Like I’ve done a few times before, I’m starting this post while riding in a moving vehicle (from Hue to Danang). This time it’s a bus, but in a matter of hours it will be a train (from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon). You may think I’m silly to keep doing this, but I find it interesting to reflect on where we’ve been while literally moving to where we will soon be.
As buses go, this one is pretty special. And by special, I mean in a less than enjoyable sort of way. It’s only a 3 hour bus, and yet… it’s a sleeper bus. Even accounting for the fact that we are not the last stop… the last stop is only an hour past us. What’s so hard about using SEATS?? There is NO need for this to be a sleeper. It’s the middle of the day! Sleeper buses, as you might recall from our trip through India, are not our favorite way to travel. That being said, they are often significantly cheaper than a train, and often just as fast, if not nearly as comfortable. Depending on the bus, your space for leg room and/or head room is always in question, and if it’s not enough, you’re just screwed. Also, getting a top seat/bed vs a low seat/bed, or seats in the front vs the back can make a huge difference, as can the age of the bus and the condition of the bus’s suspension. The higher you are, and the farther you are back, the more you get tossed around by the bumpy roads. In India, we had the worst of all possibilities. The bus was old, the suspension sucked, the roads were worse than Limon (Costa Rica) in a bad year, and we had a top bunk in the back. We arrived sick, bruised and exhausted. Still, we learned some lessons from it (such as never ride in the back, if at all possible, and try to ask for a newer bus, if available).
(I’m smiling because at least I’m at ground level)
We took a sleeper bus from Hanoi to Hue for our first trip within Vietnam. It was about a 14 hour overnight trip, and that was not TOO terrible. We rode in the front, and the bus was new, with a decent suspension, so it was not TOO bouncy. Still, they managed to screw up even then. We had specifically reserved two lower berths in the front of the bus. Then, without warning, our bus company decided there weren’t enough people on that run, so they canceled it with no warning, and just sold our tickets to another company without telling us. When we arrived at the bus, we found out they had also neglected to tell the new company about our seat reservations, so the only seats left were way in the back. We said no. They insisted they never got the seat reservation. We argued. A battle ensued. It was lengthy, and they fought dirty. We gave them the business card of our travel agent, and insisted they call him so he could fix it. First they refused, then they actually LIED to us and PRETENDED to call him, and pretended that there was nobody there. Since, by pure luck, we had happened to pass by his office not even 5 minutes ago on our way to this bus, we called their bluff. So, they called somebody else… again… LYING to us about who it was! Finally, Jime made them give her the phone so we could speak to the person directly… and THAT person lied to her about who he was (we of course don’t know our own agent well enough to recognize the voice on the phone). In any case, after firmly refusing to budge on this issue, they eventually gave us both seats up front, but only Jime got a lower berth. I got shoved up high, so every time the bus turned or swerved to avoid a pot hole, I got tossed. Oh well. Could have been worse. At least the suspension was relatively smooth, and at least we were in the front. Jime’s ride was not bad, after all that. In any case, despite all that didn’t go right on that ride, it was still MUCH better than the ride in India.
Alright, so… we’ve now made it to Danang. The whole ride took about 4 hours, instead of 3, thanks to a flat tire we got along the way. To their credit, I will say that I find it pretty damned impressive, and even a little shocking, that until we stopped in a random tire lot along the way, and I heard the sound of the pneumatic wrench going, I didn’t even know we HAD a flat tire! So, our bus may have been old and uncomfortable, but it was definitely a trooper.
While we’re here in Danang, we have about a 4 hour layover before our train at 10pm tonight. To pass the time, we found ourselves a lovely little café right across the street from the train station. So, at the moment here, we are now sitting up on a 2nd floor balcony with a soft, cool breeze, drinking cheap drinks ($1 each for a can of coke or local beer), and enjoying free wifi. Oh, and dinner was a couple sandwiches at a road-side stand for about $0.75 each. The bus may have sucked, but the day as a whole is going pretty damn swell!
So, Vietnam… it’s been a very interesting country for us. It’s the first country were we really had NO major monuments we were planning on seeing. I mean, that’s not to say there’s noting to see here (move along), but… seeing the sights hasn’t been our goal. Instead, we’ve quite happily switched into just… “enjoy the place” mode. I know, I know… I went off on quite a rant on facebook not too long ago about planning being an absolute necessity for a trip like this, or you won’t see anything. Well, Vietnam sort of proved this, and also sort of conceded the point. We did NOT see many sights, and actually spent most of our time in the hotel room, only really coming out for food. And you know what, it was GREAT. After so many months of seeing so many different things in different places, we really needed a break.
So in Hanoi, we basically just took a wee vacation from our vacation and hung out for a few days. We did research for future places, we caught up on facebook, we edited photos and wrote blog posts. We slept, and we enjoyed the SHIT out of the AC in our room. When we did go out, it was to enjoy a really great meal at some local hole in the wall, or street-side eatery (one of which, which we chose by the “hey, that looks good” method, we later found out through the internets was THE best place in the city for that kind of food, “Bun Cha Hanoi”, which you better BELIEVE we’ll be making when we get home!) or occasionally to go souvenir shopping.
(Oh, and beer is $0.50 a bottle. DIG it!)
One nice thing about Vietnam in general was, it marked a return to a Roman alphabet. Sure, we still can’t read, or even pronounce almost any of the words, but we can at least recognize them when we see them, and we can write them down ourselves for later. In places like India and China, we can’t even do that. We had to have people write stuff for us (so we could point to them later, i.e. “not spicy” or “allergic to shellfish”).
Something amusing to us in Vietnam, which we started seeing right away in Hanoi, is that people really DO still wear those conical hats that you see in every movie about Vietnam. I would have thought they were just a show for the tourists, but no… a LOT of people wear them, even in remote villages, working out in the rice paddies. Probably the most typical example of them, though, are the ladies walking through the streets with the big sticks over their shoulders, selling either fruit, or soup or something. It’s neat that you’ll see these ladies with a stick and two large jugs… like one for soup, and one for rice. Basically, she’s one-upping every carnival food vendor out there… because she’s got an entire RESTAURANT on a stick (on a steek?)!
The funniest part was that because the sticks are somewhat flexible, the ladies all walk in this funny-looking shuffle, to keep the food from bouncing around all over the place. If they were in marching band, they’d be doing a perfect roll-step. I wanted to get my picture taken with one of the ladies, but we thought it might be rude. Jime at least got a few pictures of them from a distance, though.
One amusing thing about Hanoi streets in general… each street seems to be… well… themed. Every time you go around a corner, you get into an area that specializes in selling ONE kind of thing. So, this street could be “toy street”, and that one could be “sewing machine repair” street. Our hotel was on “hardware store street”. I think our favorite one was “dried, fragrant foods street”. Every time we walked down that road, which was around the block from our hotel, we’d be awash in the sweet fragrance of dried tea leaves and dried fruits and dried herbal remedies. It was lovely to pass through at the end of the day, on our way back to our room. We could always smell when we were close to home. :)
We did see a couple specific sights in town. One was a performance of a very unique cultural art called “Water Puppets”, at the main theater in the country for this. Water Puppetry is one of those UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage things (a thing where they try to preserve things like specific dances, arts, etc, that you can’t just put into a museum). The Water Puppets thing was… interesting. It was definitely cool, but it was also somewhat surreally WEIRD, in our opinion. The music accompaniment was definitely beautiful, especially the feature player of a single string instrument called a Du Xian. The lady playing that blew me away. Soft, haunting, and soaring from lows to highs with a literal flick of a stick (you apparently play with the pitch on this thing with a big stick that looks like a car’s manual shifter). All in all, the puppets are somewhat limited in what they’re capable of, so it wasn’t the most impressive show we’ve seen, but it was definitely very original, and quite enjoyable.
