Vietnam Part 2 - Central to Northern Highlands

Leaving the pleasant temperatures of Hoi An, we head north a further couple of hours to the city of Hue, just over the central point of the country, where the temperature changed from a sunny 28 degrees to a rainy 17 degrees. Hue is set on the banks of a river & is famous for the ancient walled city where the Emperor’s once lived, an area that was once off limits to anyone other than the ruling elite & their concubines - now open for all as a tourist attraction.

Before taking in any of the sights of Hue, we figured we had better get straight onto arranging our onward travel up to Hanoi, as due to the New Year celebrations this particular leg of the journey was reported to be very busy. It was - we explored every option to move on in the planned 2 days time, there were no seats left available on any trains, planes or buses for a minimum of 3 days, & even then all that was available were the last 3 seats on a 12 hour night bus - the relative luxury of the sleeper buses with a sort of chez lounge style seat for each passenger (nowhere near as glamorous as that sounds) were well & truly booked up for the entire week. So after resigning ourselves to another uncomfortable night a few days ahead, & an extra night in the city we went out & treated ourselves to our first Indian curry for quite some time - which actually turned out to be really nice.

As it turned out Hue was not a bad place to spend a few days, we spent a day seeing the sights of the old walled city, had some more good food, ended up staying in a really nice hostel & found some good bars to while away the hours. Due to the colder temperature in Hue, the bars were set out much more like European bars - i.e. they were inside with doors & windows, rather than largely outside with just some sun/rain shelter above - which made a nice change & made us feel a little more at home.

When the night of the bus journey arrived we found ourselves the only non-Vietnamese on the bus, crammed in on seats at the back of the bus with hardly any leg room - the only thing that made us feel slightly better was the fact that we weren’t quite the worst off - a woman had paid her way onto the bus (at a reduced rate) at the last minute after all actual seats were gone, & proceeded to sit on a plastic garden chair in the middle of the aisle for the duration of the journey. This being Vietnam, with the sort of uneven roads & crazy driving that we had now become accustomed to, we were less than convinced about the ability of this woman to actually remain on this chair for the whole journey. With every wild braking or swerving manoeuvre the flimsy plastic legs of the garden chair she was sat on pretty much buckled under her, leaving the prospect of her getting any sleep somewhat out of reach. Against all the odds, the three of us actually managed to get a small amount of sleep & the journey wasn’t actually as bad as what we had feared. The woman on the garden chair arrived in Hanoi looking somewhat dishevelled & tired, having just endured quite possibly one of the most uncomfortable nights of her life - though something tells us this wasn’t the first or last time she had actually used this particular seating arrangement!

The bus dropped us at the side of the road at about 5am on the outskirts of Hanoi - not quite what we were expecting, a bus station being the usual drop off point of choice. However, there were a few taxis lined up so we weren’t concerned, but it appeared that it was a little too early for any taxi driver to actually be wanting to do any work, as it took us a good half an hour to coax any of them into giving us a lift into the city centre. As we made our way into central Hanoi we passed hoards of pensioners all doing their morning Tai Chi in the park, or power walking around the edge of the lake - limbering up for the days mayhem that lay ahead in this crazy city.

Pulling up to our hostel in Hanoi – The World Hostel, we were not exactly pleased with what we were confronted with...the pictures & reviews they had used on the web were nothing like the flea pit it actually was. When we confronted the staff with the disparities in the pictures etc they just laughed it off, claiming they had just redecorated – quite why anyone would redecorate a place that looked contemporary, clean & modern into something that had dirty walls, lino falling apart up the stair wells & disgusting bathrooms was beyond us, but...

Anyway, we dumped our bags & took a walk out into the city in search of some breakfast & another hostel. Hanoi is not unlike Saigon in it’s crazy traffic flow & the suicidal road crossing techniques you have to employ, one of the largest road users here being the Cyclo-taxis (a bloke pedalling a bike with a seat on the front for 2 people, ferrying people all over the city). After finding a good place for breakfast & strolling round some of the chaotic streets of the characteristic old quarter we found the mythical Bia-Hoi Junction – an area of the city where draught lager is served straight from the keg to the glass literally on the side of the road, the beer being completely fresh with no preservatives in it & as such it is only good for 1 day – the best part about it though is the price, 4000 dong – the equivalent of about £0.12 per glass (about ¾ of a pint). It was while we were at the first Bia-Hoi establishment of the day that Jonny got approached by one of the local shoe shine/repair kids & was promptly conned into paying around £3 for his trainers to be buffed up with an old toothbrush, much to everyone’s amusement.

