Vietnam, where to begin? How about at the beginning, my trip into the country. So I leave Lao at 7pm, on a bus that is supposed to take 20 hours to get to Hanoi. There are about 15 westerners on this bus, and we all congregate towards the back. About half of us are going to Hanoi, the rest getting off somewhere along the way. We are all a little apprehensive about this journey, as there are many, many stories about the Vietnam-Laos busses, most of which are not very good (but just about all of them are going the other way.) so we get seated and ready to leave, there’s enough room for everyone who is traveling by themselves to have there own seat, and I settle myself into a nice sleeping position, and nod off (I hadn’t had much sleep the night before.) Then at the last moment, one last guy gets on, the only seats left are with us westerners, and what does he do, he comes all the way to the very back (I’m in the last seat) and sits next to the only person sleeping on the bus, making me get up. What a start to the journey. So I manage to sleep a little over the next few hours, we have a couple of rest stops, and I get to know a few of the other passengers. Then at around 2am, we arrive at the boarder, the drivers and conductor promptly get some things, and a sleeping bag, leave the bus, and go into a building. We’re here till the boarder opens at 6am. We manage to get a little sleep, the guy next to me moves to lie on top of the luggage. Then at six or so, they kind of let us know that it’s time to cross the boarder. And what a crossing. The building doesn’t have any electricity, at least this day, so they are checking our passports by candle light, and they the people here have no since of lines, it’s just shove forward and try and put your passport through the window, chaos. It takes a little while, but eventually we make it though, and then off the Vietnam side, and this is all about bureaucracy. I have to go to at least four different lines, giving small amounts of money to different people, ordered chaos. So we make it though, we are now in Vietnam, it’s now only six and a half hours after we arrived at the boarder. The rest of the trip was fine, though amazingly slow, and we arrive into Hanoi at about 7pm, 24 hours after leaving Vientiane, now what a way to spend a day.
So Hanoi, what a lovely city. Once we arrive I get a room with a Swiss guy I met on the bus, then we head out into the city to find ourselves some food. Now, as we walk into the city for the first time, we get to experience the amazing experience of crossing a street in Vietnam. It’s quite amazing, and you have to experience it to really understand it. But traffic never stops, and you just have to bravely walk out into the street, keep your pace constant, and walk across, the traffic moves around you. It feels like magic. It’s kind of scary, but also addictively thrilling. So anyway, were walking down the street to get some food, when I run into the guy I shared a room with in Luang Prabang, almost a month before. It turns out were staying at the same hotel, so we make plans to go out late, and now we find some food. So the food was good, we meet my friend and go out, have a few beers, catch up, etc. funny part is that when we head home, about 12:30, the streets are completely empty, it’s like a ghost town, I’ve never seen a big city like this, where just a couple of hours earlier the streets where packed. Now, the first order of business was logistics. There are two major excursions from Hanoi, before you head south, and I wanted to do both, and was trying to figure out the order. I had been told both were amazing. I also had to figure in when things were going to be open in Hanoi, like the body of Ho Chi Mihn. So I decided on going the trip to Ha Long Bay first, it’s a three day, two night trip, so I would be able to Ho when I got back. Ha long bay is an amazing place, with limestone caves, and hundreds of islands. It’s also cool up in this part of Vietnam, so it was cloudy and visibility wasn’t very good, I can’t imagine how this place would look when it was clear and sunny. So we went to a huge cave, and climbed a large look out our first day, before anchoring in a bay for the night. The food was very good onboard, all part of the package, sitting out on a boat, in a bay looking at the night, with a couple of beers was very nice. It was good to be by the ocean again, even if it was cold. The rest of the trip we went to Cat Ba Island, where we had a hotel, and went hiking around it. Then we went out for a kayak, in some amazing places. It was a nice trip, and we managed to get back around 4ish into Hanoi, on the third day. Then it was back to logistics for me. Vietnam is a very big country, with a lot to see and do, and I had to prioritize. I was with a heavey heart that I chose to skip going north to Sa Pa. I made this decision because I had spent a while in the north of Thailand, and though I knew it was different, there were other things that I wanted to spend more time doing while I was in the country, mostly the Delta. I made the decision to stay two more nights in Hanoi, and then head south. During this time I visited Ho’s body, went to the “Hanoi Hilton” prison, and just wondered the town. The sights were great but I think to two best parts about being there were 1. the street food, wow, and discovering Bia Hoi. Now for those of you who don’t know, Bia Hoi, means fresh beer, and is served a little sidewalk bars throughout the country. There is a wonderful corner in Hanoi, where there are at lease five Bia Hoi stands, and it you can find a seat, leads of fun. In Hanoi (it was different in Saigon,) it is served by the glass, for 2000 dong each. What that means is you can sit for two or three hours, drink eight glasses, and pay 1 USD. It’s also low alcohol content, so you don’t get very drunk, just presently intoxicated. I left Hanoi on a night bus (I hate night buses.) I was headed for Hue. Hue is the old imperial capital, and has some amazing tombs and a citadel. But the best part of Hue, was that the same day I arrived, my friend Claire, who was traveling up Vietnam, arrived that day as well. It was so good to see her, and we managed to hang out for two days. We saw the sights, rented moto’s and explored some tombs in the outlying area, and found a nice café and bar. We were all ready to leave after two days, as once you’ve done the few things there are to do, the rest of the city isn’t anything you want to stick around for, nothing like the next town Hoi An. Now this was an amazing place, and once you got over evenyone tring to sell you clothes, just a fun place to wonder around, and do nothing. This is the city of tailors, as