10 guides x 1 question = 10 different answers

Hanoi came like a breath of fresh air. By the time we had arrived in Hanoi, we had taken an overnight bus two nights prior, walked around in 100 degree heat (in Yangon) for a full day, then slept overnight in the Bangkok airport. For the roughly 9-10 days we were in Northern Vietnam, it never rained, but it also never ceased to mist. Such weather doesn’t exist in Saigon. Anyways, when we first arrived, we were loving it. It’s amazing how after a certain amount of time with similar weather, you’ll always want the complete opposite. We had just come from 5 straight weeks of sun with temperatures ranging from hot to blazing and thought this cool misting weather was just the greatest thing on earth. It took us around 4 days to finally concede that cool misting weather isn’t the greatest thing on earth. Anyways, while we were waiting for my parents to arrive we went and had our only true Bia Hoi experience of Vietnam (beer brewed fresh daily @ 25 cents a glass). I had had a Bia Hoi here and there in Danang and Hoi An, but I really wanted to leave a lasting impression on my palette. I think we must’ve met the four nicest Vietnamese people in Hanoi that night because they all seemed to disappear after that. I think the only lasting impression the Bia Hoi left was on my slightly degraded previous blog post due to the slightly degraded state of my mind following the Bia Hoi “incident.” You know that 70/30 sightseeing/interacting ratio I posited last blog post, well with enough booze I think you can temporarily flip that ratio. Because, looking back, did we really talk about anything? I think the short answer, is no. But during my double digit bout with Bia Hoi I kept telling Libby that this was what it was all about. What was what all about? Not really sure. Only real takeaway was that I kept smoking these opium style water pipes filled with tobacco and needless to say I ended my night with a late-night date with the toilet since I don’t smoke tobacco.

The next day, besides being filled with struggles, was spent writing the blog at Café Nola. I’d recommend Café Nola to anyone visiting Hanoi. Nice location in the Old Quarter and excellent atmosphere (also there’s the name).  Libby spent her day hopping public buses to and from the Museum of Ethnology.  That night, the parents finally arrived. We started the day early the next morning with a walking (+ taxi) tour of the city. Having a guide was great for the sole reason that it’s quite nice to be taken around everywhere and not worry about directions/transportation. Other than that, it’s tough trying to be buddy buddy with people you’re A) hardly know B) paying C) will never see again. Everyone wants something different out of their guide, so of course it’s going to be impossible for them to perfectly meet your needs unless they have uncanny perception. So they generally seem to resort to the basest levels of humor. They generally know little to nothing but seem to be experts at pointing out natural features that are shaped like various animals. Speaking of expertise, their real specialty is the misdirection. This is of course greatly aided by the language barrier as most of us will simply think they misunderstood us, but no. They are just amazing at going off on a tangent and then trying to hook us with some other interesting fact (they will never in fact tell you they don’t know, which is a reasonable answer). I’m still mad he couldn’t tell me who sculpted the nice bronze statue of Uncle Ho smoking a cigarette and what type of wood his house was made out of (Uncle Ho=Ho Chi Minh). Anyways, super proud of Libby when we were at some Pagoda or other with a statue of the first King of Vietnam (circa 13^th century) and she asks our guide with the straightest face, “so is he still alive?” She really knocked it out of the park when we then proceeded to look at a purportedly thousand year old turtle and she asks him something like, “so do they put him back in the lake at night?” Mark Twain would’ve been proud. Hanoi as a whole was a great city for visiting. The old quarter has a tight neighbor hoody feel to it that is lacking in Saigon. The lake and its surroundings has an aesthetic beauty to it that Saigon also lacks. My first reaction was that Hanoi is a better city to visit and Saigon a better city to live, but after being back in Saigon for a few days I can’t be totally certain. You do only need two days to properly see the city, and you most certainly can skip the ethnology museum.

