'Nam

My first reaction to Vietnam was that it was way cleaner/less polluted than Thailand because the airport and just outside of it seemed quite well kept. But I soon realized, SE Asia is SE Asia. My first stop was Hanoi and it had it’s own special flavor of ordered chaos. The sidewalks here are used for motorbike parking and little kid sized plastic seats and tables that the plentiful amount of ‘mom ‘n pop’ restaurants set out for their customers to eat at - who are grown adults. Not comfortable in my opinion.

Streets of Hanoi

I actually got yelled at by a Vietnamese man for walking on the sidewalk instead of in the street when I was over by the Ho Chi Minh museum. There’s a bit more green space and groomed gardens than Thailand but still not much. On my first day, I sorted out a couple of excursions for the next week and then toured the city by foot with Anika, a German girl I had met at breakfast in the hostel. We were both perplexed by the craziness of traffic and navigating the city. There are not really street lights, everyone just kind of starts going through an intersection at a constant pace, honking 15 times, I clench my cheeks, and then hope and pray you don’t get hit. It’s somewhat exhilirating but then gets old after the first couple hours. There are obvious signs of communism spread around the city, such as the massive statue of Lenin and all of the tributes to Ho Chi Minh. 

Ho Chi Minh Museum

The Vietnam flag is everywhere, almost with the feeling that it is forced to be displayed. Military propaganda is present but not extreme. A lot of people wear the old Vietnam war helmets still. There is a nice park with a large pond, pretty gardens, and a famous temple in the city. Towards the end of our walk we sat outside on a balcony overlooking this park and a large intersection/round-a-bout just below. I could have sat there for hours watching the traffic try to navigate through this spot. It was seriously insane, you have 5 roads converging on one spot, there are no lanes, no traffic lights, no crosswalks.  People are motorbiking, walking, bicycling, and driving cars through it with absolutely no order. It was the real life version of frogger. These people are nuts. 

Crazy intersection

That night I had Pho, though not my first time trying it I decided it would be my last. There’s just too many animal products in there which I have no idea what they are and their textures don’t go over well with me.

That night I took the sleeper bus up to the mountains north of Hanoi. The seats on this bus are literally like a recliner chair with the leg section permanently pulled up. And it is a double decker. It’s actually a great idea except it’s made for Asians who are significantly shorter than the rest of the world. I barely fit length-wise and my feet were too tall for the little box at the end of the seat that they go in. So I’m sure the majority of the Westerners that get on these buses end up being incredibly uncomfortable because they can’t fit in the damn seat. 

Sleeper bus cramped conditions

Anyhow, I took a sleeping pill and fell asleep despite a bit of a bumpy road.  The ride was supposed to be 6 hours long and we’d arrive around 6am with stops factored in.  Well, we arrived at 3:50am in the town of Sapa and the bus driver kicked us off the bus with nowhere to go. And it wasn’t warm. So I sat on a stoop in the pitch black shivering, waiting for my hiking guide to arrive and take me to the trails. After several other buses came and off-loaded people I recognized some Westerners that had been in the travel agency office while I was there (white people stick out like a sore thumb here) so I went over to them and one of the girls had been given an address of a cafe to wait at. Of course when we get to this cafe, it wasn’t open yet so we sat on their stoop for another hour until someone opened the door. It wasn’t until 8am that our guide showed up and said we had another hour before taking off. We did a quick walking loop around Sapa Town before heading off on the hike. I was in a group of 8 people and it ended up being a really fun group. This was extra helpful as that day was my mom’s birthday so my mind was kept off all that. It was all Europeans and then me and one Canadian. We hiked to a mountain peak and then to the village, called Black Mon - probably butchered that spelling - where our homestay was for the first night. The scenery was beautiful the whole way despite the typical haze in the skies. The mountains seem to reach for forever and there are rice fields everywhere. We climbed down one of the rice fields to get a good view and they are surprisingly tall ledges. Village ladies harrassed us basically the whole way to buy some of their handmade bracelets and hand bags. I bought one thinking they’d stop bothering me but no, they are a persistent bunch and it became quite annoying very quickly. Our homestay house ended up being more like a low amenity resort type house. They cooked a delicious dinner, forcing more and more rice into our bowls such that we had to put our hands over the bowl to prevent them from dumping more rice in. Then they brought out the “happy water” which is actually rice wine, and a very potent rice wine at that. We didn’t need much of it. We all stayed up as long as our tired bodies allowed us talking about bed bugs and snakes and other insects (great pre-sleep topics), eventually going to bed at 8:30pm.

