Day 29 - Hoi An and Cam Kim, Vietnam

Day 29 – Hers

The guidebook said that Hoi An was most pleasant if you managed to get behind its tourist resort facade – so today we determined to do just that.  We set off straight after breakfast to walk the 4km to the beach, shunning boat tours and guides – we even decided not to hire bicycles so that we could focus on the scenery and local life around us.  We followed the main road out of town to the beach – past hotels, restaurants and spa resorts, but also rural fish farms and workshops: a blacksmith’s, a carpenter’s, a brick works and many little small holdings.  People with rice paddies dried their rice on the pavements in front of their houses, masseuses sprinkled blossom in front of theirs, shopkeepers lit sticks of incense at places where people had died on the roads – honouring them brings good luck, Vinh had told us - temples gonged the faithful to prayer and morning session school children played in the gated yard.

The beach was spectacular – set within a small resort village with a large bike park and a colourful array of shops.  Rows of coconut palms shaded the village side of the beach – then soft, white, sand stretched out to the sea.  The hazy islands on the horizon and a few picturesque fishing boats – plus a couple of jet skis - completed the scene. 

The beach vendors were just setting up for the day when we arrived.  They planted forests of incense amongst the palms and out onto the beach – presumably wishing for good luck in their day’s sales.  One vendor came over to us and spoke with us for about 10 minutes, trying to get us to buy fridge magnets, bookmarks, plastic fans or silk purses.  Apparently it is important to get a sale from your first customer of the day – it ensures your luck, Vinh told us – but unfortunately for our vendor, we cannot purchase anything much now as we will still have to carry it for 3 months...

The sea was glorious – clear, clean, warm – with just enough swell to know it was the ocean and not a saltwater swimming pool. I swam out a bit and then along the shore, playing ‘spot the sandals’ on the way back.  A fantastic place for a beach holiday – but just a short break for us in our adventures.  We strolled the side roads coming back – and found a terrific local market (no Western faces here...) where we bought some provisions for lunch.  We returned to the hotel for lunch and a swim in the pool.

 

Day 29 – His.

To be honest Hoi An isn’t the most exciting of places. If you don’t like beaches, wandering around buying things and searching for a good place to have dinner you are pretty much stuffed. However, there is one cool thing to do. By the main area for tour boats there is a section for the local ferries. It’s pretty easy to recognise. It’s the bit of the dock where people are pushing motorbikes onto a boat. All you have to do is jump on the boat and stand there. I’m not being lyrical here – you literally have to jump.  After a bit, when the boat is scarily overloaded, it will set off and someone will tap you on the shoulder and ask for money. The money he is asking for is the fare. You will pay more than the locals but expect it to be around 10,000 VDN. Then fifteen minutes later you dock at the other side. This is what we did. It turns out the other side is a small island called Cam Kim – though I prefer kit kat – it’s easier to remember. Kit Kat is only 15 minutes from the main town but a century away in time. The island is a commune and is the centre for artisan woodcarving. Just walking around will show you how traditional houses are made, how people live, and the work they do. Mostly people keep chickens and tap out amazing carvings on their doorsteps while occasionally looking up and shouting hello if they see you. It truly is a wander through a lost Vietnam. The return journey was much easier – after all we knew what we doing then. The view from the boat as we approached the town was magical and it is likely that view hasn’t changed much in hundreds of years.

After getting off the boat we went to the folklore museum which is only a few doors down from the ferry dock. The museum is better housed than it is displayed. That is to say the exhibits are a little dusty and tired but the building they are in is worth a look in itself as a traditional waterfront building.  Being in a wet season area Hoi An is subject to periodic flooding. On some of the buildings are flood marks. They are a red line marked on the wall with a date. The 2009 line was taller than me though 2011 only came just above my knees.

At the museum, we were persuaded to try the ‘Art Tea’ – a special blend of tea made with water from a well believed to have properties of purification and longevity.  The attendant – in traditional dress – boiled the water on a small earthenware charcoal-fired stove and served us our tea in tiny cups from a beautiful ceramic teapot, accompanied by sugar-coated ginger and coconut.  It was very refreshing.  We are beginning to buy into the benefits of hot drinks in hot weather.  We could also have had a go at making the local pottery – but decided to watch another tourist making a complete hash of it instead.

An interesting thing we saw on the way to Hoi An was a truckload of dogs. They were all barking and wagging their tails. They looked like a red haired Labradors. Vinh said they were farm dogs which meant they were for eating. I was sort of reminded of Cruella DeVille. But then why not dogs? After all we eat sheep. But all those wagging tails. There was something sad about it. I wonder if we can find a restaurant that serves dog in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City).

After we got back we went for a swim. This is becoming something of a habit – but given the climate and the fact we had been walking since early morning – it was something of a necessity. It is strange how the sun tires one so. So after a swim and dinner I think we are just going to chill out – we move on tomorrow.

Day 28 - Hoi An, Vietnam

Day 28 – His.

Breakfast was early this morning. Mostly because we had a 4 hour journey by bus to Hoi An. Hoi An is THE Vietnamese seaside town and every bit as recognisable as a holiday seaside town as Blackpool. The main difference being the 40 degree heat, 80% humidity and preponderance of Aussies as opposed to Brits.

The Bus route took us through some absolutely stunning countryside past mountains, forests and coastlines. The beaches were glorious stretches of unbroken sand that the South China Sea could play with endlessly. We stopped off at one beach for a while so we could walk the sands and paddle in the ocean for a while before we continued onto Da Nang.

During the Vietnam War, the city was home to a major air base that was used by both the South Vietnamese and United States air forces. The base was considered one of the world's busiest airports during the war, reaching an average of 2,595 air traffic operations daily, more than any airport in the world at that time. The final U.S. ground combat operations in Vietnam ceased on 13 August 1972, when they stood down in Da Nang.