Here’s a sample of a really good artist with that Du Xian instrument:
The other thing we did while being based out of Hanoi was took a truly amazing trip to an area called Ha Long Bay. We had seen pictures of this place before, and they just looked surreal. It’s a bunch (thousands) of tiny, tiny little islands all floating in the middle of this big bay, and almost always surrounded by this sort of other-wordly mist. This one is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is rated by some as one of the New 7 Wonders of the Nature.
Apparently THE thing to do in Hanoi (according to all the posters in all the Tour offices around town, of which there are many… PER BLOCK), is to actually get the hell OUT of Hanoi, and do a Cruise in Ha Long Bay. There are many comfort- and cost-levels to choose from, and you can easily do anything from a 1 day out-and-back deal to a 3 day/2 night cruise. Since the bay was about 4 hours from Hanoi, and since this sounded like THE coolest thing to do in Vietnam, we found ourselves a 3 day/2night cruise where we would spend the first night on the boat, and the second night on land at a place called the Monkey Island Resort (and yes, there are in fact monkeys on that island, as our pictures will show you later). We paid about $200 for the trip, which included all food, lodging and transportation for the 3 days.
To start things off, they picked us up at our hotel at 8am, and loaded us onto a bus. Driving out towards the Bay, we passed through massive, endless, fields of rice. Picture Iowa’s corn fields (if you can, and if you can’t, just click here), but much less tall, and mostly flooded, and you have some idea.
Interestingly, it seems there’s a tradition here of putting graves and even entire cemeteries in the middle of some of these fields. So, we’d be driving along, looking at the vast, open spaces, and all of the sudden, in the middle of the field, would be some large ceremonial headstone, or tomb, or even full, elaborate cemeteries. All of them just plopped down in the middle of the rice paddy. I have a feeling the USDA would not approve of such things, but who am I to judge?
The bus took us to the harbor, where they loaded us onto the boat. Sadly, the boat didn’t match any of the pictures on any of the advertisements, nor did our room on the boat. Then again, I knew that I should NOT have been surprised by that, but knowing didn’t fix it for me until I just decided to get over it. Jime HAD warned me that this would happen (from reviews she read), but… let me just say, in retrospect, it was probably the equivalent of ordering a Whopper at Burger King and having your food not look like the picture. Of COURSE it doesn’t look like the picture, you idiot!! Looking back on it now, the room IS actually pretty nice, even if it isn’t quite as perfect as the brochure.
So, after getting over my naïveté, I stopped and noticed the things the room DID have. It had a nice, big bed, a private bathroom with a hot shower, AC, and even a little private balcony on the back of the boat! So what if we weren’t allowed to actually turn on the AC until after 9pm; so what if the floor boards on the balcony were so rotten that anybody stepping on them risked falling through. It’s not like we were planning on spending a lot of time in the room anyway. Also, the main dining room area was pretty damned fancy. On this boat, though, it was all about hanging out on deck, looking at some of the most spectacular scenery we’ve ever seen.
They fed us pretty much first thing after we checked into our rooms. Lunch was somewhat fancy, if not quite enough food. I wasn’t starving or anything, just… would have liked a little more than they provided (this would be a theme for every meal on the boat, but c’est la vie).
The itinerary for the day was pretty full. We started the day with lunch on the boat while we cruised through the bay. Once we finished lunch, we headed up on deck to enjoy the Islands. The islands are the reason people go to Ha Long Bay. Forgetting anything that might actually be ON any of the islands, it’s the very multitude of islands there that makes the place so magical. What you have is this large bay with THOUSANDS of tiny islands spread around all over the place. All of them are made of the most amazing rock formations you can imagine. The islands are all karst, which means they’re all made from dissolved bedrock. It’s the kind of geologic process that makes a lot of the more spectacular (limestone) caves in the world. On some of the islands, you can see clear layers in the rock. Some even clearly show where some of the layers got folded over like fabric. Jime called this place a geologist’s wet dream.
Most of the islands are also covered heavily with dense green… like mini rain forests. What’s more, Ha Long Bay is also covered, almost year-round, with this thick mist of clouds, giving a very ethereal, other-worldly atmosphere to the place. Cruising through it, as you disappear into the fog, floating quietly away from the noise of the traffic on land, hearing just the sounds of your own boat and the birds and insects, you feel like you’re in another world… like you’re in a movie. It practically forces you to just sit there, silent, and let your imagination go wild.
That is, you do that right up until the assholes running the boat turn on the goddamn radio at full volume and start blasting Lady Gaga at you. At that point, if you’re me, you run immediately into the cabin and tell them (as politely as possible) to turn off the (goddamn) radio!! Fortunately, the boat people agree, and you go back out onto the deck, take a few deep breaths, and relax back into the other world… the quiet, mystical, magical world of the bay of a thousand islands.
Our first land destination was a big island with a cave. The cave was pretty spectacular, even though it was lit with very cheesy, colored lighting. Sadly, we were rushed through this giant cave in about 25 minutes. After this, we had the option of hiking to another cave on the island. Those who didn’t want to go to that one (there were a LOT of stairs involved) got to just sit on their ass and wait. I chose to go, Jime chose to wait (VERY angry at being forced to rush, and then waste time waiting. I would have preferred to stay longer in the cave). Since I felt too rushed through the previous cave, I guess I took my time through this second one, which I felt was even more incredible, and more naturally lit (and with VASTLY fewer people cramming through it). So, by the time I got out, I guess everybody else had been waiting for me for a little while. Oh well. Sorry, Jime! I did take lots of pictures for her, though (including of a Walking Stick I saw on the way to the cave). :)
After the cave, we cruised leisurely to a quiet, open spot in the middle of several islands. In this place was a wee floating fishing village, from where we borrowed some kayaks, and tooled around the Bay for a while. While we were out kayaking, we found ourselves a little cave in the side of one of the islands. That was neat by itself, but inside that cave, I spotted us a Horseshoe Crab (Cangrejo Cacerola). This was particularly neat, because while we’ve both seen those wee, pre-historic beasties before, it’s always been in a zoo or aquarium. So, here was our first “wild” horseshoe crab! Sadly, this particular wee, pre-historic beastie was now, itself, part of history. It was dead as a door nail. Still, it was in good shape, considering, so we took a picture anyway, to celebrate the occasion of our watery adventuring.
When we were done with the kayaks (we only had about 30 minutes, so we didn’t go far), we had some free time for swimming. I don’t know if you’ve ever jumped off a boat in the middle of such big open water before. It can seem daunting to some. For me, if I can’t touch the bottom, what do I care where the bottom is? In this place, the water was calm and flat like a mountain lake. Of course I jumped right in! Jime followed close behind me, and after a while, so did many others. Before long, we were all climbing up and jumping off the 3rd floor roof of the boat. It was a blast! I only jumped once, just to do it (it was FUN!, but I chose to not do it again, and risk breaking my knee, which already complains loudly at me for just walking up the stairs). The rest of the time, we just floated there happily. In that place, surrounded by those amazing little islands everywhere, something as simple as floating on water became something pretty magical indeed.
(He was our champion boat diver of the day)
And right there is were we had dinner, and then slept for the night, there in that peaceful, quiet spot in the middle of the islands.
The night would have been perfect, if the boat hadn’t been struck with a terrible tragedy. And by tragedy, I mean of course… Karaoke. Yes, it seems that the Vietnamese have a HUGE thing for Karaoke. I don’t know where it comes from, or what demon worshipper chose to curse this wonderful nation with that disease, but Karaoke is so popular, they apparently even play it on boats. So, after dinner, they cranked up the system, and it was a night of terrible, loud, off-pitch wailing for hours on end. To make matters worse, our room was right behind the karaoke screen! So, not only did we have to be on the karaoke boat, we had to be in the next room! There was no escape! Jime made sure ahead of time that they would be shutting down at a reasonable hour, so we could sleep (and beg forgiveness for whatever sins we must have accumulated in life to deserve this). Finally, at around 9:30pm, we heard about 4 Vietnamese songs in a row, so we knew that all the other travelers must have surrendered and gone to bed, and this was now just the crew left, entertaining themselves. Jime went out into the main hall in her pajamas and asked if they were almost done. Even though they had had no intention of stopping (we had heard stories of karaoke going until 2am) something about the sight of a fierce Jimena in pajamas, in the middle of their party, shut them the hell up, and mercifully, they shut it down, putting an end to one of my worst nightmares (and an end to this run-on sentence).