After those two days, we were off to Sapa on the overnight train. My first overnight train! Great ride, another boost in my appreciation for trains. Sapa ended up being my favorite spot in Vietnam, hands down. It had a mountain town vibe to it that you can’t get anywhere else in Vietnam (maybe Southeast Asia?). Yes, the food can’t compete with places like Danang or Hue, but everything else is spectacular. I’m saying this even with mostly horrific weather. I had no expectations whatsoever with regards to the ethnic minorities after our disappointing encounters in Burma, and Vietnam already being such an established tourist destination. But wow! Wearing their traditional clothes makes all the difference. That and they have a slightly different facial structure. Is that superficial (o well). There is the one (and sometimes major) downside of having Black Hmong and Red Zhao ladies following for, I kid you not, multiple kilometers in very (very) savvy attempts to sell you their woven wares. Part of the reason is my parents practically have a bull’s eye on their heads when it comes to these ladies. They know that Libby and I are too young and thus poor to really buy anything and the older people are too crotchety and experienced to give in to their mix of persistence and guilt-tripping so they really hone in on the middle zone like sharks on a bleeding seal. And it works, and at the end of the day my parents can write off that expense in their heads in less than a minute while it makes a world of difference to these ladies and could quite potentially keep fueling their way of life which is important. Because once these people stop wearing their traditional clothes than they stop being different and then unfortunately stop being interesting as sad as that sounds (Burma “jaded” me slightly with Ethnic Minority tribes/villages).  Anyways, we did the obligatory overnight trek/homestay. And phuc me! I’d actually recommend it! Shame on me. That being said, did we actually have any genuine or interesting interactions/conversations with the family, hardly. And really this homestay had the mother of all attractions for me. Herbal medicine baths in slightly oversized whiskey barrel things. I mean, they could have probably stuck me in the dirt and fed me dog, and I probably would still come back for those damn baths. Heaven on earth. They boil water with a combination of mountain herbs and then put the water in the bath and you jump in to like 110-115 degree water. I’m bringing it back to the states, mark my words. For some reason it made me feel like I was in 1850’s China. Speaking of which, I realize some of my imaginative connections make little to no sense. Why does that bath remind me of 1850’s China, I have no effing clue? It really hit home when I met some Vietnam vets on a Mekong tour and asked them if there were any vets that just stayed behind and lived in Vietnam forever, and I realized, why is that such a popular myth/allure in my mind? Can’t say for sure, must be my system 1 working too much.

Anyways, the baths in combination with an excellent home cooked meal over a wood burning hearth/stove type contraption is somehow enough to recommend the homestay. Both days of our trekking, visibility was limited to anywhere from around 2-20 meters which was obviously a huge bummer. And on the third and last day in Sapa the sun came out! It would have been tragic if we would have never actually seen Sapa which was a very very real possibility. On the third day after the nice trekking, we hired motorbikes for a motorbike tour. It was awesome, maybe my favorite day in Vietnam. We got to see all the extraordinary vistas and panoramas over the terraced rice paddies.  We were finally able to see all the pictures you would see on postcards and google. We took the road from Sapa to Ban Ho which was just amazing. There used to be hot springs in Ban Ho which was going to really just send this day into the stratosphere only to find out the GOVERNMENT BUILT A HYDROELECTRIC BUILDING OVER THE SPRINGS DESTROYING THE HOT SPRINGS. Really I think that someone should go to jail over that, maybe shot. An environmental catastrophe of the first order. What’s more important than a hot spring? Clean Energy? NO, nothing is more important than hot springs, NOTHINGGGGGGGGGGGGG. Anyways, take a look at the pictures below.

After that brilliant day in Sapa we were off to Halong Bay. I’ve now been to the two premier karst formation locations in northern Palawan and Halong Bay. Halong Bay is prettier. There are more karst Islands/Islets than in Palawan, and they are much smaller and thus add more depth, more lines to the landscape. Also you go through more straits and areas where you get the feeling that you are surrounded by the formations. The white sandy, palm lined beaches are missing in Halong bay and the water color also can’t compete with Palawan. That being said, Halong Bay is a must-see destination. Yeah the trash, and the multitude of other tourist boats certainly put a damper on the whole experience, but it’s something you have to do but are happy to have it checked off the list by the end. The boat is tolerable, quaint maybe? Staying on Cat Ba Island was the highlight of Halong Bay. The main reason being you have to go off the beaten path (defined tour boat routes) to get there. We didn’t have enough time to explore the island but it’s probably extremely nice as well.