In order to get there, we had to pass through the Hai Van Pass. The Hải Vân Pass ( it means "ocean cloud pass" and is supposed to be misty most of the time), is an approximately 21 km long mountain pass on National Road 1A in Vietnam. It goes across a spur of the larger Annamite Range that juts into the South China Sea, on the border of two Provinces, near Bach Ma National Park. Historically, the pass was a physical division between the kingdoms of Champa and Dai Viet. Long used as a lookout for enemy troops it is littered with pillboxes and installations used to protect this vital link between north and south. It’s about 350 meters high, and often is shrouded in mist. On a clear day, however, you can see northwards, to the Lang Co peninsula; and south, to the city of Da Nang. We were lucky and had a clear day. The view was spectacular and we walked up to the watch towers and pill boxes to see what the soldiers had seen and it was commanding.

From there we bypassed Da Nang itself and drove onto Hoi An. Hoi An is a town of around 120,000 inhabitants and is recognized as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The Old Quarter is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a South-East Asian trading port dating from the 15th to the 19th century. Its buildings and street plan reflect the influences, both indigenous and foreign, of its heritage.

 The city possessed the largest harbour in Southeast Asia in the 1st century and was known as Lâm Ấp Phố (Champa City). Between the seventh and 10th centuries, the Cham (people of Champa) controlled the strategic spice trade and with this came tremendous wealth. The former harbour town of the Cham at the estuary of the Thu Bon River was an important Vietnamese trading centre in the 16th and 17th centuries, where Chinese from various provinces as well as Japanese, Dutch and Indians settled. During this period of the China trade, the town was called Hai Pho (Seaside Town) in Vietnamese.  Originally, Hai Pho was a divided town with the Japanese settlement across the "Japanese Bridge" (16th-17th century). The bridge is a unique covered structure built by the Japanese, the only known covered bridge with a Buddhist pagoda attached to one side – and quite beautiful.  On arrival in Hoi an, we decamped to our hotel and spent two hours walking around seeing the sights.

The weather was stupidly hot and following the previous day’s 6 hour forced march through Hue, Peter collapsed for a day of rest in his room and Heidi and Kendal (who I found out is called Candle or Can Do by the locals – i Like Can do and i resolve to call her this from now on – she is a very can do type of person!) decided to extend their lunch for more than the half hour they were allotted. So it was only Patti and I who set off with Vinh to explore the town.

Two hours of temples, medieval merchants’ houses and custom tailor shops later, we returned to the hotel and fell into the pool for a swim to wash the sweat and grime away. It was glorious.

 

Day 28 – Hers

Hoi An is a pretty town, in a preserved, touristy kind of way.  It is similar to ZhouZhuang in China in that it comprises medieval-aged buildings lining a river, lit by lanterns at night – and that its raison d’etre is a tourist resort.  It has the advantage, though, of reportedly spectacular beaches nearby that we’ll explore tomorrow.  The main attractions for tourists (other than the beaches) are custom tailoring in a day, massages, cooking lessons, boat rides, cycle hire, the evening lantern-lit market and hundreds of bars and restaurants.  It has far fewer motorbikes than the other towns and cities we have visited – and we are less of a mark as there are far more (mainly Australian) Western tourists – making it far more pleasant to stroll through the streets.

After a wonderfully refreshing swim, we went to the hotel bar for our ‘welcome’ drink – a fruit juice and rum concoction that made us quite giggly and then out to dinner at a restaurant near our hotel.  It was Indian food – deliciously spicy – served by a young woman with amazingly good English.  She said that she had learned at school but has practised with the tourists for 10 years – She told us about Vietnamese weddings – only money is given to the couple; she thought the idea of gifts was silly because the couple might want to set up a business and can’t do that with gifts – and that many Vietnamese people are afraid of the alleged end of the world forecast for 21^st December but that she doesn’t believe it will happen.

We walked to the night market and watched tourists launch floating candles into the river and vendors demonstrate colourful glow-in-the-dark toys under the gentle red and yellow of the hundreds of lanterns.  We politely refused massages and tailoring and ‘happy hour’ at the various market stalls and camera shops – it seems they have the idea here that ‘happy hour’ means ‘bargain’ – many of the shops advertise ‘happy hour’ all day – and strolled back to the hotel, contemplating a late night swim, but deciding instead to have coffee in the garden and head off to bed.

 

Day 27 - Hue, Vietnam

Day 27 – Hers.

I awoke early – to the sound of the motorbikes whizzing Hue residents to work.  I stepped onto the balcony and watched a young girl in a house opposite our hotel place incense in her family altar, bowing her head with hands together three times – and a man in another house tend to his third floor garden.  The hotel breakfast catered for Western tourists with eggs, bacon and toast (using the very sweet bread they use here) but I was enticed this morning by the incredible array of Vietnamese delicacies – wafer-thin rice ‘pancakes’ and plump steamed dumplings filled with beef, 3 types of spring rolls, home-made yoghurt, soups, noodles, steamed vegetables, dragon fruit, watermelon, passion fruit, fried rice...it went on and on. 

Our fellow travellers appeared around 7:45 and we were all breakfasted and in the lobby to meet Vinh at the appointed 8:30 for a 6 hour tour of the main sights of Hue.  Hue was the imperial city of the Nguyen dynasty – 13 kings from 1802-1945, mainly puppets of the French colonial administration.  The citadel, housing the ‘Imperial City’ and ‘Forbidden City’, was built between 1802 and 1832. It was the home to the king, his concubines and children, eunuchs and the mandarins – local officials – when they were at court.  There were also two sections for the French colonial officials.  Vinh explained the history and many stories surrounding the symbols, temples and statues in the grounds – pointing out original features and those reconstructed after the demolition of much of the area during the TET offensive and several natural disasters.  He showed us the nine 10-ton bronze cannons – 5 representing the 5 elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth) and 4 representing the seasons – that the French had moved because they feared shots from their original positions would reach the French quarter of the city.  He explained the symbology of the colours and designs on the clothing and flags of the court.  He walked us through courtyards and temples, past walls with 45 year-old bullet holes and symbols of longevity made of blue and white ceramic pieces, typical of the Nguyen era.  Two hours later, our heads bursting with information, we headed off to the Thien Mu temple with its tall pagoda overlooking the Perfume River  -  the river that separated the citadel from the people.