The next morning, we had to get up at 6 AM and check out of our rooms before breakfast at 7. This wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined, because we actually DID end up getting a good night’s sleep, floating out there on the bay, with just a very slight, gentle rocking from the waves. After breakfast, we motored on again and went to a place called Cat Ba Island, where we would leave this boat behind for the rest of the trip. On this island, we went to a national park, where the plan was to trek up the mountain to a nice viewing point. We actually took a bus on this island to get to the park. I found it amusing to take a bus on a small island. It turned out that the island was big enough to hold a small city (which it did), but you couldn’t tell that from where we docked, so I just thought it was funny.
When we got to the park , Jime and I both started the trek, but as soon as she saw how steep the hike was, she very wisely turned around and found herself a nice quiet bench to read a book on. I stubbornly started up the hill, because I actually like hiking, and I LOVE good views. Well, I started up the hill, which promptly turned into a stair-climbing adventure… a STEEP stair-climbing adventure… a steep and WET... and slippery stair-climbing adve… you know what? Fuck this. I’m sure I could make it UP the hill, but trying to come back down… I’d fall right on my head, and that would suck. I hiked back down. Of course, this being a rain forest, in the 2 minutes I stopped to debate if I really wanted to go up or not, I got tagged by no less than 7 mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes. Still, they helped reinforce my decision to head back, joined by a German girl with a recently-broken arm who decided she’d prefer not to break it again by falling down 600 giant stone stairs.
So, the two of us went back and joined Jime. We chatted; we walked around the little village, we hiked down the road a bit for some exercise, and eventually the rest of the crew came back and we headed out. We took the bus to the other side of the island, where we hopped on another boat to take us the last 20 minutes to OUR island. When we got to our island, getting OFF the boat proved to be unnecessarily complicated. Rather than using a smaller boat to ferry us to shore (which they had done before, and would do again), they decided to take the big boat right up onto the beach. At that point they threw out a board down to the sand, and had us LITERALLY walk the plank (with two dudes holding a long bamboo pole at around shoulder height as a sort of make-shift hand-rail). This plank was not stable. It was skinny, and narrow, and the boat was moving from side to side, and... well... let’s just say that whole experience sure did suck, but at least we didn’t fall.
After we landed, we headed up to the genuinely BEAUTIFUL resort (this one actually DID match the pictures), got our key, and headed to our room. Again… this room matched the picture! the room was beautiful, and the view was wonderful. Dinner was OK. Nothing particularly fancy, food wise, but it was decent, and unlike on the boat, there was PLENTY, which made me happy. Also, you can’t beat the view from the restaurant balcony of this place. You just can’t. I put it right on par with the view from the amphitheater at Hotel Villa Caletas in Costa Rica.
We spent a very nice night at this hotel, had a really great breakfast in the morning. I got to have pancakes AND French Toast, and all the coffee I could drink. So… you know I was happy. Oh, and then some monkeys came and invaded the bar. I even got to give one a snack. :)That just made the morning even more perfect.
After breakfast, our boat showed up to take as away. This time, they DID use a smaller boat, and even pulled it up to a big stairway there, so stepping on board was easy as pie (no more walking the plank). That boat took us back to Cat Ba, where we took the bus back across the island, and then jumped back on the big boat. At this point, since the weather on the island had been a bit too windy to do anything in the water, our cruise boat made up for it by giving us another chance to swim in the protected bay. This time, we had about an hour. It was great! It was nice and hot outside, and the water temperature was something around 25C (77F). More people jumped off the roof this time, even making an effort to get some really cool pics of them jumping.
Happily, our group ended up being pretty small actually: only around 9 people. The groups we saw going before and after us were more like 20 people. Aside from that, everybody had a good attitude, so we all really enjoyed the trip together, and enjoyed each other’s company as well.
When swim time was over, we climbed back on board and began the cruise back to the harbor. We had a nice, long, leisurely cruise, but it still went too fast. I wish we could have stayed in those islands for days! They served lunch on the boat right before we arrived, so we were already docked by the time we finished up. Sadly, they screwed up this one meal for me by not having any non-shellfish options (they knew about my allergy from before I got on the boat, and to their credit, they had plenty options for me at every other meal… they just screwed up this one). I asked our guide if he could at least hook me up with a free beer or something to compensate me (drinks were not free on this trip.. and by drinks, that includes even water). Unfortunately, he was a very boring man, with no sympathy whatsoever, so he had the cooks fry me a couple eggs. Boring! I would have rather had the beer. :P
Back at the harbor, we had to wait about an hour before our bus back to Hanoi showed up. We could have spent that hour on the bay! Swimming! Alas. We are really discovering that we hate organized tours. There’s a lot of hurry-up! Wait! Hurry up! Wait! A lot of dead time, and very little good time…
All in all, it may not have been the magic fairyland of a tour they promise in the pictures, but you know what? That place is pretty damned magical anyway. That trip, all by itself, is worth coming to Asia for, let alone Vietnam.
Back in Hanoi, we did nothing else special. We continued to enjoy our quiet time, and the good food in our neighborhood. Something about Hanoi that I forgot to mention earlier is the traffic. It reminded us nothing so much as the traffic in India, but in smaller pieces. There are very few cars in Vietnam, but there is a STORM of motorcycles! And they’re all loud, like they’ve never heard of a muffler, here. There are more motorcycles than cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians combined. There are about 30 motorcycles per car. And not a damned one of them gives even a tiny little shit about traffic lights, crosswalks, hell even sidewalks. Just because you’re standing inside a store does NOT mean you can’t get run over.
So, like in India, crossing the street in Vietnam is an exercise in faith. You wait for the tiniest break in traffic close to you, and then you just wade in. As you’re walking across the street, not one person will slow down for you. You just keep walking at a steady pace, and they will flow around you like water. You don’t avoid them; they avoid you. It can be a bit unnerving, even for folks who’ve visited India (when everybody is on a motorcycle, there are a LOT more vehicles in general to walk through). After a while, you just have to become very zen-like, and flow through traffic, as it, in turn, flows around you.
Eventually, we headed out of town and went south to Hue (on that “lovely” bus ride I told you about earlier). In Hue (pronounced like “way”), we took it even easier than in Hanoi, if you can believe that’s possible. Our first hotel room was way over-charging, and had a shitty internet connection, so we switched after one night to a place with a decent internet connection that only charged $10/night (for a double room with a window, AC, free WiFi and ensuite bathroom with 24 hour hot water).
When I say we took it even easier, I just mean to say that Hue was MUCH quieter, and less busy than Hanoi. So even on our daily adventures to go out and find lunch, we weren’t constantly being hounded by motorcycles. I mean, they were there, for sure. But we didn’t have to constantly “flow”… just occasionally when crossing a particularly busy street.
We had originally planned to do about 3 days in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, and then pop down to Hoi An, another pretty city that Jime’s mom went to when she was here. However, we decided instead that we were still enjoying the slow time, so we just decided to not get on the bus to Hoi An, and instead stay in Hue a little longer. The tickets were only $4 each, so we weren’t wasting much. Instead, we just bought a new set of bus tickets to go down to Danang to catch our train (which, at this moment, we are now riding, and are within the last hour of a trip that will ultimately have been 28.5 hours).