After Halong Bay, we split off from the parents. They headed to Siem Reap (Angkor Watt) and we headed down to Central Vietnam to check off our last major sight in Vietnam-Hue. In retrospect, we should have just gone and seen Angkor Watt for a second time, but we never would have known that until we went and saw Hue. We flew into Danang so we could do the motorbike ride from Danang to Hue which had gotten numerous recommendations. You hug the coast and go over a huge mountain pass. Admittedly, that part of the trip was epic, unfortunately no one ever told us that the beautiful mountain pass that skips the highway was only 35 km long and there’s still 65 km to Hue along the two-lane highway with many 18-wheelers and no shoulders due to construction. That part of the trip was stressful. I love motorbikes and motorbike trips, but I hate motorbike trips that involve trucks. For obvious reasons there’s nothing fun about being a yard or two away from something that can literally crush you. So, I would recommend that 35 km ride and then stopping at some resort with bungalows over the water that was advertised right after the mountain pass finished. But, we were heading on to Hue. Hue, apart from the imperial city is like any other midsized or any sized Vietnamese city (ie nothing special). The food was some of the best if not the best we had in Vietnam. But making a trip to the city solely for the food is iffy. Anyways, one of our fb friends summed it up quite nicely when he said the imperial city was like going to an amusement park without any rides. The vast majority of the city was obliterated by American bombs so it’s mostly a skeleton of its former self with lots of replicas being built (zzzzz). The tombs were a bit better, located at various points outside of the city. It gives you a chance to cruise around the rolling countryside of central Vietnam which is very very beautiful. The tombs themselves mostly hover around the average range minus one which was spectacular (Khai Dinh). Beautiful and also unique murals adorn the entire ceiling and is definitely worth visiting. But again, is delicious food and a single tomb worth a three hour motorbike from Danang? Probably, but travelling with my parents was actually a shocking amount of fun so it was nice to get back to them in Saigon. One last note on the motorbike, during the first 65 km gauntlet I kept it at a “below” catastrophic speed which increased my time in the actual gauntlet. The second time I opted for the minimal time in the gauntlet. The latter option was much preferable and an interesting life lesson.

We met my parents again in Saigon for the last 2.5 day leg in Saigon. 2.5 days in Saigon is the perfect amount of time if you want to see everything stacked on top of each other. We were able to do pretty much all of our very favorite things in those two days which made for a spectacular ending to the trip. We started out splitting our favorite kebobs and then splitting our favorite Pho. Then we went and had a coffee at Khanh Casa and watched the rush hour traffic (a favorite pastime of my father). Then we went to Chill Sky Bar for evening cocktails. After that, we stopped and had an appetizer of our favorite Sushi roll, the Mexicali, at Ichiban before heading to our favorite street food restaurant. After dinner, we headed to the Jazz Club to listen to Jazz/Vietnamese fusion at Sax n Art. That rounded off day 1. Day two took us to our favorite park in District 3, then a quick look at the Notre Dame Cathedral and the post office. Than we had lunch at our favorite lunch street food location with the director of Language Corps where we did our TEFL training. After that we took the obligatory trip to War Remnants Museum . Afterwards my mother and I got smoothies and coffees at La Rotunde (Passion Fruit Peach smoothie) and Libby took her obligatory nap. We headed across the river to district two and had cocktails on the river at the Deck (yes the deck is a deck on the Saigon River). Then we walked down the street for the pinnacle of eating in Saigon. 7 courses at Trois Gourmands. The sheer contrast of eating streetfood on little tikes plastic stools and then having a 5-star meal is one of my favorite things about Saigon. Trois Gourmands lasted a very impressive 3.5 hours and remains at the very top of my restaurant experiences. The only problem with a meal of that magnitude is that by the end of the meal you really just want to tip over out of your chair and crawl into the fetal position. There certainly are worse problems in life. We rounded out Saigon with shopping in the morning and a 3 hour spa experience at Cat Moc in the afternoon. Body scrub, massage, facial, foot treatment. Yup, that’s what it’s all about. Finished with coffee at La Fenetre Soleil, Hue style streetfood and one last smoothie to watch the traffic go by. Really, we really had Saigon dialed into max. Not sure if it’s really possible to go harder in the paint than that. Obviously, Libby was gushing about how much this made her miss Saigon, and I had to remind her that we could maybe do 1 of those 10 favorite things we just did per week. And I had to remind myself, I wasn’t teaching!!! It was sad to see the parentals go. Apart from the many steps up from our Backpacker travelling we were used to, it was just really nice to double the group size. It really helps increase the energy. Also, it was nice to make less decisions and just go with the flow for a while. Although the guides helped a lot with that, just having 4 people’s input instead of 2 means you’re going to have a lot less say in the decisions, which is simply a nice change in your travelling routine.

After the parentals left we knocked off the last item on Libby’s Vietnam list-The Mekong Delta. More like the dirty delta. I’d say NOT worth seeing. If like myself, the “delta” brings to mind narrow canals, passageways, thick jungle and rice paddy’s, keep it that way. Do yourself a favor and don’t let the actual Delta ruin that romanticized vision in your head. The picturesque scenes in the tour we went on were so small and compact that they could have been recreated in a Disneyland exhibit. Whether or not it gets better depends on how deep you want to get into the jungle, which risks greater reward or greater disappointment. Your choice. Libby appended pictures to the last two posts and I actually did the pictures this post, so you can go ahead and compare us. Also, will be better with pictures in future posts. As I write this, I’m back in my favorite coffee shop and the ease of simply living abroad versus travelling abroad sort of sucks you back in, so it’s good we’re off to Malaysia this evening and the next leg of our trip. Malaysia, the Grand Prix and the much vaunted Indonesia is next.