Thien Mu is a beautiful temple and a working monastery.  We watched about 30 monks undertake their 11:00 prayers – alongside quite a number of other Vietnamese and Western visitors, some of the Western visitors embarrassing us with their inappropriate dress and disrespectful behaviour in a holy place.  The golden-robed monks circled the altar three times chanting melodiously, then after a gong sounded, listened while the head monk prayed a solo in front of the altar.  We also saw the working kitchen of the monastery – feeding a large number of children, some with shaven heads.  Vinh told us that if a couple finds it difficult to conceive a child, they come to the temple to pray.  If they then have a child, that child is seen as a child of the temple and must go to live at the temple from age 6-18.  If a child intends to stay at the monastery after that – to become a monk – his or her head is shaved.  Children who plan to return to their villages at 18 keep their long hair.

From the temple, we boarded a dragon boat and cruised back along the Perfume River to the harbour.  We climbed back into the minibus – filling our water bottles for the third time this morning -  and headed off to the tombs of the Nguyen kings.

There are 10 royal tomb complexes in the area, each set out like a mini-citadel to ensure a comfortable afterlife – only 4 of the tombs are very large because the French preferred the kings to come to the throne aged 10 or 12 and rule only a couple of years, so most kings did not have time to complete large works. The largest complex – and the one we visited – is Tu Doc. Whilst he was alive, the king used his tomb complex as a retreat, visiting to relax and write poetry.  When he died, 70 identical sarcophagi were buried in the surrounding woodland to ensure his body was never dug up and desecrated – and all those involved in the arrangements were killed.  To this day, no one knows where he is actually buried – the sarcophagus on show is one of the 69 decoys.  There is also a tomb for the queen – the queen was the king’s mother, not his wife – and temples to his concubines who had to live within the temple complex once he had passed away. (This is better than the fate of the Chinese concubines who were buried alive with the dead emperor....)

Accompanied by the chirps of birds and buzz of insects, we followed paths through gardens and arches, past ponds and crumbling walls decorated with symbols of the Nguyen dynasty, over ornamental bridges and under banyan trees – the whole thing looking like the setting for the King Louis scene in Disney’s Jungle Book. 

By this time, we had been exploring sights and listening to Vinh’s explanations for 6 hours in draining heat and humidity.  He asked us if we wanted to go further to see one last temple within the complex, but none of us felt that we could take any more in.  We climbed gratefully back into the minibus and returned to the hotel for a shower, some lunch and a swim.

 

 Day 27 – His

As Patti mentioned the ancient Vietnamese have a curious conception of elements. According to them, there are only 5 (metal, wood, water, fire and earth). This contrasts with the ancient western concept of 4 elements (earth, wind, fire and water) so we asked Vinh about this. His explanation was that you couldn’t see air therefore as far as he was concerned it didn’t exist. I liked this idea so I tested it. I tried hiding behind several things to see if I ceased to exist. But it didn’t work – which some might say was not a good thing.

The day was scorching and we all sloped along panting like dogs until we got back to the hotel. About the only thing we could all think about was getting into the air conditioning and the pool for a little relief. The pool was great but as we were swimming backwards and forwards a storm hit. We are, apparently, in the rainy season but we have yet to have had any real evidence of this – well, until today. The rain lashed down. The lightening was fearful and the thunder rolled mercilessly across the sky. I stayed in the pool and let it rain. Patti tells me you shouldn’t be in a pool in a thunderstorm – another one of those old wives’ tales that doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. At least I was fine despite the storm. It was pretty surreal to swim in such a storm so I sat on the side and let it rain on me – after all how much wetter could I get? After a while we went in because, to be honest, the rain was coming down so hard it stung. There is one thing the rain managed to do. It emptied the streets. The only motorbikes around were a few brave souls bent double trying to get where they were going and totally resigned to be soaked. It was very odd to see.

After drying ourselves out, we walked down to the night market by the river for dinner which we had in a small roadside cafe with little plastic chairs set on the pavement. It was spicy, filling and totally unrecognisable. Whenever we go off for a dinner by ourselves I can never really tell what it is that we are eating – although I know one thing we had contained eggs. Patti and I are blessed with cast iron stomachs so we have no real fear of the various ‘meats’ and sanitary conditions that would curl the hair of the average westerner and we are happy to try anything once – this attitude has led me to spitting out a few things almost immediately, which makes the locals laugh – but then, my attitude is if you haven’t been ripped off, had a stomach bug or been laughed at by the locals then you haven’t travelled.

Anyway, we have – to date – survived our culinary experiments and despite the over abundance of coriander and greenery, it was pretty good and we returned to the hotel to pack for the journey to Hoi An early in the morning.

Day 26 - Hue, Vietnam

Day 26 – His.

The train was surprising comfortable except for the occasions the train company decided to add or take away carriages. They did this randomly and with no warning so several times in the night the train would be violently rocked backwards and forwards. So violently that I could have sworn I was going to be tipped out of the bunk. Which wouldn’t have been much fun as I was on the top bunk. After a while I decided it would be far more upsetting if the train were to lurch violently from side to side as this would we mean we were derailing. Thankfully there was no way this could have happened as I think we didn’t go more than 30 miles an hour for most of the journey.

We all pretty much got up at 7. There is an unspoken communal agreement to get up at 7 on most sleeper trains it would seem. At least prior to 7 everyone tip toes around but after 7 they thump about selling things for breakfast.

This journey had a surreal gothic air to it. When Patti got up to brush her teeth and wash she pulled open the door and a Vietnamese breakfast vendor popped up like a jack-in-the-box and yelled ‘Soup. Soup.’ Into her face. The man looked like a half mad skeleton; bone thin, wild white hair and the kind of staring eyes you last saw in a Jack Nicholson movie as he was clutching an axe. Patti, bless her, kept her composure, hurriedly shook her head and pushed past him. He went off mumbling something to wait for the next tourist to open a door – maybe this was his hobby – I didn’t see any soup.