there are thousands of them, and the place to buy tailed clothes, if you can find a good one, which is hard to know. I got two suites and four shirts made (so far they seem to be pretty good.) I met of with this guy Cameron, who I had met in Si Phon Don, Loas, and yet another Swiss guy, and we spent our evenings hanging out, playing a lot of pool. Now because the entire city of Hoi An is a UNESCO world heritage site, all the bars have to close by 11. And it’s enforced. But because of this, there are a few bars, about 4k outside of town, that stay open till 3, with free transportation to them, you just half to pay to get back. A couple of fun night out here. Spent one day renting moto’s and going to explore some old Cham ruins. I ended up staying here for five days, and had my first day of being sick, at lease it was when I had a room with sat TV. Next up was Nha Trang, and as it turned out, all my people from Hoi An were on my same but, and so we got a nice triple room, very cheap, nice. Nha Trang wasn’t that great a place, a nice enough beach, but the town itself was not a place you really wanted to hag out in. Spent on day renting moto’s and going out to monkey island, an island covered in monkey’s. We did find a good bar, it had a pool table and we befriended to owner/bartender. Spent the nights here before she closed up, and one night she joined us out, and taught us some Vietnamese card games. I spent only two nights here, though it seems longer, and I would have stayed longer, as there was cheap diving, but I had just got a email from my friend Justin, and he was going to be heading to Mui Ne, shortly, and I thought I would meet him. I got there in the afternoon, and he arrived late that night. It was good so see him again. He had met a couple of English girls on the bus so we had our social group. That next day we all rented motorbikes, and went into town. We explored the little of it there was, and then had lunch with an Israeli couple we had met. We hung out with then for a while, did a little hike. The next day we went to the dunes. This is the reason we had the bikes anyway (except that they are fun.) The dunes were amazing, a few miles inland from the ocean, there were the massive sand tunes, my a moderately sized lake. The thing to do was rent a piece fiberglass mat, and with it came a small child, and go to the dunes, then slide down the steep hill. It was great fun, and we spent hours here sliding and swimming. Then had a big night back at the hotel. Good fun, lovely place, good people, but we all had to get moving, and my next destination was Saigon.
I had a great time in Saigon. I love this town. It’s hard to say which place I liked better here or Hanoi, they were very different towns, and had different things going for them, but I maganged to stay longer here, for no real reason. My first day there I didn’t really do anything, just wondered around the town, did a couple errands, nothing special. But then that night I ran into a couple of guys I had met in Hoi An and Nha Trang. I had planed on doing the chu chi tunnels the next day, but when I ran into them, they had had this idea to go to a water park, and that sounded great, so the plan was set. This night, along with every subsequent night in Saigon was at the Bia Hoi stalls, and in Saigon, they sell it by he liter, very nice and cheap. So the following day, we met up, and headed off for a water park (Saigon has four.) This was a nice little adventure, as we went to the main bus mall, and tried to find our bus, we had many people tell us that the bus that went out there didn’t run anymore, but we found it, and then got to see a lot of Saigon not normally seen. The park was fun, though a little small. We did spend five hours here, and the last two hours, the park was nearly empty, so we got to just go and go, no lines, nice. That night, again at the bia hoi, we ended up hangin out with some local guys, and they showed us card games, and bought us peanuts. Lovely time. So the next day I went out the Chu Chi tunnels. I chose the tour that stopped at the ______ church, and got to see their mass. The church was really something, kind of a crazy fantasyland thing, much too bright. This religion combines Christian, Daoism, and ?. The mass was kind of boring, but the music was cool. Anyway, to the tunnels. They were cool. I know that these were the ones, re-dug for tourists, but still a cool thing to do, and I was the only person in my group to get in and go through all the tunnels, that was fun. Then back to Saigon, a nice day out. Now for the life of me, I don’t know how I spent the next few days, but I stayed in Saigon for another two days, and just kind of bummed around, and looked at the city. But I had to leave. And I had spent too much time here. My big plan was to have four or more days on my own in the delta, and now I only had two more nights before my visa expired. I had such ideas, and I really didn’t want to do the normal big tourist tour. I ended up finding an alternative tour, where you get to stay with a family for a night, and see there farm, before going to the big town, and floating markets etc. It was a little more, but I thought it would be nice, and it was a max of five people, so it wouldn’t be so intrusive. The only thing is that it left at 5:30 in the morning, god that sucked. Especially since I ended up staying out later then I had previously done in Saigon. But when I turned up, I found out that I was the only one on the tour, so I had my own private tour and guide, excellent, now the price was worth it. It was nice, and the family we stayed with was nice. I got to go into their orange orchard, which I’ve never seen one like this before, and then I got to try net fishing. And throwing those nets is hard then it looks. I also got to bike around the small village, and islands, and got the local market. It was nice. Then off to Can Tho. I had the evening free to wonder around. The next morning we did a tour of the floating market, and then cruised the canals in a small long-tail boat for a little while, stopping off to see a rice paper factory. Then I was rushed off to bus, and almost missed it, that was going to get me to the boarder town. As it turned out, then boats that went to Cambodia only left in the morning, and as I was arriving around 12:30, there were no more that day. But my visa expeired that day, so I had to leave. Luckily a guy in Can Tho had told me of another crossing, about 20-30 min from the town, that wasn’t in any guide book, so I hopped a moto, and went there. I was the only westerner there, and I was afraid that they were going to turn me back, but they let me though, and I made it to Cambodia.