We moved onto another part of the pavement where we sat down on kid’s sized plastic garden chairs & proceeded to work our way through several more of the city’s best bargain. Being on the side of the street, there was no toilet at this particular establishment, however a family living down one of the alleys just across the road had seized on the business opportunity of opening up their outside toilet for the use of patrons across the street, charging about £0.10 for each use – which meant that once we had a few beers we were rapidly spending almost as much on going for a pee as we were on beer.

After some food we searched round a few hostels, which were all far better than our one & for not much more money, determined to move places we had a few more Bia-Hoi’s while we talked it over, then decided it all sounded like too much grief & just decided to stay in the hell hole we were already in. Such are the beauty of beer fuelled decisions.

The following day we hit the streets of Hanoi again with the plan of organising our tour out to Halong Bay, a beautiful area just off the East coast of Northern Vietnam filled with thousands of small limestone islands & cliffs jutting out into the water, where you cruise around on the old ‘Junk Boats’ as they are called – the style of boat that is synonymous with the likes of Hong Kong harbour, big wooden boats with huge oriental style fabric sails. After traipsing around the millions of tour operators that all seemed to be offering pretty much the same thing at varying prices, some that looked far more reputable than others, we decided to go for a middle of the road priced trip from an agency that had come specifically recommended for its quality of boats, service & food...we would soon find out what this actually meant.

Satisfied with achieving this, all booked up for the following day we strolled around more of the city, visiting Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum (which was conveniently closed), the confucious Temple of Literature and ambled through the French influenced boulevards lined with chateau’s & villas from the French Colonial days, before making our way back to our favourite street side location in Hanoi. We were determined to spend the grand total of £1 each on Bia-Hoi, which resulted in us consuming 9 beers. Obviously the £1 spent on beer resulted in £3 being spent on trips to the loo, our ageing bladders not being what they once were. All this drinking & walking backwards & forwards to the toilet was hungry work, so we decided to order some food from the menu that was selotaped to the wall next to the pavement where we sat – intrigued as to where this might be cooked at & what it would actually be like, we took the plunge. 10 minutes later we were pleasantly surprised to see someone pull up on a moped with our freshly cooked wanton dumplings & beef noodles on the back – which turned out to be fantastic, one of the tastiest meals we had in Vietnam.

The following morning with slightly thick heads, we waved farewell to the delights of The World Hostel & jumped on our tour bus out to Halong Bay. Admittedly alarm bells started ringing straight away, as the bus – that was supposed to be a private bus from the ‘Explorer’ agency we had booked with, turned out to be a shuttle bus for the infamous ‘Sinh Cafe’ tour agencies, of which there are hundreds of completely different agencies all trading under the same, as once upon a time Sinh Cafe tours used to be the best value back packer tour agencies in Vietnam – now hundreds of others have simply stolen the name to try & get a slice of the pie that Sinh Cafe monopolised in the past. It was for this very reason that we didn’t book with a Sinh Cafe agency in the first place, as there was no way of telling the good from the bad.

Anyway, too hungover to be bothered to do anything about we just sat back & travelled our way the few hours east out to the coast. Along the way the weather turned horrendous, very thick fog, low cloud & heavy rain, the only thing you could make out through the windows of the van were paddie fields as far as the eye could see and women on the side of the highway selling loaves of French bread, people just pull into the hard shoulder of Vietnam’s equivalent of the M1 to buy a few loaves & head off again!

Upon arrival in Halong City port, there were vast numbers of people standing around not going anywhere. We proceeded to join this crowd & stand around in the rain going nowhere, doing nothing & getting no information for almost 2 hours. Many people had booked just a day trip out to the Bay & were being turned around & taken back to Hanoi, the fog being so bad that the harbour master would not allow any boats out into the bay. Just when we thought we would be turned round back to Hanoi as well, our ‘guide’ herded us up & took us over to a distinctly shoddy looking ‘Junk Boat’ – the name really fitting the bill of what our vessel represented. ‘That’s weird’, we said to each other, this looks nothing like the luxury ‘Explorer Tours’ boat we had been promised in the pictures when we booked the 3 day 2 night trip. Oh well, we thought, perhaps we will move to a bigger boat when we get out of the harbour. As our boat & every single other boat in the port proceeded to pull out at the same time (about 200 of them), we unsurprisingly all came to a crashing halt as the boats all bottle necked against one another trying to get out of the harbour exit. After much shunting & crashing of boats against one another, our captain decided to give up, so we dropped anchor on the other side of the harbour to where we boarded the boat (about 100 meters away) & we were served lunch.

Nose to tail with dozens of boats, we ate our way through a bland & unexciting lunch of boiled Tofu (foul!), rice & cold chips. ‘That’s weird’ we all said to each other again – this looks nothing like the lovely pictures of food we were shown in the agency offices. The one saving grace about our boat was that it was one of only a few boats that wasn’t full of Chinese, Japanese & Vietnamese tourists all getting completely stuck into a good bit of lunch time karaoke in tone deaf voices. Funny to watch from our boat as they were all going mental for it, thankfully we were spared this torture actually taking place in our boat.

