Category: Vietnam 2011

All good things must come to and end, and sadly day 14 for Hannah, Deb and Glen meant we were voted off the trip and it was time to come home. Pretty uneventful trip home, again via KL, so no need to go into detail about that.

What I will say is what a great time we had and to sum up the trip as best I can.

Vietnam is an enigma in many ways. It’s quiet yet loud, small but overtly large in areas and poor yet capitalist. It doesn’t conform to anywhere else we’ve been in that it feels that everyone works as hard as each other – there are no passengers. The women do as much if not more manual work as the men, the children are well behaved and have that hard work attitude drilled into them from an early age.

My fear for Vietnam is that they’ll be exploited by the West in the next decade or so. Clearly there’s little in the way of money within the country, so to grow, they need outside help. Vietnam has what the west want: beaches, warm temperatures, an interesting culture and cheap (and desperate) labour. The resorts, golf courses and brand new international airport in and around Da Nang show where the country is ultimately headed. I just hope that Vietnam retains what makes it special and doesn’t become even more reliant on the tourist dollar to get them through.

If you’re thinking of visiting Vietnam, I’d do it sooner rather than later. I have no doubt that Vietnam in 2020 will be a great place to visit if you’re keen for a fairly cheap and enjoyable resort-style getaway, but if you want to get in and really see a country, I think you’ll be too late. Already people are saying that Cambodia is what Vietnam was 10-20 years ago and for the more intrepid traveller, my bet is that’s where the backpacking tourist wanting to see SE Asia will head.

My other tip for Vietnam is to do your research before you go. There’s heaps to see and do, but getting around isn’t always simple. It’s not necessarily a country made for tourists who are used to the luxuries that say Europe can offer – so make sure you’re fit and healthy before you go.

One last thing – on behalf of Deb and myself, a massive thanks to Laura, Ben and Hannah for being great touring companions. Not an argument was had and given we did almost everything together – that’s quite an accomplishment. We had a fantastic time and look forward to reliving the memories for years to come!

As I mentioned in the last post, Hanoi is insanely busy but not pushy like Saigon. It’s hard to put a finger on why it’s different, but it’s probably a bit more upper class in some respects and is certainly more beautiful. In the middle of the city is an enormous lake complete with a beautifully designed bridge that looks a treat lit up at night.

Since this was our last full day in Vietnam, we decided to see as much of Hanoi as we could and then have a special last dinner. We split the day into 2 – sight-seeing in the morning with a bit of markets action and then water puppets in the afternoon.

We’d seen on Top Gear that there’s a wrecked B-52 bomber from the war still in a lake in the city somewhere. We caught a taxi and made our way out there. We found a few interesting bits and pieces hidden in the backstreets of Hanoi – very much off the tourist track. Walking down tiny alley ways really opens the mind to what the real day-to-day life of a local is. Open-air butchers, markets, eateries, hair salons… it’s a microcosm for the greater Vietnamese way of life.

Continue reading “Day 13 – Hanoi”

The 2nd day of our 3 day cruise around Halong Bay started with us taking our bags ashore with us to the island of Cat Ba Island. Cat Ba Island is the largest island within Halong Bay and makes for a great stop-over place when doing cruises in the Bay. It’s a surprisingly big place – we were in the bus from where the boat dropped us until we reached our resort (nice to say that!) for about 20-30mins. The island is home to 8,000 – 10,000 people and is somewhere you could spend a decent amount of time.

Continue reading “Days 11 & 12 – Halong Bay”

After booking our accommodation in Hue for a cruise around Halong Bay – 1 of the 7 natural wonders of the world, we waited patiently in our hotel lobby for the bus. It didn’t come. Thankfully the hotel owner spoke perfect English and he sorted it all out for us.

So, Halong Bay… If you haven’t heard of it or haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. The place is amazing both naturally in how it looks and what the local people do there. It’s essentially huge rock formations that stick out of the water everywhere, all of varying size.

Overtime, they have eroded and now have their own characteristics to them. Whether that be a beach, cave, a gap to canoe through or similar. Almost all have small trees and shrubs growing straight off the rock.

We booked about the last 2 night package available as it’s the busiest time for the region due to the celebrations on May 1st. Our bus picked us up, without the ability for us to take our luggage due to no space, so a quick pack of an overnight bag and we were away, hoping our luggage will be at the hotel when we’re back.

Halong Bay is about a 3.5hr drive from Hanoi. From there, you board a small boat which takes you to the big boat, an imitation Chinese Junk that’s anchored in the bay.

Due to our last minute booking, we could only purchase the supreme accommodation – what a shame! After we got settled, we had a delicious lunch as we started to cruise the bay and explore in and around the hundreds of rock formations.

