We left bangkok on the 19th to fly to Hanoi. The first sign on the SARS outbreak we saw was that Vietnam Airways sprayed the entire cabin of the aircraft once everyone was on board. The plane wasn't that full, but I guess it makes people feel better.
We had a taxi booked from the airport to ease our arrival...it cost $10 to get in from the airport to central Hanoi... The start of the trip in was quite sedate....rice paddys either side of the road. Then as we started to hit more traffic we noticed that the driver was using the horn all the time. Even if he just saw a bike 500m in the distance he'd beep at it.... We didn't realise at the time but this is standard operating procedure in Vietnam. Also, might is right on the roads here. If you're a pedestrian you're bottom of the pile...a truck must be top of the pile. You'd better dodge or you WILL be driven over. Instead of using indicators they use their horns. Beep-beep ( I'm coming up behind you and I going to overtake you). Beep-Beep-Beep! ( I'm right behing you, move out of the way NOW!!!) BEEP-BEEP-BEEP-BEEP!!!!! ( I'm right alongside you, so for God's sake don't do anything stupid!!!). It seems to work, you just have to remember that you may be overtaken on either side at any time.
The hotel, Anh Dao, in the old quarter in good. The rooms are spotless, though Gina did see a rat in the hall. Still for $12, it's fine. They were all about me trying to get the cable TV in our room working when we arrived. The first night we just went out for dinner in the old quarter.. .... we ended up in this little family run place that literally had 3 tables in it. The food was excellent and the beer was cold and all with a price tag of less that $5! So, we settled in for the night in our new location....the bed seemed comfortable, A/C not too cold and the traffic did seem to quiten down a bit as the night wore on. Then in the middle of the night we had the mother and father of all electrical storms. The first clap of thunder sounded like a bomb going off outside our window. Just as this died down at about 5AM, the traffic started up again. Anyway we survived all that and dozed for a few hours... Then at about 9:30 we had the embarrasement of having reception ring us to see if we wanted breakfast. If you sleep too much in Vietnam it's said to be a sign of sickness.
We spent our first day wandering around the old quarter of Hanoi. The first time we left the hotel we felt like we stuck out like a sore thumb, but we got over that a lot quicker then we had in Bangkok. We were a bit suprised at the amount of curiosity that we aroused, but Vietnam is a lot less travelled than Thailand. People were a lot more interested in Gina than me, but with her pale skin that's to be expected. The traffic in town took a lot of getting used to. After a while we got the hang of the narrow streets, but then down by the lake the roads open up a bit and it really gets the adrenaline going trying to get from one side to the other. Apart from the usual approaches from street sellers the walk around the old quarter was really good. Every street specialises in something different. For example we had one kid follow Gina for about 500 yards pestering to give her a shoe shine. We pointed out that she was wearing sandals a couple of times, but that didn't seem a deterent! Another guy wanted us to donate to the "Red Cross". He followed us for about a mile, trying each of us in turn. At the end all we could do was laugh. He left us, blowing Gina a kiss as he went on his way.
The following day we had booked a day trip to the Perfume Pagoda. This is one of the most important Buddist sites in Vietnam. The trip starts off with a couple of hours on bus out of Hanoi, then you switch at a small village to a small rowing boat. These are usually rowed by older women. The boat journey is about an hour each way. The women are hardy. The only thing that's a bit suss about this is that the women don't get paid by the tour group at all. They just reccomend a tip, which is all the get as far as I know. On top of that there are more familys and boat's in the village than people to take ( at least at the moment with SARS and all). So, they work it on a kind of rota, but the tip they get is pretty much the only hard cash they see. The boat journey is really nice...it's pretty mountainous, but with rice paddys along the river. The views are great and it's just really peaceful. After all that peace the one hour walk up the mountain to get to the pagoda was a welcome change of pace. I don't think I've ever sweated so much in my life!! Then, to add insult to injury, the local guys who are doing some construction work jog around the place carrying all sorts of heavy objects without even breaking a sweat. There are a lot of lean-to shelters along the path with people trying to sell beer, water etc. None of them had anything I needed.....oxygen mask, adrenaline shots..(Yeah Col, I know, I need to go back training). Anyway, Gina whacked her head off a bamboo pole that was supporting one of these sheds, much to the amusement of the locals, except the guy who had to check that his shed wasn't going to fall down. The Grotto itself was spectacular cave where buddist images had been set up for worship. Some of the locals were laughing at us, wondering why we would walk up that mountain when we're not even buddists. I'm inclined to agree with them. On the way home I nearly tore the roof of another shed, luckily the bamboo wasn't too hard on the head. This has been happening a lot to us lately, we walking into this, banging off that. We're punch drunk half the time! Anyway, the Perfume Pagoda was a really good day trip, the boat ride was the highlight for us, the actual Pagoda itself was good and there was a sense of satisfaction getting there, you felt you'd earned it. The last bit of drama was that somehow a few fresh water crabs managed to get into our boat on the way back home, which caused a lot of jumping around as we got out of the boat......I can still hear their laughter and I burn with shame.