After an hour or so of this all the boats decided to head back over to the port where we had started from, so off we all went back across the 100 metres to the port side & proceeded to ram & crash each other as all boats fought for space at the water’s edge to moor up again. Getting off this particular Junk Boat, we clambered across onto another suitably rubbish boat, where we then repeated the process of ferrying back across the harbour, crashing into as many boats as possible as we all fought our way out of the harbour – the harbour master having now deemed the waters safe to explore. First stop for all boats was an island about 30 minutes from the mainland where there was a huge cave network, so once again on approach to the harbour on the island we crashed, rammed & jostled our way into position to get to land so we could get off the boat. After traipsing through the cave with every other punter that had been stuck in the harbour all day long & our non-existent English speaking tour guide we had been promised (‘that’s weird’, we thought...). Getting back out of the caves we boarded yet another Junk Boat to make our way across to the island where we would spend the night.

Thankfully our boat pulled away & headed off in the opposite direction to the majority of the other boats, finally giving us a taste of the tranquillity we had been after. The rain had now stopped, the mist was rising & the sun was setting, sitting on the deck of the boat we cruised past hundreds of these tiny limestone islands, feeling like a real journey into the unknown.

Quite how far into the unknown we would find ourselves going was steadily being revealed to us with each developing chapter of this tour. After a couple of very tranquil hours cruising through this magical landscape, we arrived at the island wherenwe were to spend the night. Of the two nights we were on this trip, one was in a hotel on the island; the other was on the boat. We arrived at the hotel, (looking nothing like the pictures we had been shown by the agency once again), to find that the entire hotel was soaking wet inside. All the floors, the walls, the stairs, the chairs, tables, light switches, and plug sockets were soaked. It was like the pores of the hotel were actively sweating in the heat. A very strange phenomenon that we have not seen anywhere before or since. Against my better judgement I decided to the plug the TV in our room into the plug socket, where it very quickly & unsurprisingly exploded almost immediately. Woops...we won’t mention that to the staff.

After a rather damp night sleep, we woke to a beautiful day & set out early on yet another boat headed for a National Park that was on one of the surrounding islands. We sailed past tiny floating village communities & deserted coves with pristine sands, in the early morning light it had an idyllic feel about it. After a couple of hours we met up with another boat, & performed another obligatory boat change, this time we were hopeful that we would actually board a boat that had sleeping quarters on it – tonight being the night we were due to sleep on the boat & none of the boats we had been on so far had anywhere to sleep other than the floor. Alas it was not to be, we boarded another bed-less Junk Boat & made our way to the ‘National Park’ for the hiking or biking options we had been promised by the agency.

Due to the fact we had been shunted from pillar to post between a myriad of equally inefficient agencies, the ‘guide’ on our current vessel had no record of our tour including the hire of bikes in the original price (...’that’s weird’, we thought), he was not budging on his stance, & we refused to pay any more money than we had already paid, so we decided to set off on foot for the ‘hike’ through the ‘National Park’. What it actually transpired to be was a paved road through one of the islands, no sign of any ‘National Park’ information, & no option to deviate from the paved road on our ‘hike’. After about 45 minutes of walking in the midday sun down some random road on the island, we decided we had had enough & made our way back to the boat to console ourselves with a couple of cans of lager.

We cruised around more islands for the afternoon, stopping off at ‘Monkey Island’ where we were supposed to have an explore around, however our ‘guide’ announced to us as we dropped anchor 100 metres from the beach that our boat didn’t have a small dingy boat that they need to actually get to the shore, & if we wanted to get to island we would have to swim. That’s weird....

Getting back to the island where we had spent the previous night, we boarded a bus back across the island & boarded yet another boat – this time the boat actually resembled the boat we had been promised all along, with private cabins, a nice lounge & dining area & beautiful deck top terrace. The new people that we met on this boat all had tales of how the last couple of days had been absolutely perfect for them, cruising around on the same boat the entire time in full comfort & luxury, having visited the actual National Park, been actual hiking & actual mountain biking, kayaking numerous times etc – all the things we had been sold, but were yet to materialise. It quickly transpired however that this luxury vessel was not to be our boat for the night, & we were yet again just being ferried to one more boat.

The journey across to our next boat however was fantastic, the sky burning red with a beautiful sunset over the bay, as a natural beauty spot Halong Bay is definitely up there as one of the best. Boarding what thankfully turned out to be our final boat, we were pleased to find it was up to standard of the last one we had just got off, after settling into our cabins we enjoyed a good meal, & along with Mike & Nina, a South African couple who had been through every step of the last couple of days with us, got stuck into the boats supply of beers & enjoy the night out in the bay.

