon" in it's original name. No photos can do it justice as you can never fit it all in but we certainly had fun trying! It was good fun with lots of relaxing, some drinking, and El even managed to speak proper French to the French couple for over an hour on the last day: and even managed to remember a sentence using the subjunctive so all in all a great trip. We were deposited back in Hanoi with plenty of time to do the city before leaving Vietnam.

Cat Ba island - mark one (stinks of fish)

We got up at 6am and caught a bus to Hue airport. A wonderful, easy and quick flight later we arrived in Hanoi before 9am. We jumped straight into a taxi which took us to a bus station. We should have realised we'd made a mistake when we had an argument with the taxi driver about where he was taking us, but nevertheless we had decided to get to Cat Ba island (in Halang Bay - the coastline with all the jagged rocks that you see in postcards) on recommendation from Rob and Meg, under our own steam, rather than take a tourist trip.

We then caught a bus to Haiphoung then a motorbike to the ferry, but missed the ferry in front of us as we didn't have enough cash on us (no ATMs on Cat Ba) and had to get some money out. Not to mention it was lunchtime and we were starving and all there was to eat was a pot noodle stall selling vastly overpriced water and noodles, that tasted like a pot noodle back home. So we eventually got another bus to a different ferry after being stung for about 50% more than we should have paid and got a ferry to Cat Ba island, then another bus ride to Cat Ba town itself. Sadly, half the island has been designated a national park so they have utterly devastated the other half by quarrying half the stone out to make a road for the ferry terminal.

View towards the ferry
It was horrid. It was firstly reminiscent of the backside of Hong Kong island - with little mountains surrounded by high rise hotels. But Cat BA was at the height of its tourist season - it is like Costa del Vietnam: jam-packaged full of Vietnamese package tourists. It was almost impossible to find a hotel under $25 which is daylight robbery ($10 should get a pretty damn nice room anywhere else in Vietnam).

Finally we found a reasonable hotel and wandered the streets looking for a nice place to eat. We were met with the stink of endless seafood in crummy and dirty-looking places, and surly looks from locals who clearly weren't interested in our money.

We did have a lovely day the next day chilling on the beach, although we did get a bit sunburned...silly silly...but the 2 and 3-day boat trips we had expected to find were vastly overpriced and on really shitty boats with no beds and no shade for the daytime.

The nice part of Cat Ba
When our hotel manager threw us out of the hotel after the second night we cut our losses and bought a ticket back to Hanoi. We were so close to Halang bay you could almost see it from the beach but we realised that all the good trips were arranged in Hanoi and we frankly couldn't wait to get out of that shitty little town.

Hue - for a day

Hue is also a world heritage town but we were only there for an afternoon and a night so not much to report. It is situated a bit further up the coast than Hoi An, inland a bit on a river. It was roasting when we arrived and so checked into a hotel right where the bus dropped us and headed into town.

The citadel - OK for a while but frankly it's too hot for culture!

There is an old citadel that we wanted to visit and made our way there through the incredibly hot street. It was quite interesting but much of it had been bombed in the Vietnam/American War and although it was "undergoing restoration" much of it was left to your imagination - quite literally as there weren't even any maps or pamphlets to tell you what might/should have been there. In any case after an hour of that we couldn't take any more culture - we were still a bit zapped from all the tailoring in Hoi An - so found a cafe with yummy mango shakes and a pool table and wiled away the afternoon there.

We found a nice restaurant for dinner and had an early night as we'd decided to get a flight up to Hanoi - to save both time and effort - an had to be up at 6am to get a bus to the airport.

Hoi An - tailor-made hell!

We arrived fresh from the night train to a nearby town - Danang - and hopped straight into a taxi for a half-hour ride to Hoi An, a beautiful historic town near the coast which is famous for it's tailor shops.

We found a nice enough hotel and headed out to get some clothes made. We had already tried to get some stuff made in India - Kieran got a suit and a few other bits and bobs, but for El it was a total disaster and she came away empty-handed. You are faced, in Hoi An, with a choice of Tailor shops: cheap and cheerful, but probably not excellent quality, or vastly overpriced but with a much higher level of service and quality.

In the end we hedged our bets and placed orders with 4 different shops with varying quality levels. It took all day to decide the designs we wanted, what type of fabric, how much it should cost, and getting measured up but at the end of what turned out to be a fairly stressful day we had high hopes for our new wardrobes.

El gets measured up - does my bust look big in this?
The second day was a nightmare. We had to retrace our steps from the day before for our first fittings - with not a single item actually fitting correctly. In some cases it was clearly evident what was wrong, or perhaps the tailor had purposefully not finished the item so as to tailor it to our specifications. However, on more than one occasion you end up having to figure out exactly why the suit/shirt/dress/top/etc. looks wrong and convince the tailor what needs to be corrected. This is incredibly tiring and stressful and half the time the people in the shops then have to translate all the new measurements or alterations to a 3rd party anyway so your high hopes crash down pretty quickly and leave you feeling totally anxious.

Kieran just can't take it any more
You'd think that having a wardrobe tailor-made would be really good fun but, as with most things in Asia, it is not the pleasant and simple experience you expect it to be. We ended up with a bottle or red wine on that night drowning our sorrows and vowing never to get more clothes made. Of course in the course of the day we had seen more things that we wanted so ended up ordering more!!!

A small aside to mention about Hoi An. It is a beautiful French-style city (well, the old part anyway) and I think it is also a world heritage site. The streets are filled with pretty yellow houses with plenty of trees for shade and is a wonderful place to soak up the atmosphere. Of course the abundant traffic does get in the way somewhat, but nevertheless it has a charm unmatched by many cities we've visited in Asia. It's a bit like a more hectic version of Luang Prabang!