The rest of our time in Hue was pleasant. We found ourselves a favorite restaurant in town and went there almost every day at least once. Aside from having really good food at STUPID cheap prices (like $2 for green mango salad with shrimp, or a delicious riff on a hamburger, served on french roll, or even a giant, personal hot pot for $2.50) they also had the most fantastic fruit smoothies you can imagine. Our favorite mix was fresh Passion Fruit (maracuyá) with just a little bit of mango for a kick of sweet. This was our own invention for the blend of fruits, but I must say that this restaurant executed it FLAWLESSLY! These guys apparently have a reputation for having some of the best fruit shakes in town, and we can totally get behind that. To put it in perspective… beer at that restaurant was less than $1 each, and I didn’t have ONE. We just drank fruit smoothies with every meal, sometimes two each. It’s nice to be gluttonous sometimes, and it’s especially nice being gluttonous at less than $1 per glass.
One reason why they were so perfect, of course, was the never-ending heat and humidity. This is definitely getting to be a theme by now, but it was HOT outside! Add in the heavy humidity (I’d say around 60% on average while we were there), and it makes you never want to leave your air conditioned room (foreshadowing here… the humidity Siem Reap, Cambodia makes Vietnam seem downright pleasant). But going out and finding these delicious… mountains of ice in a glass… that’s damned near heaven on earth. If you’re in the US, picture a slurpee on the hottest day of the year. If you’re in Costa Rica (especially if you’re Mariel), picture a Super Churchill Coloso in Puntarenas. NOW you can picture how much we enjoyed the sweet, tart, frozen, delicious treat that made our day, every day, in the town of Hue.
We also found a really great clothes shop down on the corner, where not only were their clothes BEAUTIFUL, but they would measure out and custom make shirts for us, super cheap (like $9) and with ZERO markup for making us a completely custom shirt! Jime and I each ordered ourselves a shirt. We then went across the street and Jime ordered a second shirt from a different vendor. When we went back to pick them up, the 2nd shirt Jime had ordered was completely wrong: wrong fabric, wrong design, wrong measurements! Fortunately, the owner accepted that she was wrong and gave Jime back her deposit. In contrast, the lady from the first shop not only got Jime’s order AND my order, right, but did it with such amazing style, that we both went back and ordered a second shirt. Those were also ready the next day. And THAT shirt (for me) was so nice, I went back and ordered a THIRD one, which she finished from scratch the SAME DAY! So… Jime and I now have a set of really beautiful shirts from India, and another set from Vietnam, and they’re both completely gorgeous. In fact, I think my Vietnam shirts are probably the prettiest shirts I’ve ever owned (which is saying a lot for me, because Jime has found me some pretty amazing shirts in the past).
So, in the week that we were in Hue, we actually only went out twice to do sight seeing. To be fair, that’s actually very typical for that city. Usually tourists only stay there for 3 days. In fact, in chatting with the folks at our favorite restaurant, they were actually quite shocked (SHOCKED, I SAY!) and amused that we stayed a whole week. In any case, the two things we saw there were The Citadel, and a full day tour - half on a boat and half on a bus.
The Citadel was a short cab ride away, which was good, because sadly, it was completely not worth the time (or the heat that magically appeared that day). Basically, there was one main building in the front that was in pretty good shape, but the rest of the large facility was little more than almost completely invisible ruins of a former city. I know that this place was one a city of emperors, much like the Forbidden City in China (in fact, another name for this place is the Purple Forbidden City, despite there being no purple anything that we could see anywhere). Still, the years, and the many wars, were not kind to this place. The US in particular bombed it pretty badly. Very little remains to be seen. That doesn’t stop them from charging an entrance fee, of course, but I can’t blame them for that. They ARE actively trying to restore what they can there (on the day we were there, there was a small army of people painting old doors).
The full day tour was a bit nicer, but still left a lot to be desired. I love any excuse to be on a boat, so starting off the tour that way was nice for me. Jime is not quite so easily amused, so the boat itself did nothing for her. I enjoyed the cruise down the river to our first few stops.
(Dragon boats for the tour)
The first stop was the oldest house in Vietnam, which is still in surprisingly good condition. I have no idea how old it is, but I’m guessing Google will tell me if I ask it (Edit: apparently the exact age is not known, but it was originally the residence of the 18th daughter of Duc Duc Emperor, in the late 19th century. In related news, I wonder if Emperor Duc Duc had a goose?). Anyway, in the back of the house is a large garden/orchard with a whole bunch of fruit trees. Those trees include Mango, Papaya, Lychee (mamón chino), Jackfruit, Durian (aka the fruit that smells like sweet, delicious, rotting flesh), and even Dragon Fruit (pitahaya), which looks like a flaming pink ball that grows on cactus.
The next stop was some random temple on the side of the river that the tour guide didn’t even take us into… just stopped us down in front and chatted at us for 20 minutes that we couldn’t get back. The last boat stop was the Thein Mu pagoda, which is a big temple and monastery site. The Pagoda is kinda cool. It’s this big, very tall building that serves as a symbol for the city of Hue.
The rest of the temple grounds were behind this, and contained housing for the monks, a few shrines, and a very large and lovely garden. Oddly, one of the random plants in this garden was a Star Fruit tree (carambola). I say oddly, because they have this lovely fruit tree here, producing PILES of lovely star fruits… and they just leave them there to rot on the ground! Poor star fruits! All that yum… just thrown away like so much rubbish.
(pobres carambolas!)
They also had one particular historical artifact that caught both of our attention. In 1963, a monk from South Vietnam got in his car and drove to the Cambodian Embassy Saigon. After participating in a brief march, he parked his car at a busy intersection. He and two other monks got out. One set down a cushion for him in the middle of the road, and he sat himself down on it in the lotus (meditation) position. The other fellow monk then poured gasoline over his body. Marchers formed a circle around him, and with a few final words, he struck a match and set himself on fire, immolating himself in protest of the Catholic government’s repression and abuses against Buddhists. A very iconic photo (by Malcolm Browne) exists of his sacrifice… a picture of him engulfed in flames.
At this temple… is his car. In the window of this car is a large print of Malcolm Browne’s photograph of the monk in flames, appearing completely calm, peaceful and still… as he burned alive. In the background of the photo, you can clearly see the car behind him. The photo is disturbing enough by itself. But seeing that image framed and resting on the car that he drove that day… that can’t help but stop you in your tracks and make you think. I wasn’t prepared to see it. When I saw the car on the other side of the garden from where I was standing, I didn’t know what it was until I got there. Now that I have seen it, I think that image will stick with me for a while.
After the Pagoda, we headed over to see some famous tombs of emperors. Apparently there was a thing where late 19th and early 20th century emperors here would build themselves these elaborate burial sites with lakes and statues and gardens and even giant obelisks. Some of the basic history I read about these tombs said that since these particular emperors ruled during the French colonization period, their actual role was largely ceremonial, with no real power. Consequently, they had a lot of money and a lot of time available to have epically huge and elaborate memorial sites built for themselves and their families. And now, for the low price of about $4/person, we can tour through them.
While we had been traveling up and down the river all day, we had been seeing a lot of these barge ships, most of which were so completely stuffed full of sand that their hulls were just BARELY above the surface of the water. If there had been any kind of heavy winds or rough water on the river, they would have all been swamped. In fact, it seemed like all of them were constantly running a bilge pump to get rid of extra water as they traveled down the river. Well, on our way up to the tombs, we finally saw where they were getting all that sand. It seems that these barges don’t just carry the sand, they actually DREDGE it themselves! Each of the boats has it’s own little… I dunno… mud vacuum. If you’ve ever owned a fish tank, and you’ve cleaned out the bottom of the tank, you’ll have an idea. I guess they must have been doing maintenance on the river to make it deeper or something, because there was a cluster of boats all in one place, and we could seem them all sucking up sand from the bottom in this one spot, and filling directly into their boats, water and all. Now we know why the bilge pumps were always running! It was impressive to see just how much of these boats were ABOVE water, when they were empty. We had only been seeing the full ones, floating down the river like low riders. But here were the same barges, riding high. They were actually so big that full-grown men were disappearing from view when they’d jump down to stand in the hull. I had no idea they were so big! When they’re full, they look like surf boards with a motor.