Our first adventure was to check out some relatively recently discovered caves, well around 1992. Off the boat we got, hike up a large number of steps on this island and we enter the cave. We were expecting to crawl around a bit – we were wrong. Very wrong. The cave is simply enormous. Think basketball stadium size but higher in some parts. They’ve lit it up in various colours to show off the stalagmites and stalactites and after 20mins of exploring, we exited via another opening, amazed at what we’d seen.

We went down along and then up another path to the opening of another cave. This was more traditional in that it had a huge mouth and had a large concave back to it. This one is very visible from the water and has been used for a long time for celebrations etc.

From there, back on the small boat and off to a full-time floating village complete with general store, a dozen houses or so and a school! We proceeded to kayak around the area, exploring the community and going under the huge rock formations to find an oasis – a bay within a bay. Was great fun & astounding at how some people are able to live… Apparently some of the people never put foot on land in their lifetime!

There are a number of floating villages around Halong Bay of varying sizes. An incredible way to live and I guess kind of sadly, they’re becoming more reliant on tourism to survive.

Our final adventure for the day was back on the Junk… Swimming. And jumping. This was bloody good fun. The junk has 3 levels, bottom floor, main floor including the premium accommodation plus eating area and then a rooftop area. This is where some of us jumped from into the salty green water below. We estimated the drop was about 9m and felt it. Me (Glen) was the only one stupid (def. not brave) enough to go from the top whilst the others had a go from the bottom level. Much fun was had!

The final “entertainment” for the day was karaoke after dinner. Who knew Asians were so into it? 😉 the crew were into it in a massive way, mainly singing Vietnamese songs with a few western ones thrown in for good measure. It was hard to get them off it!

The girls did a good job of representing Australia and belted out quite a few numbers. The boys tried a Dire Straights song but the words were totally wrong, not just slow, so the system matched our voices.

We slept in our cabins and was a pretty good experience. The junks all moor together since the accident and the Government took around 50 Junks off the water due to poor safety. Let’s just say they must have been bad. All in all, I counted around 60 junks that anchored around us for the night. How did the Government choose where boats would stop for the evening? This part of the bay is shallow, so if the boats do sink, they will still be above water! Now that’s safety for ya!

That’s just day 1! Day 2 & 3 to come soon.

Hue is pretty impressive… We would have done well to stay here longer, but as it happens, we only had a day here.

Hue is home to an enormous Citadel in the middle of the city. It was built in the 1800s although it looks like it could be 1000 years old. It was home to the royal palace and also some bloody battles in the Vietnam War.

It’s also hot. Damn hot. Due to the enormous gardens and greenery everywhere within the 10km circumfrence of the citadel, it just amps up the humidity and it’s moister than a fat girl’s sock. We basically walked for 5 minutes, took a rest for 10 and went through a litre of water. Rinse (literally) and repeat.

Took some great photos if we do say so ourselves, including bullet holes in the old walls at the site of the battles.

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From there, we went into the city more, had a few drinks & lunch at the well-known DMZ bar, then tried to source our trip to Halong Bay. Now that’s an ordeal… there’s a hundred different options to choose from all with slightly different accommodation; itineraries and inclusions/exclusions. In the end, it was pretty simple, we only found 1 mob who would allow us a 2-night stay… 1 on the boat/junk and 1 on CatBa Island, the biggest island within Halong Bay.

We tried a river cruise which was about 90 minutes and went up and down the river.  A very pleasant way to finish the day before having a very traditional meal at a non-tourist restaurant… we are branching out! The food was really tasty and rather cheap cheap! Not sure it agreed with Ben so much or if it was something from earlier in the day.

We had a late flight to Hanoi at 22:10 which quickly became 23:20 when we got to the airport… of course we got there early due to previous “issues” with our last flight, and so we had 3+hrs to kill. Apparently sitting in front of the fan in a non-airconditioned building is a no-no over here… No fan for you!

Some very weary travelers eventually arrived in Hanoi and to our hotel at about 1am, ready for a 7:30am departure for Halong Bay… Best part of the travel was the taxi into Hanoi from the airport where we saw the market sellers taking their goods in for the morning (this is after midnight remember)… we could not get over how much they can fit on the back of a motorbike… If only we could have taken photos. Put it this way – we scoffed at one guy for *only* having a bail of herbs/green stuff the height of him behind him. The others had at least double if not triple that. Imagine panier bags but ones that almost touch the ground and go out double the width of the bike full of flowers, herbs, morning glory (leafy greens), cabbages – you name it.

The next 3 days – Halong Bay, potentially one of the new 7 natural wonders of the world!