The following morning we had an early start for some pre-breakfast kayaking around the bay & the surrounding grottos in the side of the cliffs, all very nice. A hearty breakfast later & we set off on our final cruise around the islands & through the bays, back to harbour.

Getting back into Hanoi we arranged to meet up with Mike & Nina for a few final Bia-Hoi’s at our favourite street side establishment, before which however was a quick visit back the ‘reputable tour agency’, Explorer Tours, that we had booked with, to make a few minor complaints about the disparities between what we were sold & what we ended up. Thankfully we managed to negotiate ourselves a 20% refund each which was something.

After a few drinks & some more street food with Mike & Nina, we made our way down to Hanoi train station for the sleeper train we were taking that night, headed for the far North West of Vietnam, a mountain town populated by minority hill tribes called Sapa. The sleeper trains have 4 berths to a cabin, so we felt a bit sorry for the lone Vietnamese lady who had the misfortune of making up the 4th bed in our cabin – the 3 of us already being a few beers in, decided that the best way forward would be to carry on the merriment on the train with the cans of ale they were selling on the train. As it transpired I think we were dealt our karmic payback straight away, as when we decided to turn in about 3am we not only struggled to nod off, but when we finally did start to get some sleep the train pulled into the station very shortly afterwards, some hour or so ahead of schedule around 5am in the pitch black & cold whereby we then had to make our way a further hour up a very steep & windy road in the back of a van to get to the town of Sapa...those few extra ‘one for the roads’ no longer seeming like such a great idea.

We had booked into a really nice guest house in Sapa called ‘The Fansipan’ where we were greeted with a breakfast of bacon & egg sandwiches which went down very well. The town is a very picturesque place high in the mountains, famed for being shrouded in mist most of the year; we were lucky enough to have a few days of sunshine while we were there & as such could take advantage of the great views of the surrounding valleys & hillsides.

There are several main indigenous tribes that live around the area - the most dominant being the Black Hmong tribe, & as you would expect there are many of them around the town trying to sell you the handicrafts they had made. Many of them speak near perfect English, despite largely having no formal education & living a largely subsistence lifestyle. Although they do hassle you to buy things, it is not a hard sell like in some places as here they are happy to while away time chatting and telling us all about themselves and their lifestyle, so you feel you gain more than the 50p trinket you purchase. A couple of young girls of about 14 started chatting to us & walked around the town with us for an hour or so, telling us about their way of life, how girls get married at 16, are expected to have children before they are 20 and tend to the housework (or ‘hutwork’ as is more appropriate) while the men farm the land. It is due to this that you don’t see many of the male tribe members around town, as they are working the fields while the women try to supplement their meagre incomes by selling handicrafts. Many of the people actually live more than 10kms out of town, & with no means of transport have to walk backwards & forwards to Sapa in an attempt to sell their trinkets, which often results in many of them effectively sleeping rough as it is too far to do the round trip on foot in one day.

The following morning we visited the nearby Bac-Ha market - a weekly Sunday market, predominantly set up as a trading point for all the various tribes around the surrounding areas, with a small area of the market aimed at the tourist market as it grows in popularity for outsiders to visit. It was a fascinating blend of sights, smells & sounds with the stalls of home brewed 'rice wine' liquor in large plasic containers, the busiest amongst everything on sale. One of the more disconcerting sections of the market was the area where live cats & dogs were being sold for use as meat. You get something distinctly different to what you might hope for when you order a Hot Dog around some of these parts...

In the afternoon we visited one of the villages where the tribe actually live & were invited into one of the homes. A very basic adobe hut with little more than an open fire which was the kitchen area & beds on the floor, constructed of mattress’ made from piles of twigs & branches with covers over the top. A very modest & hard way of life, shown in the faces of the some of the women we met who were in their 40’s, though looked in their 60’s or 70’s.

Many of the mountainsides in the area have been completely given over to agricultural terraces, & it makes for a striking landscape – if not somewhat barren looking this time of year as it was the dry season. We found the people to be very warm & friendly who were happy to share glimpses into their way of life that is so far removed from our own. Having said that mind you, many of them have now joined the mobile phone revolution & can regularly be seen walking down the street balancing a bag of crops on their head, chewing on a piece of sugar cane in one hand while chatting away on their mobile in the other.

After a really good 3.5 weeks in Vietnam we made our way back down the mountain from Sapa to the Northern border town of Lao Cai, where we bid a fond farewell to Vietnam & crossed the border into the impending mayhem of the Peoples Republic of China...