Vietnam

Chuc mung nam moi!

Escaping the lunar new year in China was a great idea apart from the fact that Vietnam celebrate it too.    If we hadn’t been confined to our beds for the first 24 hours of Hanoi, we’d have found most things shut anyway.  As it was, our massive journey out to the hostel balcony to convince ourselves we’d been outdoors wasn’t that badly impacted by travel chaos or early closures.

On Day 2 we dragged ourselves out and slowly covered 17km of city schlepping and were generally underwhelmed.

The old quarter is chaotic enough, the street food literally on the street (prepped, cooked and eaten), the thousands of scooters jam packed like a diesel fumed shoal of fish – all very typical SE Asian city, but we couldn’t see anything beyond that.  Most cities have some character or underlying rhythm that makes the chaos bearable/endearing but we failed to see it here.  Our state of health definitely won’t have helped but we returned to Hanoi 9 days later and didn’t feel any different.

We saw the cities lakes and river, the flower market, the pagoda’s, temples, mausoleum, and very partisan jail museum where it was proved beyond doubt that the French are cruel bastards but the Vietnamese perfect hosts when running a prison.  We took in the French quarter, the embassy buildings, the night market and covered every nook and ally of the old quarter but failed to be charmed, or even interested really, in what Hanoi had to offer. 

It was with combined exhaustion and relief then that we got the night train to SaPa – 8 hours of train, 1 hour of bus to the north. 

It’s cold in SaPa.  Even when you stand in direct sunlight it’s cold. We checked into the coldest, dampest room I’ve ever been in (a delux according to the owners so god only knows what the basic rooms were like), dropped off our backpacks and went for a little leg stretch to try and get warm.   The valleys of SaPa are populated by multiple indigenous tribes who despite living within miles of their neighbours maintain separate languages and dress to identify with their village.  Aesthetically it’s very interesting but the shrewd business skills of the village women (you rarely see a man. I’d like to think it’s because they get eaten after sex like a mantis but later trips into villages showed they’re very much alive. Just bloody lazy) make every walk a master-class in not buying tat.    We visited CatCat village and waterfall as it’s only down the road so easy to get to – just walk past the teams of dogs, goats and buffalo.

Tourism is so important to this area that the village of CatCat has been turned into an exhibition.  See the mud house with bamboo roof,  Look!  An old person with no teeth who will pose for a photo for 10,000 Dong and on and on.  Each attraction is marked out by a wooden sign to ensure you don’t miss ‘old house’ or ‘craft worker’.  Can’t blame them for turning a profit but it doesn’t make for a rewarding explore!   The walk back to SaPa is only about 5km uphill but we were both so flaky from food poisoning still that we had to stop twice enroute for medicinal beer. 

That evening was New Year’s Eve and despite the bar next door playing music so loud our bed vibrated, we climbed into our cold damp room and crashed out by 9pm.  

New Year, new day blah blah blah…  With a gung-ho attitude to making the most of our trip (but mostly because we’d booked in advance) we set off on a 2 day trek with a local guide from the Hmong tribe.    

Due to a combination of shonky knee/ankle/hips, and my ability to fall over air on the flat,  we are big fans of climbing up hills but not so much going down them.  Not ideal then that the first day was spent slipping down steep inclines as we descended paddy fields, river banks and animal tracks to get to a village at the bottom of the valley.    Our guide, and the 3 local women that accompanied us (one in her 80’s I reckon) all carried baskets of hand-woven goods and wore cheap plastic slip-on sandals but skipped down like mountain goats while we slid and fell and swore and complained about the lack of purchase from our high-spec walking boots.   Eventually one of the wizened sisters held my hand and took charge of keeping me upright – an act of kindness that earned her the right to sell me some embroidered stuff later in the day but we both knew this and quite frankly it was a small price to pay to stay off my arse. 

We were very lucky that the weather stayed dry, and that the sun came out. We’ve heard many stories of people never seeing the peak of Fangispan (Nam’s tallest mountain) or the full valley due to clouds whereas we had a sunny day with perfect views.

As we approached our final village we popped into our guides family house so she could pick up her son. A typical home with 6 adults and 3 kids, goats, dogs and chickens wandering around.  A fire in the kitchen had huge lumps of meat hanging above it to dry it out, her Dad was fast asleep on a wooden bed nearby (we only realized he was there when he woke up to do a massive spit in the fire) while a row of little boys were glued to the TV.   As it was school holidays all the kids were bored so the Dad had plugged in the generator to power up the oldest TV/Video combo and put on a 1970’s badly dubbed version of Monkey Magic.  We pulled up a bench and joined them for an episode of Pigsy, Monkey and Tripitaka before heading off again with two 6 year olds in tow.

That night we slept in a homestay – a womens house in the village with some spare beds.  A strange evening involving lots of shots of the local happy-water and the best spring rolls we’ve ever had but we were suitably exhausted to sit by the fire with her cat then crash out for a good 10 hours again.

Day 2 trekking was more of the same but with a bamboo forest thrown in, then a 30 minute motorbike taxi back up the hills to SaPa where we showered, changed and set off for a night bus south.

The journey to CatBa Island was a combo of buses and boats all for $30.  We booked through a foot massage place (like you do), were given a receipt but no tickets and told to wait for the first mini-bus to arrive.  The next 16 hours went like this…

-        Minibus for 1 hour to Locai city where we were dropped off at an office where 2 people smoked profusely while ignoring us.

-        After an hour of nothing, we got another minibus which spent an hour touring the city picking up passengers until we were 3 deep (and I do mean sitting on knee’s) and deemed sufficiently full to go to the main bus station.

-        We got a sleeper bus and climbed into our cots.  Normally a sleeper bus means chairs that recline but this was a custom-made bus full of tiny beds. You and your luggage had to fit in to your allocated cot which were clearly not made for anyone over 5ft 3.  Through the night we picked up more passengers until there were sleepers in the aisles and steps too.

-        At 3am we were woken up and moved to a different sleeper bus which stayed parked in the (then empty) car park. The 2 of us plus a couple of drivers between shifts climbed into new cots and slept for 3 hours.

-        6am the car park was packed with activity, the drivers had gone and we were woken up by a new fella and put in a taxi which took us to a bus stop where we got on a local bus to the ferry port.

-        Ferry to Cat Ba Island, onto another local bus and we were dropped on off the main drag in Cat Ba town.

Easy as that.   

At every stage in this journey our $30 dollars was drawn down from and the remainder passed onto the next handler until all journeys were complete and all parties were paid.  It was like we’d been couriered across the country by a very effective logistics team.   And all without any common language being spoken.

Cat Ba island is mostly jungle covered and a great starting point to see Ha Long Bay – a UNESCO site and huge tourist draw due to the thousands of limestone karsts.   If you go from Ha Long itself you can see caves where neon lights and sound systems have been installed to enhance the beauty of nature hence our decision to do it from Cat Ba instead.

After a day rambling around the island we took a 2 day boat trip through the karsts in all their glory. After negotiating a refund from the trip organizer who had blatantly lied about the boat we’d be taking, we sat back and enjoyed kayaking and sailing around various bays.  Day 1 was overcast so we got to see it all looking a bit misty while Day 2 cleared up and we saw it in all it’s sunny glory.

Back to Hanoi then, which had mostly re-opened post-NY,  we saw a couple more museums and the so-bad-its-funny water puppet theatre – like Punch and Judy in water,with dragons -before flying home.

Vietnam is a long thin country and we only saw the Northern bits so Ho Chi Minh, Hoi An etc. will all have to wait for a different trip.  Until then, it’s back to the fiercely cold Beijing winter for a few more months.