Our next trip out of Hanoi was to Halong Bay, which is a world heritage site and looks like something from a James Bond move. You know, the type of place where the bad guy always lives with a nestful of good looking women. This was a very relaxing couple of days for us.......cruise around the bay, go for a swim, see a grotto, sleep over night on the boat, a bit more swimming, get stung by something in the water ( it's still itchy 5 days later!!), head back to Halong city. Then our boat got stuck on a sandbar on the way home, just for a bit of excitment. The rescue boat, another tour boat, came over and got stuck on the same sandbar. An hour later a third (smaller) boat came out and picked us up. Confidence was high, but it took a bit of a dent when we were informed that we should put our swimming gear on just in case!!! There was basically one small life raft on our boat and 20 people. They thought that we might have to put our gear in the life raft and make our way one at a time from one boat to the other. Gina was loving this, the thoughts of getting into water was bad enough, but we were miles from shore!! As it turned out the small boat managed to pull up alongside of ours and we jumped across. Of course, with everyone from the tour on the small boat it weighed a lot more than it did coming to get us. It promptly got wedged as well. We all moved to the front of the boat ( some one suggested jumping up and down) and then it finally floated free. We both whacked our heads while on the boat too!
We flew south to Hue rather than taking the overnight train, which was a bit of a cheat but we never claimed to be all that hardcore about our "backpacking". There isn't much to see in Hue itself, even the receptionist at the hotel we got said that 3 or 4 days was more than enough in Hue. There are a couple of day trips from here....one along the river for some royal tombs and the other is to the DMZ and Vinh Moc tunnels. The Perfume River trip was good fun. We took a small boat along the river ( I hit my head about 5 times getting in and out of it at the various stops....brain hurting...). At some of the stops we just walked to the tomb or temple, but at a couple we had to take motor bike rides for a few kilometres to get to the final destination. We knew we could get hassle here as the round-trip price can sometimes turn into and each-way price. It did at one place and I was so hot and tired I just paid up and didn't argue. The bikes seemed to be run by one guy and I don't think the drivers get much of a cut from the money, cause I gave the girl who had been driving Gina a dollar tip ( I'd meant to give a couple of thousand dong, but I was a bit distracted at the time) and she grabbed my arm and kind of hugged me saying, "Oh thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you". It made up for the hassle with the king-pin, she was just so delighted ( it's a bit more than a days wage for here). The DMZ trip we enjoyed as well. To be honest a lot of the day is spent travelling aroung from place to place and the museums aren't that great. Our idea of a museum and the Vietnamese are a bit different, but the tour guide made up for the short comings. The Vinh Moc Tunnels are about 2.5 kilometres long. We only saw a small section of them that are open, but it gave a good impression of the tenacity of the North Vietnamese during the war. People lived down in the tunnels for years, kids were born there!! Of Hue itself there's not a lot to say. On average the food in Vietnam has been excellent, but in Hue it was pretty crap everywhere we tried until we went to this place being run by two mad middle aged women. It was a kitchen, fridge and a few plastic tables/chairs on the street. But the beer was cold and the food was excellent, and all for next to nothing.
Further south from Hue is the small town of Hoi An, described as a shopping mecca with old town charm. It does what is says on the tin! It's a really nice place to chill out for a few days, but you do have to get used to the children sales people. They come up to you every time you stand still for more than 5 seconds trying to entice you to buy Tiger Balm, whistles or other trinkets. When that fails the next ploy is to ask where you come from and then ask for a coin from that place. We don't have any non Vietnamese money on us, but we did wonder at this. It's something we havent' encountered before. Later on it all became clear. A youngster tried to sell us some stuff and then asked us where we were going. We said back to Thailand, so he asked us if we wanted to buy some Baht from him for some Dong!! They've got their own street Foreign exchange system going, but it's only useful it you need to change a dollar or two. Again, it does wear a bit thin after a few days, but it is pretty ingenious of them!
I think with the down turn in tourism here people are probably being a bit more pushy about selling their stuff than before. It's amazing how quickly tourism has become central to so many people here, even though the country has only been open 7 or 8 years.
So far our trip in Vietnam has been excellent. We both prefer it to Thailand and it's no where near as stressful as our research had led us to believe. Even the Lonely Planet guides make it out worse than it is, but I guess they're trying to warn people of the worst eventuality. Even from what we've seen so far Vietnam is changing rapidly. People that we've met who were hear even just 3 or 4 years ago say it's totally different from then. One small example is how the Motor cycle has replaced the bicycle as the favoured mode of transport. There's a massive amount of construction going on too, but the agriculture still remains a manual process. And hard bloody work at that.
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