Once we got to the tombs area, the tour stopped at the 3 most popular and elaborate tombs: Minh Mang, Kai Dinh and Tu Duc (in that order). Since we’d read that the Minh Mang tomb was largely similar to the Tu Duc tomb, and since the Tu Duc tomb was supposedly the better of the two, we decided to skip Minh Mang and just wait outside for an hour until we could catch the bus to the other two.
So, the first tomb we saw that day was Kai Dinh. It was much smaller in terms of space than the other one, but also much TALLER with some spectacular and beautiful architecture! Unfortunately, the asshole, pudknocker tour guide decided that at this tomb, we’d only get thirty minutes. Thirty fucking minutes?? Are you kidding me?? We were told we’d have at least 45 minutes at this tomb. Our idiot guide says “Just trust me; this tomb is very small. You don’t need more than thirty minutes.” Meanwhile, that was not what the tour promised, and that should not have been for him to decide, and it’s not like our tour was running late (ultimately, we were dropped off at the end of the day a full hour and a half early).
In any case, the tomb was pretty incredible! Aside from the buildings, and some ceremonial soldier statues in the front (very similar in concept to the Terracotta Warriors, but much fewer, and made from concrete), the main mausoleum was covered on every wall with really incredible 3D mosaics. When I say 3D, I mean that there were a lot of tiles, but also a lot of sculptures blended into the walls. So, instead of a flat mosaic of a dragon, they would have the dragons head sculpted to be coming out of the wall, or down from the ceiling, complete with curly wires for whiskers. Of course it wasn’t just one dragon; it was more like… say… 70+ dragons. The walls and ceilings were completely COVERED! Ultimately, while we will concede that it was a small space (compared to the others), that small space was jam packed with lots of little details (it made the inside of the Taj Mahal seem plain, by comparison). So, we would have very much preferred to spend at least an hour there, so we could sit there and take it all in. Alas, we were good little tourist groupies, and made sure we left on time.
By the time we got back down the stairs, the bus was already started to pull away. Mother fuckers! The guide saw us and stopped the bus. We yelled at the guide. We were not late! We were actually two minutes EARLY! He basically ignored us and just muttered something unintelligible and sat back down. Whatever, dude.
The next stop was for about 6 minutes at a place that makes incense. It was neat to see the process, and they had a pretty display set up. Again, this was only going to be a 10 minute stop to begin with, and they shortened it beyond that. That being said… well… it was basically just a souvenir stand on the side of the road. I didn’t really need more time. Still… would the extra 4 minutes have killed them?
(Jime takes perty pictures)
That last stop on this tour was for the Tu Duc tomb. For this one, they said we had 45 minutes. It was pretty huge, I think around 1 square km, and I think anything less than 1.5 hours would have been rushing it. It was a very pretty mix of buildings in various states of repair. Most were in decent condition, some were just shadows of their former self, and some were almost perfectly in tact. Beyond that, the theme of this place was a harmony between man and nature, so the place was like one giant garden with hundreds of trees, vine-covered walls, and a nice lake with lots of lotus and water lilies. The lotuses weren’t in anywhere near the perfect condition we saw them in all those gardens in China, so clearly doing maintenance here is not a high priority. Still, while it may not have been on par with the gardens of Suzhou, it was definitely a pretty place in its own way, and I’m glad we went.
And that was it for Hue. The day after the tour, we took off down the road for Ho Chi Minh, our last stop in Vietnam. In Ho Chi Minh, our first night there, we met up with a guy named Noah, a friend of a friend (Steve Peters, aka Lord Peters aka The Guy who co-invented the greatest game in the world… Mondo Croquet) in Portland.
We met him downstairs at our hotel, and walked through our neighborhood until we found a nice place to eat, which turned out to be, of all things, a Turkish Doner place. It was good! We had a great time chatting with Noah, and learned a bit about how he came to be in Vietnam (aside from just marrying a Vietnamese woman that he met in Seattle), and how life was going for him here. We also tried to meet up with one other friend of a friend from Portland and Costa Rica (Sarah Joy Staude), but alas, our schedules never met up.
Other than that, I am proud to say we did damned near NOTHING in Ho Chi Minh, except wander around and enjoy the food. Our favorite food, as it happens, turned out to be a Pork Banh Mi sandwich cart on the same block as our hotel. HOLY CRAP that shit was good! And, it was only about $0.75 for a sandwich, so we would happily eat 2 (Jime) or 3 (me) per meal, at least once a day. Oh, and of course… different city, different banana pancakes.
On our last night in town, I went out to see a movie I’d been waiting for months to see, and was glad I got a chance to see in the theater before it went away. I saw The Dark Knight Rises (the latest Batman movie).
Since this is not the kind of movie that Jime fancies, I was going to go by myself, but I decided to get clever and put up a post inviting any of the local Couchsurfers who might like to join me. Happily, two people took me up on the offer! One was a local Vietnamese guy named Linh, and the other was a Russian girl named Rita. I invited them all to meet up at my hotel, and, since I lived in the party area of town, join me for a couple beers before the show. Linh had even offered to give me a ride to the theater and back so I wouldn’t have to take an expensive, cross-town taxi. To show my appreciation, I bought him a couple beers and one of my favorite sandwiches for dinner.
We all had a great time chatting, and I wish I had had more time to get to know both of them, because they were both a lot of fun. Linh mentioned that he hadn’t been to a movie or Couchsurfing meetup of any kind in a long time (due to work), so he was happy to have this chance to get out and play.
When we eventually got to the theater, I sat between Linh and Rita, and we started having a chat about our various countries, when we finally came upon the topic of The War. At that point, I noticed something very poetic about the make-up of my little movie group. There we were, a Vietnamese, a Gringo, and a Russian… happily enjoying a movie together. I mentioned this sudden realization to Rita and Linh, and we decided that to really embody the metaphor, we should have Linh sit in the middle. We all had a nice giggle at that one.
After the movie, I got my last tiny adventure for this country. On the way to the theater, Rita and I had ended up sharing a cab together, since she had just found out about the meetup at the last minute, and wasn’t able to work out any other ride. I shared the cab with her so she wouldn’t get stuck paying the whole thing by herself. Well, at the end of the movie, she was going home to a different district than I was, so she was ok taking the cab by herself. This meant I got to ride home with Linh, as originally planned. Well, this being Vietnam, Linh’s “Ride” was of course a motorcycle. In my life, I have been on a motorcycle exactly ONCE before, and that was for about 3 blocks on the back of my grandpappy’s motorbike during a camping trip when I was… say… 12. As an adult, I had essentially decided that motorcycles were not my thing… too dangerous in my book (I know Jonathan and Lyzz will disagree here and that’s fine, but this was my feeling). Well, this is Vietnam, and motorcycles are practically a national religion. Fortunately, Linh had an extra helmet for me, and it even fit my gigantic head. So off on the bike we went! After all that build-up, it was the most uneventful ride you could have imagined. He didn’t speed, we didn’t have any close calls, and being 11:00 at night, there was hardly even any traffic. We got home, I hopped off the bike, said thanks and bye, and he went off on his merry way. I had just completed my prototypical Vietnam experience.
The next day, we got our bus and off we went to Cambodia. That bus ride was certainly not without incident, of course, but that, as they say, is another tale.
The full set of Vietnam photos is here:
https://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/2148
As buses go, this one is pretty special. And by special, I mean in a less than enjoyable sort of way. It’s only a 3 hour bus, and yet… it’s a sleeper bus. Even accounting for the fact that we are not the last stop… the last stop is only an hour past us. What’s so hard about using SEATS?? There is NO need for this to be a sleeper. It’s the middle of the day! Sleeper buses, as you might recall from our trip through India, are not our favorite way to travel. That being said, they are often significantly cheaper than a train, and often just as fast, if not nearly as comfortable. Depending on the bus, your space for leg room and/or head room is always in question, and if it’s not enough, you’re just screwed. Also, getting a top seat/bed vs a low seat/bed, or seats in the front vs the back can make a huge difference, as can the age of the bus and the condition of the bus’s suspension. The higher you are, and the farther you are back, the more you get tossed around by the bumpy roads. In India, we had the worst of all possibilities. The bus was old, the suspension sucked, the roads were worse than Limon (Costa Rica) in a bad year, and we had a top bunk in the back. We arrived sick, bruised and exhausted. Still, we learned some lessons from it (such as never ride in the back, if at all possible, and try to ask for a newer bus, if available).