Candid shot of a native lady 

 The crew for the trek

 Rice fields

 Adorable Sapa children

The next day we walked to another village to the tune of the same beautiful mountain and rice field scenery. Half the group was only doing one night so they got picked up and taken back to Sapa while the rest of us continued on.  The homestay this night was a similar situation, not exactly roughing it. The family made duck that night and the father ate the brains after taking the two beak pieces and making quacking noises. He was also obsessed with a terrible Vietnamese version of techno music that he played all day and night. Needless to say we went to bed early that night. The next day we did a half day hike to a third village. A puppy from a house next to our homestay of the previous night followed us the entire way, taking off chutes to chase chickens and other birds and then immediately coming back to walk in front of us. He was a cutie. We passed some very small children who were clearly terrified of white people because they stopped playing on their pretend drums and ran off the foot path with horror-struck faces despite our smiles and waving. The 2.5 days trekking was great scenery and very interesting talking with Jane, our guide, about village life.

Our taxi ride back to Sapa Town was miserably bumpy, the driver called it a “sapa massage”. Once we made it to Sapa, we took a taxi to the cable car that is supposed to get you to the Fansipan peak, the highest point in Vietnam, only to find out it was closed due to wind when we arrived. Sapa is a 100% a tourist town. And it’s as filthy and chaotic as Hanoi so I didn’t have much of a desire to stay there. The following day I rented a motorbike and took it 60 miles south and back through some more beautiful mountain and rice field scenery before my 4pm bus back to Hanoi. The main highway I was on provided very interesting sights, such as small children walking along it unattended. People driving are also idiots, they consistently pull out onto the road without looking and will just stop right in front of you while waiting for the other side of traffic to clear. By the end of my journey, I was highly annoyed but also very thankful my bike survived the whole trip. The speedometer didn't work and the oil light was on the whole time. After returning the bike, I went and bought a replacement North Face backpack for $35, my pink one had ripped after over 10 strong years of service. There is knock off and discounted North Face and Under Armour everywhere in this country since it's all made in Vietnam. I looked up the regular price of the backpack I purchased later - $150! Sitting at a restaurant for lunch I witnessed a motorbike crash. I didn’t feel bad for them either because of what I had experienced earlier (they weren't injured). So I now know the reason for Asians notoriously being terrible at driving. Once on the sleeper bus, I finished the book I was reading and then dedicated the second half to writing my mom a letter, as is my tradition every year on the day of her death. It always gives me a good healthy cry and leaves me feeling vented and better by the end of it. Miss you mama.

Trying to not die of pollution on the motor bike 

More mountains 

We arrived in Hanoi around 10pm and I befriended a group of Canadian girls to share a taxi ride back to the Old City. I’ll preface this paragraph with telling you that the Vietnamese can act very strangely. They touch you (not inappropriately, just unnecessarily as if you were best friends) a bit too much and they exaggerate words excessively when they talk. So, after one guy tried to grab my arm to pull me towards his cab, we went with a different guy. He proceeded with putting his arm around one of the Canadian girls and wouldn’t let go until we were at the car. Then in the car he blasted the music, it was some famous rock n roll song. When that song ended he switched it 180 to Celine Dion and started belting it out, not actually forming english words and constantly elbowing the girl in the front seat to get her to laugh. Once we got out of the car, we spent a good 5 minutes recapping the ridiculousness of what just happened.

I left for my excursion to Halong Bay early the next morning so it was a quick turnaround.  After a 4 hour bus ride, we arrived at the harbor and boarded our ship we would be staying on for the night. We rode through the awesome limestone karst islands popping out of the water all over the place before arriving at a massive cave that we toured. Then we went another 30 minutes further into the bay and stopped to do some kayaking where we explored two more caves. It was a cloudy day which gave the area a mysterious feel. The landscape was so unique and definitely not something I had seen before. I was with a bunch of Europeans again on the boat but we had a good evening talking about each others’ countries. After dinner we did some squid fishing but only one guy caught one. After a surprisingly decent sleep on the boat, the next morning we went to Tip Top island and climbed up stairs to the top for some great panoramic views. Then I switched boats and headed to Cat Ba Island with a different group. We hiked to the top of a peak in the island's National Park and then headed to the town at the south end of the island. After getting some lunch I headed up to Cat Ba Cannon Fort which was a look out fort during the Vietnam War. It had great views overlooking the harbor and surrounding islands but also a heavy emotional side to it thinking about all the young Americans that died here in Vietnam.

Halong Bay 

Halong Bay from inside a cave

Viewpoint from Tip Top Island 

Viewpoint from Tip Top Island

Cat Ba National Park

The next couple days were low key, I headed back to Hanoi via a very questionable small barge ship which had been converted into a passenger ship. I had one full day in Hanoi to sort out some travel plans and do a bit more exploring before I took off for my much anticipated visit to the Himalayan Mountains in Nepal!