So on the third day we retraced our steps again and, bit by bit, acquired some clothes, had more fittings, more alterations and more stress. By midday we'd practically had it but managed to round up everything we needed and dropped it off at one of the shops who kindly packaged the lot up and sent it home for us. In the end we got 45 pieces of clothes (a suit being 2 pieces) between us and spent a grand total of 650 quid, including postage, so we think that all in all we got a good deal, even if it put 10 years on us.

Finally a note on the amazing food in Hoi An. Their local specialities were numerous but included "white rose" a sort of rice pancake filled with shrimp and steamed, and a noodle/veggie combination that outshone everything we've eaten here!

Definitely a great place but a shame to discover that I'm not cut out for this tailoring business!

Vietnam - Nha Trang

View from the train


We got our first train in Vietnam, the first class air con was a room with two bunk beds, and they were very clean and comfy, the station was also clean and it was minimum hassle to get on the train. I was really impressed until the train started to pick up speed and started to sound like a wailing banshee. I thought that there was the biggest thunderstorm going on outside - I think that they desperately need some WD40 on the rails here! Anyway the view coming into Nha Trang at 5:30am was very beautiful, see above.

El and I got a cyclo each (cycle rickshaw with the seat at the front, you feel like you are in a pram) and raced each other to the hotel, I even made my poor old driver get out so I could beat her!

We again met up with Carolin here, our biggest travel buddy, 5 times so far we have met up and we might catch up in Kula Lumpar to make it 6.

Choosing the lobster


Nha Trang is one of the strangest towns we have ever been too. The trucks play "happy birthday" when reversing and the ice cream trolleys plays some kind of Xmas tune, You can get lobster on the beach for $10 and every 5 minutes some kid drives up in a moto to sell you a fake photocopied book, first time ever for that in Asia, could be a really good service if the books were real.

The place has a massively high level of tourism which we did not like but on the flip side 5 mins out of the main area we had a great night, eating on a street stall and drinking the local brewed beer with a big crowd of locals who keep telling us 1-2-3 YO! (cheers) and kept on asking "you drinking - yes!" they even bought us a plate of vegetables and one of them came up to me to apologise for his drunk friends, lovely people and a great night out.

The first day we took a cable car over the sea to an island off the coast (very cool) where they have a water park. Eleanor had never been to one (Francis and Celia, you are bad parents!) so I was really excited to see her face after a big slide.

First off we all went down a multi-slide slide all together, they had mats with a stiff curve at the end with handles, so you could only go down head first. The stupid designers of park had the slide end up right at the end of the slide in a foot of water. This meant that the mat met the water first and was pushed up into your face, I thought that I had broken my nose and El did not look too happy but we tried a few more out with the same result. Last off we tried a slide that shot you into a large cylinder that then dumped you into a pool, it look very cool and did not use the mats so we thought that we would be ok.

I went first and the guy told me to grasp my head as I went down, no problem I said, all was OK until it shot me into the cylinder, the force tore my hand from my head and smashed my head into the wall, then it dumped me into the pool...nice. We all had headaches for the next hour and decided to give the rest of the park a miss :-)

Not happy at the park


We went diving with the sailing club the next day, our first fun dive after our divemaster course, we had to take a picture of the diving rosta board: Kieran and Eleanor Divemasters!!! The first dive was really good and we got to see a lot of things that we have not seen before, but are both looking forward to other places now.

We are now off to Hoi An a world heritage city that is known for its tailors, yay shopping!!!!! We had to get the tickets on the black market as 4000 students are traveling up and down the country taking their entrence exams, bless them.

Just finished the Time Travelers Wife, really good book if anyone needs to get a present for someone :-)

Goooood Morning Vietnam!!! Ho Chi Minh City

El really hates bus journeys
You can sense a definite distinction between Cambodia and Vietnam as soon as you go over the border: Vietnam is much richer and things like the quality of tarmac on the road, and the scooters that people ride all point towards a society which is in a very different economic place. Laos is poor, true, but they farm or fish or make their living. In Cambodia the people seem much more desperate for money. In Vietnam they just realise how much there is to be made from the tourists (and make money they do!).

We had a reasonable bus journey (just 6 hours) from Pnomh Penh to Ho Chi Min City (previously Saigon) and arrived just after lunch. We debated whether to stay but there's not a lot to do in HCMC other than go to War museums and visit the tunnels used in the Vietnam War (here called the American War).

We manged to get an overnight train ticket for that evening and spent the afternoon wandering round, drinking an very expensive cup of coffee while overlooking HCMC's "Notre Dame" Cathedral, and ended up at the War Remnants museum.

The garden is full of US warcraft: planes, tanks and the like, and contains mainly photographs of the Vietnam/American war. One gallery shows photographs taken by journalists who were killed during the war (all nationalities, including Vietnamese) and other shots from various sources. What made them really compelling is that instead of a random picture of corpses with a generic caption, they had captions likie: this is Mr John Doe (or whatever), who lived in this village who was killed aged 30 at 4pm on July 1978. It really personalised the images and made for quite haunting reading. Unlike the killing fields at Pnomh Penh - implemented by their own Government, this was real war: horrific and brutal.
It's built like a tank...er, hang on...

A few beers later, we'd shaken off the sadness and caught our sleeper train to Nha Trang, a bit further north up the coast where we hoped to meet up (again) with our companion from Koh Tao, Carolin.