(I’m smiling because at least I’m at ground level)
Alright, so… we’ve now made it to Danang. The whole ride took about 4 hours, instead of 3, thanks to a flat tire we got along the way. To their credit, I will say that I find it pretty damned impressive, and even a little shocking, that until we stopped in a random tire lot along the way, and I heard the sound of the pneumatic wrench going, I didn’t even know we HAD a flat tire! So, our bus may have been old and uncomfortable, but it was definitely a trooper.
While we’re here in Danang, we have about a 4 hour layover before our train at 10pm tonight. To pass the time, we found ourselves a lovely little café right across the street from the train station. So, at the moment here, we are now sitting up on a 2nd floor balcony with a soft, cool breeze, drinking cheap drinks ($1 each for a can of coke or local beer), and enjoying free wifi. Oh, and dinner was a couple sandwiches at a road-side stand for about $0.75 each. The bus may have sucked, but the day as a whole is going pretty damn swell!
So, Vietnam… it’s been a very interesting country for us. It’s the first country were we really had NO major monuments we were planning on seeing. I mean, that’s not to say there’s noting to see here (move along), but… seeing the sights hasn’t been our goal. Instead, we’ve quite happily switched into just… “enjoy the place” mode. I know, I know… I went off on quite a rant on facebook not too long ago about planning being an absolute necessity for a trip like this, or you won’t see anything. Well, Vietnam sort of proved this, and also sort of conceded the point. We did NOT see many sights, and actually spent most of our time in the hotel room, only really coming out for food. And you know what, it was GREAT. After so many months of seeing so many different things in different places, we really needed a break.
So in Hanoi, we basically just took a wee vacation from our vacation and hung out for a few days. We did research for future places, we caught up on facebook, we edited photos and wrote blog posts. We slept, and we enjoyed the SHIT out of the AC in our room. When we did go out, it was to enjoy a really great meal at some local hole in the wall, or street-side eatery (one of which, which we chose by the “hey, that looks good” method, we later found out through the internets was THE best place in the city for that kind of food, “Bun Cha Hanoi”, which you better BELIEVE we’ll be making when we get home!) or occasionally to go souvenir shopping.
(Oh, and beer is $0.50 a bottle. DIG it!)
To give you a better idea of what this stuff is like, and para que se te haga agua la boca.
Something amusing to us in Vietnam, which we started seeing right away in Hanoi, is that people really DO still wear those conical hats that you see in every movie about Vietnam. I would have thought they were just a show for the tourists, but no… a LOT of people wear them, even in remote villages, working out in the rice paddies. Probably the most typical example of them, though, are the ladies walking through the streets with the big sticks over their shoulders, selling either fruit, or soup or something. It’s neat that you’ll see these ladies with a stick and two large jugs… like one for soup, and one for rice. Basically, she’s one-upping every carnival food vendor out there… because she’s got an entire RESTAURANT on a stick (on a steek?)!
The funniest part was that because the sticks are somewhat flexible, the ladies all walk in this funny-looking shuffle, to keep the food from bouncing around all over the place. If they were in marching band, they’d be doing a perfect roll-step. I wanted to get my picture taken with one of the ladies, but we thought it might be rude. Jime at least got a few pictures of them from a distance, though.
We did see a couple specific sights in town. One was a performance of a very unique cultural art called “Water Puppets”, at the main theater in the country for this. Water Puppetry is one of those UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage things (a thing where they try to preserve things like specific dances, arts, etc, that you can’t just put into a museum). The Water Puppets thing was… interesting. It was definitely cool, but it was also somewhat surreally WEIRD, in our opinion. The music accompaniment was definitely beautiful, especially the feature player of a single string instrument called a Du Xian. The lady playing that blew me away. Soft, haunting, and soaring from lows to highs with a literal flick of a stick (you apparently play with the pitch on this thing with a big stick that looks like a car’s manual shifter). All in all, the puppets are somewhat limited in what they’re capable of, so it wasn’t the most impressive show we’ve seen, but it was definitely very original, and quite enjoyable.
It’s like she’s playing a 1-string violin with a stick shift.
Apparently THE thing to do in Hanoi (according to all the posters in all the Tour offices around town, of which there are many… PER BLOCK), is to actually get the hell OUT of Hanoi, and do a Cruise in Ha Long Bay. There are many comfort- and cost-levels to choose from, and you can easily do anything from a 1 day out-and-back deal to a 3 day/2 night cruise. Since the bay was about 4 hours from Hanoi, and since this sounded like THE coolest thing to do in Vietnam, we found ourselves a 3 day/2night cruise where we would spend the first night on the boat, and the second night on land at a place called the Monkey Island Resort (and yes, there are in fact monkeys on that island, as our pictures will show you later). We paid about $200 for the trip, which included all food, lodging and transportation for the 3 days.
To start things off, they picked us up at our hotel at 8am, and loaded us onto a bus. Driving out towards the Bay, we passed through massive, endless, fields of rice. Picture Iowa’s corn fields (if you can, and if you can’t, just click here), but much less tall, and mostly flooded, and you have some idea.
Interestingly, it seems there’s a tradition here of putting graves and even entire cemeteries in the middle of some of these fields. So, we’d be driving along, looking at the vast, open spaces, and all of the sudden, in the middle of the field, would be some large ceremonial headstone, or tomb, or even full, elaborate cemeteries. All of them just plopped down in the middle of the rice paddy. I have a feeling the USDA would not approve of such things, but who am I to judge?
They fed us pretty much first thing after we checked into our rooms. Lunch was somewhat fancy, if not quite enough food. I wasn’t starving or anything, just… would have liked a little more than they provided (this would be a theme for every meal on the boat, but c’est la vie).
Most of the islands are also covered heavily with dense green… like mini rain forests. What’s more, Ha Long Bay is also covered, almost year-round, with this thick mist of clouds, giving a very ethereal, other-worldly atmosphere to the place. Cruising through it, as you disappear into the fog, floating quietly away from the noise of the traffic on land, hearing just the sounds of your own boat and the birds and insects, you feel like you’re in another world… like you’re in a movie. It practically forces you to just sit there, silent, and let your imagination go wild.
Our first land destination was a big island with a cave. The cave was pretty spectacular, even though it was lit with very cheesy, colored lighting. Sadly, we were rushed through this giant cave in about 25 minutes. After this, we had the option of hiking to another cave on the island. Those who didn’t want to go to that one (there were a LOT of stairs involved) got to just sit on their ass and wait. I chose to go, Jime chose to wait (VERY angry at being forced to rush, and then waste time waiting. I would have preferred to stay longer in the cave). Since I felt too rushed through the previous cave, I guess I took my time through this second one, which I felt was even more incredible, and more naturally lit (and with VASTLY fewer people cramming through it). So, by the time I got out, I guess everybody else had been waiting for me for a little while. Oh well. Sorry, Jime! I did take lots of pictures for her, though (including of a Walking Stick I saw on the way to the cave). :)
(He was our champion boat diver of the day)
The next morning, we had to get up at 6 AM and check out of our rooms before breakfast at 7. This wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined, because we actually DID end up getting a good night’s sleep, floating out there on the bay, with just a very slight, gentle rocking from the waves. After breakfast, we motored on again and went to a place called Cat Ba Island, where we would leave this boat behind for the rest of the trip. On this island, we went to a national park, where the plan was to trek up the mountain to a nice viewing point. We actually took a bus on this island to get to the park. I found it amusing to take a bus on a small island. It turned out that the island was big enough to hold a small city (which it did), but you couldn’t tell that from where we docked, so I just thought it was funny.