The train were on was due in at 11 in the morning so we had a few hours to kill which we did by reading and chatting. It turns out Heidi’s last name is Frank.

‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Is that like Anne Frank?’

But Heidi told us that her great grandfather had changed it when he came to America and it used to be Frankenstein.

How lucky is that – we have spent the night on a gothic horror night train with Frankenstein’s great granddaughter. Heidi is an excellent character if only a little gullible. She insists the fantasy world in the book  ‘Princess Bride’ is real and has spent the last few years hoping to climb the cliffs of insanity. I don’t know if i have the heart to disabuse her.

The train arrived on time despite dire warning from Vinh to the contrary and an awaiting minibus escorted us to our hotel. We have a free day today and so we went for a walk around the town. Hue is the old capital and is small (only 300,000 people live here) so the walk didn’t take long. It is right in the middle of the DMZ and suffered terribly in the war. On the train ride here – along with buffalos in paddy fields and people ploughing with stick ploughs – we saw a few old tanks on concrete plinths as memorials. The railroad track passed a lot of graveyards with fairly ornate tombs. Vinh tells us that the people believe the size of their tomb is a mark of how well they will be respected when they are dead. People are strange.

Our walk into town was constantly attended by the cyclo riders. A cyclo is a kind of bicycle rickshaw and the people who ride them are not ones for taking no for an answer. It can be a bit grating. However, they speak quite quietly and i find yelling at them ‘What? What? Speak up man!’ is a bit disconcerting for them. As is saying – ‘My God you are right! That is an incredibly reasonable price.’ Then saying no thank you seems to put them off. But i have only just begun to try this – so I need to experiment more.

The Hotel has a pool! This is better news than it may seem at first. Mostly because it is so baking hot here that just standing up get you sticky with sweat – I am reminded of China again. I hope Patti realises this counts as her hot holiday.

Tonight we are to go to dinner at a local family’s place. They are friends of Vinh and they have invited us all for dinner – it should be fun – well at least interesting.

 

Day 26 – Hers.

The meal with the Vietnamese family was delicious and very interesting.  We were greeted by the 92-year-old grandmother of the family.  We sat in the ornate chairs of the main reception room – no children allowed – while Vinh introduced us and explained the layout of the house and the importance of the two altars: one to the ‘Mother Goddess’ and the other to the ancestors.  The central section of the house was flanked by sections for the families of each of Grandma’s children who still live in Vietnam.  Two of Grandma’s children had to emigrate after the ‘American War’ because they had fought with the US for the south.  Hue was the location of the infamous TET offensive – North Vietnamese soldiers had hidden in the ancient citadel.  The citadel and surrounding town were completely destroyed by bombing – the residents of Hue, including Grandma and her young family, ran for the hills – stepping over the dead bodies of their neighbours as they ran. Vinh told us earnestly that the Vietnamese do not dwell on the war – that when Vietnam opened its doors to tourists and émigrés after twenty years of rebuilding, it was ready to forget all the wars of its past and use tourism to its beautiful country as a way to develop.

Grandma demonstrated her oral hygiene routine to us.  Traditionally, after a Vietnamese woman had married, she daily chewed a concoction of acorn, lamb fat and leaves; this freshened her breath and strengthened but blackened her teeth.  The sign of a married woman was therefore black teeth – it was a way to let men know who was already taken – to make a married woman unattractive to other men.  Modern Vietnamese women are allowed to just wear a ring......

We saw the family’s kitchen – two gas burners, work surface, a stepped wooden table and another altar to the ‘Kitchen god’.  The kitchen god keeps an eye on the happiness of the home (Is a meal cooked for everyone every day, keeping the heart of the home warm?) and is believed to report on the family in the week before the new year.  Based on this ‘report’, families will have good or bad luck for the following year.

We sat at a table in Grandma’s son’s house.  It was also a shop, open to the street and locals came in intermittently to buy a coke or the local beer.  Conversation was lively, Heidi redeeming herself for her earlier gullibility by scoring knowledge points throughout the meal and the young grandson running around, taking photos and pretending to be Spiderman.

I lost track of the courses – there were seven or eight of them, beginning with a delicious pumpkin, peanut and coconut soup (that I might try to make at home) and spectacularly light spring rolls, through various dishes of meats and vegetables with rice, finishing with another soup and then pineapple you were to dip in salt.

We took a taxi back to the hotel – we were so full, walking would have been difficult – and went up to the bar on the hotel’s top floor to gaze out at the lights of the city below.  We filled our water bottles from the large supply Vinh had arranged and retired to bed, sound asleep well before 11.

Day 25 Halong Bay and Hanoi, Vietnam

Day 25 – Hers

We awoke to the gentle swaying of the boat at its mooring  in beautiful Halong Bay and went up on deck up to watch the changing colours of the sea and islands as the sun burned off the early morning haze.  Our fellow passengers joined us at around 7:30 for breakfast in the main cabin at 8:00.  There was a little consternation amongst a few of our fellow passengers that the ensuite facilities were wet rooms and the showers sprayed everything.  We had got used to this idea in China – I just use one of the towels to dry a path to the basin and toilet and don’t worry about it too much.

It was about an hour’s sail back to the harbour after breakfast.  We sat on deck, reading, chatting and watching the local fisherman at work – mostly from small sampans – but also one large trawler – until we were asked by Vinh to go into the cabin ‘for security’ as we docked.

The 3 ½ hour bus ride back to Hanoi was broken by a stop at a craft shop and restaurant.  It was too early for lunch so I decided to try a local ice cream.  The flavour on the tub said ‘green rice flake and milk’ – I can’t really describe its flavour – the ‘flakes’ were some kind of nut and the green swirls didn’t  taste like rice – but I’m not sure what they did taste like. It was delicious, though – I may seek it out again.

