Vietnam Part One

Following our terrible journey from Laos, we decided to splash the cash on the accommodation front in Hue, and got a room for $10 in a hotel which had been recommended to us by a chum from our Indonesian boat adventure, who we happened to bump into again in Laos. As well as having air conditioning, it had a telly AND hot water - pretty serious stuff.

Following a brief period of convalescence, I went out onto the streets to try and find somewhere to get my laundry done. My laundry is an unpleasant task at the best of times, and after a week or so in Laos, this was a particularly lively batch. After a few minutes, I found an old man who had a laundry sign outside his shop, and dropped it off. His grasp of English numbers was about as good as my grasp of Vietnamese, so after much confusion (mainly him thinking that 17 meant 50) and haggling, we settled on a price of 50,000 Dong including a bottle of water for me. As I left the shop, I heard him open the laundry bag and then call for his wife! Poor woman.

The following day we decided to take it pretty easy and have a wander around town to take in the sights. We went to the old Citadel, which was ok, but it had some tanks and stuff, so that was good. Other highlights of the day included the market and the pub, but not necessarily in that order. Walking back to the hotel, I dropped in to see my laundry man, who beamed at me whilst handing back my washing. It wasn’t until I got back to the hotel and opened the bag that I realised the washing smelt worse than it had when it had gone in! I didn’t really want to offend the old chap by saying that his wife’s washing skills were rubbish and it looked clean enough, so I just ‘went smelly’ for the next few days. I won’t, however, be haggling on laundry again.

Culture vultures that we are, we went on a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone) tour the following day, which pointed out various sites of interest, around the area, from the Vietnam War.

Aside from having to get up at a quarter past five in the morning, the day was quite good, and we saw some stuff including a bridge, a hill, some pickpockets,

some bunkers, a few tanks and finally, following an electric fence, the Vinh Moc Tunnels. These tunnels were actually pretty cool, and were where a number of Vietnamese lived on and off for six years. The went down to 23 metres (lots of yards, Dad) - although we were only allowed down to 15 metres, and that was quite claustrophobic enough.

The next day, we got ourselves set for another night on the road, this time to Hanoi. Despite promises of reclining seats and air conditioning when booking our bus, it was to be another 12 hours on a shocker - plus, we were stuck right in the back corner with no leg room whatsoever! After a terrible night’s sleep, we arrived in Hanoi at 7 a.m., wandered around for about half an hour trying to find where we were on the map in the book, before getting in a taxi and pointing. Unfortunately, in Hanoi, unlike Hue, $10 didn’t stretch as far accommodation-wise, and we ended up in a bit of a grot-hole. After a quick snooze and a shower, we headed into town to take a look around. We fairly promptly decided that we didn’t want to spend too much time in Hanoi, so we arranged to leave the following morning - this gave us just enough time for a walk around the main lake, then to take in a show at the Water Puppet Theatre, and finally, to enjoy the local fanny.

We were up early again the next day for a trip on a junk boat to Halong Bay in Northeast Vietnam. It was stunning - on the first day, we visited Surprising Cave (no one knows why it’s called that), then cruised to Titop Island, where climbing up 480 steps in the searing heat was rewarded with some absolutely spectacular views from the top. Finishing the day off, we kayaked around for a hour or so enjoying the sunset, before sleeping on the boat.

A highlight of day one was Lauren’s rubber ‘vegetarian prawns’ which were truly rank. On the second day of the trip, we completed a three-hour hike in flip flops on Cat Ba Island, swam in the bath-like water and spent the night in a hotel on the island itself.

The trip ended on Tuesday 28th July, when we headed back to Hanoi, from where we were planning to catch the night train to a town called Sapa, in the far north of Vietnam, the following evening. Having asked around a couple of the tourist agents in town and been quoted silly prices, I decided to go to the train station myself to buy the tickets. I managed to find a ‘Xe Om’ - motorbike taxi, and within minutes we were tearing up the manic streets of night-time Hanoi, weaving in and out of traffic with thousands upon thousands of other mopeds - very good fun indeed. A nerve wracking moment came when the strap on my helmet came undone half way there - I wasn’t sure whether to try and fix it with one hand, whilst holding on to the bike with the other hand, or whether to grip the bike with just my legs and try and fix the helmet more quickly with both hands. In the end, I went for the latter approach, all was well and our sleeper train tickets to Sapa were booked for the following evening at a fraction of the cost quoted by the agents.

Following a quiet day in Hanoi, doing pretty much nothing except visiting the prison museum where the French used to imprison the Vietnamese, and the Vietnamese used to imprison the Americans (though not at the same time), we caught our sleeper train up to Sapa.

Set in the mountains of north Vietnam, the town was absolutely beautiful. We spent a lot of time walking around admiring the views (I particularly enjoyed the view of the restaurant with a horse’s leg hanging outside on a hook). Thoughts of doing a trek - the activity for which Sapa is most famous - were canned pretty much on arrival, when we saw the weather report, so we spent a couple of days recharging our batteries and enjoying the local food and beer. One night was slightly interrupted by an invasion of cockroaches in our room. They say that cockroaches can survive the most potent nuclear power spillages - this chap, however, was no match for me and a piece of dental floss… (Maybe I look a bit too thrilled!)

After a couple of days, we were on the move again, back to Hanoi on another sleeper train, in order to start our journey south to Hoi An on a sleeper bus the following evening! We have become great fans of sleeper transport - although the buses and trains are not particularly comfortable, you save the cost of a hotel and more importantly, don’t waste a day getting somewhere. It is imperative, however, to have a large can of Red Bull the next morning for breakfast!

All in all, the first half of Vietnam was great fun - Hanoi was slightly harder to like straight away because the people weren’t quite as friendly as we’d been used to, and the city was absolutely manic and exceedingly noisy. After a few days we were beginning to find our feet there, but I’m not missing it yet, especially given that the local pub was literally a dump...