When we got to the park , Jime and I both started the trek, but as soon as she saw how steep the hike was, she very wisely turned around and found herself a nice quiet bench to read a book on. I stubbornly started up the hill, because I actually like hiking, and I LOVE good views. Well, I started up the hill, which promptly turned into a stair-climbing adventure… a STEEP stair-climbing adventure… a steep and WET... and slippery stair-climbing adve… you know what? Fuck this. I’m sure I could make it UP the hill, but trying to come back down… I’d fall right on my head, and that would suck. I hiked back down. Of course, this being a rain forest, in the 2 minutes I stopped to debate if I really wanted to go up or not, I got tagged by no less than 7 mosquitoes. I hate mosquitoes. Still, they helped reinforce my decision to head back, joined by a German girl with a recently-broken arm who decided she’d prefer not to break it again by falling down 600 giant stone stairs.
So, the two of us went back and joined Jime. We chatted; we walked around the little village, we hiked down the road a bit for some exercise, and eventually the rest of the crew came back and we headed out. We took the bus to the other side of the island, where we hopped on another boat to take us the last 20 minutes to OUR island. When we got to our island, getting OFF the boat proved to be unnecessarily complicated. Rather than using a smaller boat to ferry us to shore (which they had done before, and would do again), they decided to take the big boat right up onto the beach. At that point they threw out a board down to the sand, and had us LITERALLY walk the plank (with two dudes holding a long bamboo pole at around shoulder height as a sort of make-shift hand-rail). This plank was not stable. It was skinny, and narrow, and the boat was moving from side to side, and... well... let’s just say that whole experience sure did suck, but at least we didn’t fall.
After we landed, we headed up to the genuinely BEAUTIFUL resort (this one actually DID match the pictures), got our key, and headed to our room. Again… this room matched the picture! the room was beautiful, and the view was wonderful. Dinner was OK. Nothing particularly fancy, food wise, but it was decent, and unlike on the boat, there was PLENTY, which made me happy. Also, you can’t beat the view from the restaurant balcony of this place. You just can’t. I put it right on par with the view from the amphitheater at Hotel Villa Caletas in Costa Rica.
Happily, our group ended up being pretty small actually: only around 9 people. The groups we saw going before and after us were more like 20 people. Aside from that, everybody had a good attitude, so we all really enjoyed the trip together, and enjoyed each other’s company as well.
When swim time was over, we climbed back on board and began the cruise back to the harbor. We had a nice, long, leisurely cruise, but it still went too fast. I wish we could have stayed in those islands for days! They served lunch on the boat right before we arrived, so we were already docked by the time we finished up. Sadly, they screwed up this one meal for me by not having any non-shellfish options (they knew about my allergy from before I got on the boat, and to their credit, they had plenty options for me at every other meal… they just screwed up this one). I asked our guide if he could at least hook me up with a free beer or something to compensate me (drinks were not free on this trip.. and by drinks, that includes even water). Unfortunately, he was a very boring man, with no sympathy whatsoever, so he had the cooks fry me a couple eggs. Boring! I would have rather had the beer. :P
Back at the harbor, we had to wait about an hour before our bus back to Hanoi showed up. We could have spent that hour on the bay! Swimming! Alas. We are really discovering that we hate organized tours. There’s a lot of hurry-up! Wait! Hurry up! Wait! A lot of dead time, and very little good time…
All in all, it may not have been the magic fairyland of a tour they promise in the pictures, but you know what? That place is pretty damned magical anyway. That trip, all by itself, is worth coming to Asia for, let alone Vietnam.
Back in Hanoi, we did nothing else special. We continued to enjoy our quiet time, and the good food in our neighborhood. Something about Hanoi that I forgot to mention earlier is the traffic. It reminded us nothing so much as the traffic in India, but in smaller pieces. There are very few cars in Vietnam, but there is a STORM of motorcycles! And they’re all loud, like they’ve never heard of a muffler, here. There are more motorcycles than cars, trucks, bicycles and pedestrians combined. There are about 30 motorcycles per car. And not a damned one of them gives even a tiny little shit about traffic lights, crosswalks, hell even sidewalks. Just because you’re standing inside a store does NOT mean you can’t get run over.
So, like in India, crossing the street in Vietnam is an exercise in faith. You wait for the tiniest break in traffic close to you, and then you just wade in. As you’re walking across the street, not one person will slow down for you. You just keep walking at a steady pace, and they will flow around you like water. You don’t avoid them; they avoid you. It can be a bit unnerving, even for folks who’ve visited India (when everybody is on a motorcycle, there are a LOT more vehicles in general to walk through). After a while, you just have to become very zen-like, and flow through traffic, as it, in turn, flows around you.
Eventually, we headed out of town and went south to Hue (on that “lovely” bus ride I told you about earlier). In Hue (pronounced like “way”), we took it even easier than in Hanoi, if you can believe that’s possible. Our first hotel room was way over-charging, and had a shitty internet connection, so we switched after one night to a place with a decent internet connection that only charged $10/night (for a double room with a window, AC, free WiFi and ensuite bathroom with 24 hour hot water).
When I say we took it even easier, I just mean to say that Hue was MUCH quieter, and less busy than Hanoi. So even on our daily adventures to go out and find lunch, we weren’t constantly being hounded by motorcycles. I mean, they were there, for sure. But we didn’t have to constantly “flow”… just occasionally when crossing a particularly busy street.
We had originally planned to do about 3 days in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam, and then pop down to Hoi An, another pretty city that Jime’s mom went to when she was here. However, we decided instead that we were still enjoying the slow time, so we just decided to not get on the bus to Hoi An, and instead stay in Hue a little longer. The tickets were only $4 each, so we weren’t wasting much. Instead, we just bought a new set of bus tickets to go down to Danang to catch our train (which, at this moment, we are now riding, and are within the last hour of a trip that will ultimately have been 28.5 hours).
The rest of our time in Hue was pleasant. We found ourselves a favorite restaurant in town and went there almost every day at least once. Aside from having really good food at STUPID cheap prices (like $2 for green mango salad with shrimp, or a delicious riff on a hamburger, served on french roll, or even a giant, personal hot pot for $2.50) they also had the most fantastic fruit smoothies you can imagine. Our favorite mix was fresh Passion Fruit (maracuyá) with just a little bit of mango for a kick of sweet. This was our own invention for the blend of fruits, but I must say that this restaurant executed it FLAWLESSLY! These guys apparently have a reputation for having some of the best fruit shakes in town, and we can totally get behind that. To put it in perspective… beer at that restaurant was less than $1 each, and I didn’t have ONE. We just drank fruit smoothies with every meal, sometimes two each. It’s nice to be gluttonous sometimes, and it’s especially nice being gluttonous at less than $1 per glass.
One reason why they were so perfect, of course, was the never-ending heat and humidity. This is definitely getting to be a theme by now, but it was HOT outside! Add in the heavy humidity (I’d say around 60% on average while we were there), and it makes you never want to leave your air conditioned room (foreshadowing here… the humidity Siem Reap, Cambodia makes Vietnam seem downright pleasant). But going out and finding these delicious… mountains of ice in a glass… that’s damned near heaven on earth. If you’re in the US, picture a slurpee on the hottest day of the year. If you’re in Costa Rica (especially if you’re Mariel), picture a Super Churchill Coloso in Puntarenas. NOW you can picture how much we enjoyed the sweet, tart, frozen, delicious treat that made our day, every day, in the town of Hue.
So, in the week that we were in Hue, we actually only went out twice to do sight seeing. To be fair, that’s actually very typical for that city. Usually tourists only stay there for 3 days. In fact, in chatting with the folks at our favorite restaurant, they were actually quite shocked (SHOCKED, I SAY!) and amused that we stayed a whole week. In any case, the two things we saw there were The Citadel, and a full day tour - half on a boat and half on a bus.