Entering into Hanoi city, we passed the 7 km long mosaic, created for the 1000^th anniversary of the city.  It was beautiful – different sections done differently, perhaps by different community groups (I must ask Vinh.) in different styles and designs – some telling stories.  We spent the afternoon wandering around parts of the city we had missed on the first day – dodging the inevitable motorbikes -  and trying out some of the street food: the ‘famous’ Hanoi baguettes, spicy spring rolls, savoury pastries filled with meat and sweet ‘doughnuts’ filled with custard or pineapple.  We saw several couples having their wedding photos taken by the lake and the red bridge to the island temple.  We bought drinks from a street cafe and then waited for the rest of our group outside the Water Puppet Theatre for the early evening show.

The water puppets are peculiarly Vietnamese.  They originated in the rice paddies – and, apparently, there are still only three places in the world to see them – all in Vietnam.  To traditional music, the puppets (which are complicated marionettes with their strings attached to poles under water) dance, splash and act out stories of the traditions of the Vietnamese people.  It was a delightful way to spend an evening.  I actually think it would be a very popular children’s entertainment in the UK. – I think Rob is going to try to interest one of his arty friends in organising it.....

We returned to the hotel day room, showered and readied ourselves  for the night train south to Hue.  Vinh had prepared us for something quite horrendous (and having been on a night train in Egypt, I understood the description) but , in fact, we had 1^st class berths – only four to a compartment, air conditioned, with lockable doors, individual reading lamps and clean, sit down toilets with separate washing facilities – plus boiling water on tap as in China.  It was luxurious even compared to the Chinese trains never mind those in Egypt.....

Day 24 Halong Bay, Vietnam

Day 24 – His.

 Today is Halong Bay – a world heritage site and one of the new seven wonders of the world. Though I do get the feeling that it is one of the new seven wonders because the Asians have rejigged it that way. The coach ride to the bay from Hanoi is four hours – well three and a half hours and a half hour break in between for us to stretch our legs wonder around a pottery and have the chance to buy some tourist bits and pieces. I was going to say I would have been tempted to buy something if it weren’t for the fact that we were going to be travelling for ages yet and anything we bought would be battered to smithereens, but the truth is I was just not tempted to buy anything. So far the trip around Vietnam has seemed more like a trip round Egypt. Not so much in the sights, scenery and the atmosphere but more in the general set up they have for tourists, which kind of surprises me. I would never have thought of Vietnam as being a tourist trap country but apparently it is. I can only guess that a lot of antipodeans come here. It’s a bit hard to gauge as we are not here in the high season. That is both a good and bad thing. Good because the crowds are at their lowest and bad because we are ducking and diving between successive typhoons in order to see anything. So far we have been lucky and the seas around Halong bay were like a mill pond when we arrived.

 The boat was a junk of sorts but really clean and pleasant. We motored out of the Harbour and had lunch as we leisurely chugged our way to the islands. Halong bay is a collection of some 1,900 – ish little islands made from limestone that jut incongruously from the green ocean. The water is shallow here and the islands dump a ton of minerals into the sea so it is green and relatively life less. The islands crowd in on each other and the tourist boats wend their way along the same track in a line. My guess is it is some kind of conservation effort – but we all visit the same islands and go to the same caves and end up on the same beach. In high season this would be dreadful but in low season it is well worth it. The sea was calm and hot, the islands magical and beautiful and the caves cold and mysterious.

 There is something truly magical and romantic about having lunch and dinner in this atmosphere, gently floating along in the hazy day and stopping off to visit the only beach – which is man-made by the way – and swimming in clear seas that have the temperature of a warm bath. After doing all of that we retired to the upper deck of our boat and watched the stars for a while as we chatted the evening away with the guys in our group and then went to bed. One of our group wants to stay on the boat for the rest of the trip and seriously asked our guide if it were possible. He just laughed so i guess not.

Day 24 – Hers

Halong Bay was one the main reasons I chose this section of the trip – and it didn’t disappoint .  I would have loved to have longer cruising around the karst islands and floating villages, perhaps kayaking through some of the caves, looking for monkeys – but that is one of the problems with group tours. You can’t just decide to stay somewhere that takes your fancy – you must keep moving on to wherever is next on the itinerary. 

On the bus journey, Vinh – our guide – taught us a few words of Vietnamese and explained some of the cultural differences.  There are 6 million people in Hanoi – and 4 million motorbikes.  Motorbikes are manufactured in Vietnam and a decent one can be purchased for about $400.  Cars are not manufactured in Vietnam, have difficulty negotiating any but the widest roads and cost around $60,000. If I lived in Vietnam, I would no doubt join the swarm....

Vietnamese houses tend to be very tall and thin.  Property fronting the road can be used as commercial premises and is much more expensive so plots are thin but deep – and up to four generations live together so they just add another floor (another similarity with Egypt...).

Day 23 - Hanoi, Vietnam

Day 23 – Hers

Another interesting take on the hotel breakfast – this morning I had vegetables, fried rice, crème brulee, lemon juice and spring rolls with my eggs and bacon – and we were off to explore Hanoi. We walked along the banks of the West Lake, skirting the parked scooters and impromptu cafes set up on the pavement – illegally there, apparently, as they quickly packed everything up and moved it all across the road when a police van went by.... – and shaking our heads at the women with baskets of exotic fruits hanging from poles over their shoulders. “ Bananas?” they would ask – “No, thank you.”  They didn’t even ask us about the other fruits – maybe they don’t know what they are either.... Invariably, the woman would then motion that she could put the pole on my shoulder for a photo.  “No, thank you,” we repeated, and walked on. 