The Citadel was a short cab ride away, which was good, because sadly, it was completely not worth the time (or the heat that magically appeared that day). Basically, there was one main building in the front that was in pretty good shape, but the rest of the large facility was little more than almost completely invisible ruins of a former city. I know that this place was one a city of emperors, much like the Forbidden City in China (in fact, another name for this place is the Purple Forbidden City, despite there being no purple anything that we could see anywhere). Still, the years, and the many wars, were not kind to this place. The US in particular bombed it pretty badly. Very little remains to be seen. That doesn’t stop them from charging an entrance fee, of course, but I can’t blame them for that. They ARE actively trying to restore what they can there (on the day we were there, there was a small army of people painting old doors).
(Dragon boats for the tour)
The rest of the temple grounds were behind this, and contained housing for the monks, a few shrines, and a very large and lovely garden. Oddly, one of the random plants in this garden was a Star Fruit tree (carambola). I say oddly, because they have this lovely fruit tree here, producing PILES of lovely star fruits… and they just leave them there to rot on the ground! Poor star fruits! All that yum… just thrown away like so much rubbish.
(pobres carambolas!)
While we had been traveling up and down the river all day, we had been seeing a lot of these barge ships, most of which were so completely stuffed full of sand that their hulls were just BARELY above the surface of the water. If there had been any kind of heavy winds or rough water on the river, they would have all been swamped. In fact, it seemed like all of them were constantly running a bilge pump to get rid of extra water as they traveled down the river. Well, on our way up to the tombs, we finally saw where they were getting all that sand. It seems that these barges don’t just carry the sand, they actually DREDGE it themselves! Each of the boats has it’s own little… I dunno… mud vacuum. If you’ve ever owned a fish tank, and you’ve cleaned out the bottom of the tank, you’ll have an idea. I guess they must have been doing maintenance on the river to make it deeper or something, because there was a cluster of boats all in one place, and we could seem them all sucking up sand from the bottom in this one spot, and filling directly into their boats, water and all. Now we know why the bilge pumps were always running! It was impressive to see just how much of these boats were ABOVE water, when they were empty. We had only been seeing the full ones, floating down the river like low riders. But here were the same barges, riding high. They were actually so big that full-grown men were disappearing from view when they’d jump down to stand in the hull. I had no idea they were so big! When they’re full, they look like surf boards with a motor.
So, the first tomb we saw that day was Kai Dinh. It was much smaller in terms of space than the other one, but also much TALLER with some spectacular and beautiful architecture! Unfortunately, the asshole, pudknocker tour guide decided that at this tomb, we’d only get thirty minutes. Thirty fucking minutes?? Are you kidding me?? We were told we’d have at least 45 minutes at this tomb. Our idiot guide says “Just trust me; this tomb is very small. You don’t need more than thirty minutes.” Meanwhile, that was not what the tour promised, and that should not have been for him to decide, and it’s not like our tour was running late (ultimately, we were dropped off at the end of the day a full hour and a half early).
In any case, the tomb was pretty incredible! Aside from the buildings, and some ceremonial soldier statues in the front (very similar in concept to the Terracotta Warriors, but much fewer, and made from concrete), the main mausoleum was covered on every wall with really incredible 3D mosaics. When I say 3D, I mean that there were a lot of tiles, but also a lot of sculptures blended into the walls. So, instead of a flat mosaic of a dragon, they would have the dragons head sculpted to be coming out of the wall, or down from the ceiling, complete with curly wires for whiskers. Of course it wasn’t just one dragon; it was more like… say… 70+ dragons. The walls and ceilings were completely COVERED! Ultimately, while we will concede that it was a small space (compared to the others), that small space was jam packed with lots of little details (it made the inside of the Taj Mahal seem plain, by comparison). So, we would have very much preferred to spend at least an hour there, so we could sit there and take it all in. Alas, we were good little tourist groupies, and made sure we left on time.
The next stop was for about 6 minutes at a place that makes incense. It was neat to see the process, and they had a pretty display set up. Again, this was only going to be a 10 minute stop to begin with, and they shortened it beyond that. That being said… well… it was basically just a souvenir stand on the side of the road. I didn’t really need more time. Still… would the extra 4 minutes have killed them?
(Jime takes perty pictures)
We met him downstairs at our hotel, and walked through our neighborhood until we found a nice place to eat, which turned out to be, of all things, a Turkish Doner place. It was good! We had a great time chatting with Noah, and learned a bit about how he came to be in Vietnam (aside from just marrying a Vietnamese woman that he met in Seattle), and how life was going for him here. We also tried to meet up with one other friend of a friend from Portland and Costa Rica (Sarah Joy Staude), but alas, our schedules never met up.
Other than that, I am proud to say we did damned near NOTHING in Ho Chi Minh, except wander around and enjoy the food. Our favorite food, as it happens, turned out to be a Pork Banh Mi sandwich cart on the same block as our hotel. HOLY CRAP that shit was good! And, it was only about $0.75 for a sandwich, so we would happily eat 2 (Jime) or 3 (me) per meal, at least once a day. Oh, and of course… different city, different banana pancakes.
On our last night in town, I went out to see a movie I’d been waiting for months to see, and was glad I got a chance to see in the theater before it went away. I saw The Dark Knight Rises (the latest Batman movie).
Since this is not the kind of movie that Jime fancies, I was going to go by myself, but I decided to get clever and put up a post inviting any of the local Couchsurfers who might like to join me. Happily, two people took me up on the offer! One was a local Vietnamese guy named Linh, and the other was a Russian girl named Rita. I invited them all to meet up at my hotel, and, since I lived in the party area of town, join me for a couple beers before the show. Linh had even offered to give me a ride to the theater and back so I wouldn’t have to take an expensive, cross-town taxi. To show my appreciation, I bought him a couple beers and one of my favorite sandwiches for dinner.
We all had a great time chatting, and I wish I had had more time to get to know both of them, because they were both a lot of fun. Linh mentioned that he hadn’t been to a movie or Couchsurfing meetup of any kind in a long time (due to work), so he was happy to have this chance to get out and play.
When we eventually got to the theater, I sat between Linh and Rita, and we started having a chat about our various countries, when we finally came upon the topic of The War. At that point, I noticed something very poetic about the make-up of my little movie group. There we were, a Vietnamese, a Gringo, and a Russian… happily enjoying a movie together. I mentioned this sudden realization to Rita and Linh, and we decided that to really embody the metaphor, we should have Linh sit in the middle. We all had a nice giggle at that one.
After the movie, I got my last tiny adventure for this country. On the way to the theater, Rita and I had ended up sharing a cab together, since she had just found out about the meetup at the last minute, and wasn’t able to work out any other ride. I shared the cab with her so she wouldn’t get stuck paying the whole thing by herself. Well, at the end of the movie, she was going home to a different district than I was, so she was ok taking the cab by herself. This meant I got to ride home with Linh, as originally planned. Well, this being Vietnam, Linh’s “Ride” was of course a motorcycle. In my life, I have been on a motorcycle exactly ONCE before, and that was for about 3 blocks on the back of my grandpappy’s motorbike during a camping trip when I was… say… 12. As an adult, I had essentially decided that motorcycles were not my thing… too dangerous in my book (I know Jonathan and Lyzz will disagree here and that’s fine, but this was my feeling). Well, this is Vietnam, and motorcycles are practically a national religion. Fortunately, Linh had an extra helmet for me, and it even fit my gigantic head. So off on the bike we went! After all that build-up, it was the most uneventful ride you could have imagined. He didn’t speed, we didn’t have any close calls, and being 11:00 at night, there was hardly even any traffic. We got home, I hopped off the bike, said thanks and bye, and he went off on his merry way. I had just completed my prototypical Vietnam experience.
The next day, we got our bus and off we went to Cambodia. That bus ride was certainly not without incident, of course, but that, as they say, is another tale.
The full set of Vietnam photos is here:
https://alexjimenartw.shutterfly.com/pictures/2148