We visited Ho Chi Min’s palace and mausoleum, the One-pillar Temple and looked over the wall at several other temples not named in our guidebook.  The guards around the Presidential Palace pointed tourists- quite a few Europeans, many more than in China - in the right direction when they weren’t sure and blew their whistles if anyone stepped over the painted line indicating the restricted area.  We visited the Confucian Temple of Literature and University – founded in the 11^th century and restored and extended in 2000 by the US Indochina Reconciliation initiative (I suspect it may have suffered some damage being right in the middle of Hanoi.) – and listened to some traditional music in one of the courtyard buildings.

We strolled through parks and along busy streets – playing dodgems with the scooters every time we had to cross a road – often walking in the road as the pavements are used as additional shop areas, parking areas and, where there’s a gap, as roads.  On one street, cockerels had been tied to trees – perhaps in preparation for a cock fight later? On another, groups of people picnicked outside the gates of some official-looking building.  Nearer to our hotel, back in the Old Quarter, each street has a preponderance of one kind of shop – clothes, leather goods, sweets, scooter tires, etc.  – and the indoor market  in the centre has it all – piled so high and so close together that it was difficult to negotiate the aisles.  We had obviously arrived at lunchtime.  Shopkeepers ate their rice or noodles while sitting on little blue plastic stools in what aisles there were;  the protocol apparently is to just step over them.

It is actually quite different here to China.  The people seem less open, more guardedly courteous and there is an undercurrent of danger that we never felt in China – but perhaps that is just the constant fear of being mown down by a scooter.  They also don’t carry umbrellas.... In China, nearly every woman had an umbrella to use as a parasol on sunny days.  Here, the women wear facemasks against the pollution and hats.  I say ‘hats’, but to get it right, your hat must look as much like a lampshade as possible.  We did see a bit of this in China – on the last day in Shanghai, we passed a woman who I am sure must have dressed in the dark, donning her colourful bedside lampshade instead of her hat by mistake, but it is much more common here.

 

Day 23 - His

Patti mentioned the scooters and she is right there are hundreds of them. To imagine what it is like think of yourself standing in a cross roads and all around there is a swarm of people sized bees that can only move backwards and forwards. Then, as if someone blows a whistle, imagine that they rush towards each other from all four points of the compass and madly pass each other at 30 miles an hour and you are standing in the middle of it. Then think of this going on for hours and hours – if you do this you will have some idea of what the street traffic in Hanoi is like. China was crazy but this is pure insanity on two wheels. It never ends and to cross the street the only option you have is live a life where you never leave the block you are on or step into the mad swarm of bees and hope you don’t get hit. We’ve been doing it all day and it gets a little tiring. The only relief was to see we were slightly better at it than other terrified newly arrived tourists that we saw dashing across in little huddled groups. The sidewalks are an adventure in themselves. What isn’t covered in parked cars, motor bikes, impromptu cafes, moving traffic and people just sitting is taken up by shops and tiny outdoor businesses. The tiny outdoor businesses consist of people who load all they need to carry out their trade onto a bicycle and push it to a vacant part of the sidewalk. Here they tip out their tools and get on with whatever job they do. There is cycle repair, body shops, foot massage and barbers – I was offered two haircuts, even though I think I am looking quite stylish at the moment – obviously not.

The city is much more human in its scale. The tallest tower block we have seen is about 15 floors – quite different from the 50+ floor behemoths that inhabit large Chinese cities – and there aren’t that many of them. The streets themselves are lined with crumbling French influenced town houses that are more thin than they are deep and all the streets are very similar. This isn’t a problem to navigate though. All you really need is a better than average map, a good sense of direction (or a compass) and enough bravery to cross the roads and you should be fine.

 Our five hour walk around the city took in the major sights which are compacted into a relatively tiny area and if you plan to spend more than a few days here it’s probably for the night life which, as far as I can make out, consists of Karaoke bars and foot massages – though we did come across the Playboy Club as an alternative. Karaoke is enormously popular here. We are due to meet the new group at 6 – in about half an hour – and if they suggest Karaoke as a thing to do I am going to cry.

 Well, it wasn’t karaoke – we went for dinner in a typical Vietnamese restaurant designed for European tourists to try the speciality of Hanoi, which is some kind of fish thing served in a pan on a bucket of hot coals. It was all too Disneyland for me so I ordered fried noodles. Personally I would have preferred to eat in a street restaurant – but ah well – I guess you have to do these things sometimes. In this way group trips are a little like marriage a degree of flexibility is called for. The guys in the group are an eclectic lot including a retired guy from England – who is travelling to make up for lost time, a girl from California and a down to earth Aussie girl whose parents are Brits.

 Peter is 65 and has swollen feet so we took a taxi to the restaurant and he took a taxi back but we walked – it was only 20 minutes and the route back was along the same market street we had walked this morning. The market was actually very different in the night. They closed the roads to traffic and filled the centre of the road with stalls so it was even more crowded than before – one thing the Vietnamese seem to know how to do well and that’s crowds. Tomorrow we set off for the coast and we will be on the boat or travelling by train for a while so we are going to be out of touch but – hey ho – we’ll upload everything in a couple of days!

Day 22 Shanghai, China - Hanoi, Vietnam

Day 22 – His

We set off from Shanghai at around 11. Mostly just after we got up, had breakfast and a bath. I have been collecting the free toothpastes. For some reason the Chinese are obsessive about clean teeth. This is not your 2 minutes in the morning two minutes in the evening kind of obsession. This is the four or five times a day followed by mouthwash and mint gum for the rest of the day kind of obsession. Consequently the hotels all provide free toothpaste and I have been collecting them – hey, save a dollar here a dollar there! Consequently the top pocket of my backpack is now stuffed with little tubes of toothpaste. I’ll use them – in fact I am determined to use them – who knows what the dental hygiene standard is like for the rest of our trip – of course if it is up to the level of the Chinese I will have enough in toothpaste to have paid for the trip several times over. So, after brushing our teeth we set off.

I have many pet hates and little fears when it comes to travelling and one of them is taxi drivers. I live in fear of being ripped off by them. Of course it doesn’t help when you arrive at airport and all the notices warn you of avaricious taxi drivers waiting to rip you off. In fact every tourist i know has a deep and ingrained distrust of taxi drivers and this seems to be a worldwide phenomenon. It must come from somewhere – personally i think it came into being from taxi drivers being avaricious and greedy. So, I guess they only have themselves to blame. Still, on occasion i do feel sorry for them. I mean everybody thinks they are thieves. Anyway, as part of this fear I wanted to use the Metro out to the airport. I have to say to everybody visiting Shanghai – Learn to use the metro! Actually, just go down there – it is stunningly easy to use. There is a little button on the ticket machine that translates it into English for you and the trains warn you when you are coming to your stop – In English!

It’s amazing – far easier than the Paris Metro – which really just hints at where you have to go and leaves the rest up to you – so easy to get lost. Or the London tube, which is supposed to be so easy that a five year old could use it. You try telling that to the hoards of worried looking, confused and lost London tourists I have seen hanging around the underground with tube maps open and tired expressions. However, the Shanghai metro is truly easy – so try it. The tube ride out was only 14 yuan – about £1.40 (I think the cheapest London tube ride is £5), The taxi to the airport here is about £30.

I think i said before, (on arrival) how clean the airport is. Now I have to add civilised. They have little smoking rooms in the departure lounges. They are walled off and have giant fans in them so they don’t bother anybody and you can puff away until you drop dead from lung cancer or your plane is called whichever comes first. JFK used to have a little smoking lounge until they were forced to close it by the health police.

There must have been some mistake in the booking because the food on the plane was delicious (we flew Vietnam Air, by the way) it was some kind of noodle thing with crab salad and fresh fruit. Patti spent most of the meal waxing lyrically about the quality and amount of crab – I, on the other hand, spent most the meal pouring packet sugar onto the fruit to make it edible. After a three hour-ish flight we arrived in Hanoi where i had to face my taxi driver fears – again!

 Day 22 – Hers

Rob goes a little crazy on travel days.  He says it’s the taxis – maybe so, but whatever, I am always relieved when we get where we’re going.  I try to distract him by pointing out little oddities.  In this case, the cartoons on the metro showing you how to behave properly and the group of Chinese tourists from the countryside who chattered away in Shanghai airport to their be-flagged guide, munching on sweetcorn and dancing in a ring around a little 2-year old boy with trousers that left his nether regions open to the air and no nappy.  I had seen this style of country children’s clothing before – any business just flows out as required (once on a child’s mother’s shoe) – but in an airport? I couldn’t be a guide – I would forever be trying to get the whole group to conform to the conventions of where we were. I certainly would have bought that child a nappy.

We arrived in Hanoi around 4:00 local time – it’s an hour earlier than eastern China – the first indication that we are wending our way back to England.

Immigration at Hanoi was easier to negotiate than just about anywhere we have been in the world.  The usual stony-faced official checked that you matched the photo on your passport and visa and that you were listed on his computer – and you were through.  I don’t know what else US, British , Chinese, Bolivian, etc., etc. immigration officials have to do that takes so long.... 

I picked up a free map of the city, calmed Rob’s nerves whilst he found us a taxi with a meter that worked and settled back to watch the scenery on the 30km ride to our hotel in the Old Quarter.  Dusk fell quite early – it was dark as we passed the roadside shops and ‘cafes’ (just groups of plastic stools on the pavement with someone cooking in a wok), karaoke bars and garages.  Signs along the way proclaimed in Vietnamese and English: ‘Hanoi – City of Peace’. We immediately noticed that scooters seem to be the preferred mode of travel – helmeted and face-masked riders whizzed by us on the highway – and in the city centre, they became like a never-ending swarm of bees.  Crossing a street has so far seemed impossible – we shall have to figure that one out tomorrow.

The countryside looked quite lush – with little canals and lakes scattered between areas of palm trees and fruit groves.  The buildings on the outskirts could have been from any of a dozen tropical countries we have visited – I was strongly reminded of southern Ecuador – but in the city centre, they developed a style of their own.  Many are very narrow, their facades a curious mix of southern European and Asian decoration. A few larger buildings are turreted and balconied fairy-tale concoctions – and a few are utilitarian communist block constructions or modern tourist granite and glass.

We checked into our hotel – they turned on the lights in reception as we arrived and 6 members of staff held doors, checked forms, gave information and generally hovered around us. (I don’t think this hotel is very busy....) As with all of the hotels used by Gecko, it is locally-owned and of a good standard.  This one has a gym, laundry-service, room-service and a variety of other facilities we won’t have time to use.  Its one drawback, as we discovered later on, is that the walls are paper thin (Ah, so there are other people staying here...).

We went out for a brief stroll – only around the block as I refused to cross the sea of scooters – and into a little shop to buy some biscuits to have in the room.  Getting to grips with the money is another of those new country challenges – the shopkeeper kindly refused Rob’s offer to pay over $10 for a small packet of Ritz crackers and sorted out the 80 cents that was actually due.... 

Back in our room, we revelled in the hotel’s free wifi and Vietnam’s internet freedom, catching up on Facebook and uploading to our blog page – 2 activities that are banned in China.

 

Day 21 - Shanghai

Day 21 – Hers

We had to move hotel rooms today – same hotel, same price, even the same floor, but when our itinerary changed we needed another night here and we booked it through a different company.  What a shame... now we have a queen-sized bed, river view and complimentary coffee as well as everything else....

Our main adventure for today was designed for little boys interested in science.  I happen to know one of those whose chronological age is forty-hmpetyhmpt.  We walked to the nearest metro station, figured out how to buy tickets and go the right direction – and went 4 stops under the river to the Museum of Science and Technology, set in the absolutely enormous and beautiful Century Park.  The guide book had, rather condescendingly, stated that the exhibits were a bit dated – though very interactive and worth a visit.  I must say that we found it very impressive, well-laid out, fun - and certainly more up to date than the Science Museum in London, unless that has changed dramatically in the past year.  Some of the sections – the natural environment (Ah, that’s where they took the non-moth eaten specimens from the old museum...), the geological journey into the earth and the computer-aided design and manufacture exhibits, in particular – allowed you to actually explore the world yourself.  You could have a bust of yourself laser-designed and 3d printed while you wait.  There were films and shows in many of the sections - as well as IMAX 3D and 4D cinemas on site.  The building itself is extremely well-designed – very few places felt at all crowded; despite 12,000 visitors in the time we were there.

 I lost Rob for a while in the history of invention exhibit – I eventually found him examining some cathode tube thing in detail – and again in the section looking at the genetics of phosphorescent plants......  We played around for a while in the huge energy transfer learning centre; called ‘The Light of Wisdom’ (All the galleries had very interesting names when transliterated into English.  For example, the section on fossil-dating of the Earth’s rock strata was labelled ‘the Bible of the Earth’s evolution’ – a possibly contentious juxtaposition of ideas....) and joined groups of excited children in the perception, health and fitness, volcano and earthquake interactive areas. (They wouldn’t let us into the ‘Children’s Rainbow’ gallery – any adult had to be accompanied by a child and we couldn’t find 2 children to borrow...)  We watched robots solve Rubik cube puzzles in under a minute, play requests on the piano and dance to a song chosen by visitors.  We admired China’s plans for space exploration and technology parks – and realised that they certainly have found a way to excite their next generation of scientists, designers and engineers. 

 Our guide book also recommended the huge underground shopping mall near the museum, so we walked through it on our way back to the metro station.  You could buy anything there – hand made shoes, hand-tailored suits, electronics, jewellery, leather goods, souvenirs, T-shirts, etc., etc., etc.  The map of the mall showed that it went on for blocks – all underground.  Clearly other guidebooks have also recommended it because we saw more European faces in our half an hour there than we have in the whole of our 10 days in China anywhere else.  The shopkeepers stood in the doorways and tried to entice us in with their few words of English – but, as with most places here, a simple ‘No, thank you’ got them to lay off.

 A quick metro-ride back and a greasy – but delicious – fried vegetable pasty from a street stall saw us back in our room. Time for some of that complimentary coffee, I think.

Day 21 – His

While we were wandering around the Museum we walked through the human and health section and stopped outside a series of displays concerning mental health. Proudly displayed in English and Chinese was a sign and this is what the sign said.

HOW TO KEEP A HEALTHY MENTAL STATE

Mentality is a psychological state that is concerned with a person’s attitudes and reactions towards various things. How can we have a healthy mental state?

Here is some advice:

1. Form good habits and be a cultivated person

2. Have a scientific way of living and an optimistic attitude towards life

3. Be able to cope with failure and keep active

4. Have a sincere and loving heart

5. Learn to cooperate with other people and be sociable

 Don’t you just have to absolutely love it? It operates on so many levels. For a start it is true. Secondly it is so Chinese. Thirdly can’t you smell the communist sentiment beneath it.... and so on and so on. I could wax lyrically about the sentiments and significance of this simple sign for hours. But the thing I really want to draw your attention to is that it was just displayed in a museum. We saw a similar sign in Beijing outside a park. The Chinese seem to take this sort of stuff pretty seriously – particularly point 5.

On the tube back to our hotel was an American Chinese woman with her two American Chinese kids. She was clearly on a ‘visit-grandma-in-china-and-rediscover-her-cultural-roots’ trip. Her kids weren’t behaving particularly badly – no more boisterous than many American kids I have seen in America – but far too boisterous for the Chinese around. Because the kids looked Chinese the expectation was that they should act Chinese and there was a lot of murmuring going on. The American Chinese mother looked mortified, particularly when the Chinese grandmother started to apologise to everybody around her in Chinese and English for the children’s bad behaviour and she started to loudly blame it on the American education system. I can only imagine what was going through her head – but, remember point 5 above.

Cultural attitudes are so curious. Patti tells me this was particularly noticeable in the women’s toilets. The Chinese have two kinds of toilets. The older’ level-with-the floor-and-squat’ type, common in France for a while, and the normal – to us – ‘sit-on-it-and-do-your-business’ type.

Apparently, at the woman’s loo the squat type always had a huge queue whereas the sit type was always empty. It seems the Chinese women would attempt to hover over the sit down type as it never occurred to them to actually sit down on them. They must have found the sit down type so uncomfortable – having to hover that high up . I am willing to bet they just couldn’t see the point of them and saw them as completely unhygienic.

Our dinner was pretty fantastic. We ate a small place at 224-226 Guangdong Road in case anybody ever visits that part of Shanghai. The food was good, the place clean and the staff helpful and we came away stuffed having paid the grand total of £5.40 for the two of us. If you eat in a western hotel or go to the Raffles bar you can expect to pay normal English prices for dinner out (£30-£50 for two). But there is really no need. Just about every street has hundreds of places to eat. Every 5^th or 6^th shop seems to be a restaurant and you can eat for as little as £1 per person. I suspect that most people in the city eat out at least once a day. I am sure I have commented more than once that the Chinese live their lives on the street. On the way back from dinner we passed a mother playing badminton amongst the traffic with her son. She was terrible and knew it. So we laughed with her at her playing skill as she had embarrassedly  caught our eye. As we passed she invited me to play with her son – so I did – only in Shanghai i feel could dinner be rounded off with a game of badminton played amidst the moving traffic using a nearby scooter as a net.

 Shanghai, like most other Chinese cities is growing at a rate of about 1 million people per year. Thousands drift in every week with their belongings on scooters to look for work. They don’t only bring their kids, cats and clothes with them but their country attitudes to life too. The roads in Shanghai are good with clearly marked cycle lanes running beside both sides of the road so cyclists can go with the traffic. Most scooters, motorbikes and cyclist ignore this though and go wherever they like. Crossing the road means looking around constantly for traffic coming every which way all the time. I keep expecting a half mad country cyclist to drop from the sky one day.

This is our last night in Shanghai and China and I will be sorry to be leaving.