Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City

Today we are up early to catch a flight from Da Nang to Ho Chi Minh City. Bags are a lot fuller and our pockets lighter after 2 days in Hoi An.

Hoi An

Monday morning, we are going from Hue to Hoi An

Hue

Saturday Xmas Day: We took the overnight train from Hanoi down to Hue. Left Hanoi at 11pm on the dot, and arrived in Hue at about 11am. Much quieter and more manageable traffic in Hue.
We went for a tour of the Royal Palace and forbidden city. Most of it was destroyed either in the French War or the American War, but it is now a UNESCO World Heritage site and is being restored. The plan is to complete restoration in 2020, but they have a long way to go. It is a huge site with many beautiful buildings, and there is a problem with termites also.
Phuong offered to take us to an optician, so I bit the bullet and took the opportunity to get some reading glasses. My eyesight has been perfect until a year ago, but these things creep up on you when you are old enough to remember the Vietnam War, well the 1975 bit.
We all went for dinner to a Royal banquet, a themed restaurant. A terrific traditional music group. The one stringed guitar was particularly impressive.
Sunday Boxing Day: Motorbikes were waiting to take us on a tour. We set off into the traffic, Hue thank goodness, not Hanoi. We all had a driver each, and it was great fun negotiating the traffic to the boat ramp. We took the boat up the Perfume River to the Pagoda. Monks were praying when we got there, including tiny children. The boat returned us to a gap in the jungle and we jump on the motorbikes again and went on a tour.

Sunrise in Ha Long Bay and back to Hanoi

We woke up early to see the sun briefly, and some clearer air in Ha Long Bay. Very beautiful and peaceful in the early morning. After breakfast the boat headed back to the harbour, and we rejoined all the traffic heading in and out of Hanoi. It was raining lightly and we saw 2 crashes on the road, both motorbikes colliding with trucks. We stopped at a place that specialised in ceramics and pottery and had very clean toilets. The run into Hanoi was reasonable, and we got to the hotel about 1.30pm as promised. The hotel made 3 rooms available to our group to store our gear, recharge our batteries and freshen up. We had lunch at Little Hanoi, really nice once again. Sampled another variety of local beer. We went our spend the afternoon in Hanoi. Mike and I bought another major brand backpack for about $15, then headed into the chaos by the lake. We found some more things to buy, Mike bought a hat in the theory that they would stop hassling him if he already had a hat. Wrong. We had a really nice coffee overlooking the Hanoi equivalent of a roundabout and were totally entertained by all the craziness. It is Xmas eve so lots of people dressed up in Santa suits and heading into town for parties. We inched our way through the streets, it is like being caught in a buffalo stampede of motorbikes with the odd car and bicycle thrown in to really slow things down. At time we could not move, or had to climb over parked motor bikes to go any further.
Now we are waiting to get the train to Hue at 11pm.

Ha Long Bay

Thursday Ha Long Bay. We drove through the crazy traffic on the road toward China. It took a long time to get through the city including about 10 minutes at one grid locked intersection. The road took us past a fairly industrial zone, including a huge Canon factory. After about an hour we were in rice paddies, passed a huge coal mine and coal fired power station. The town nearby was covered in coal dust but people still sell all their clothes and cosmetics out of the front rooms of their 5 storey houses. Even though land is not such an issue here, the houses are still very narrow and 5 to 7 storeys high. Looks odd when one is on its own. Approaching Ha Long Bay there are some small limestone carsts on the land. The town is developing rapidly with a lot of hotels being built. We got on our boat, a small floating hotel, and one of about 100 waiting to take tourists. It was really comfortable and we soon settled in to lunch. We had a crew of 5 people cooking, cleaning and driving the boat.

The day was very misty and we were worried we wouldn't see much but soon we were amongst the most beautiful mountains rising out of the sea. We sailed along then came to a cave high up on one of the mountains. We docked the boat and all got off to go through the cave, not sure what to expect. It started off small, then we went through a small gap and it opened up into something the size of about 2 football fields. Various armies have hidden in here over the years from the French and the Americans. On the way back to the boat we saw some monkeys up in the jungle. A couple of us took up the offer to go kayaking and we set off past a whole lot of boats, past some sort of toll gate to a lagoon, secluded amongst all the other mountains. It was like a lake in the middle of the sea. Incredibly beautiful. We paddled around for a while, enjoying the calm. We came across a rather large jelly fish in the middle. We headed back, glad we had a crew member as a guide, cause we didn't know which ship was ours and it was getting dark. We enjoyed a gin and tonic and a lovely meal, then we all went to bed fairly early, some jet lagged Americans who endured big delays getting here. One woman from England has not arrived yet, due to the Heathrow thing. Hopefully she will join us in Hanoi.

Hanoi

A day in Hanoi today. We took an Urban Adventure tour to some of the major sites. Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and a viewing of the body. He died in 1969. Lots of Soviet style officialdom, buildings and military parade ground. The French style Presidential Palace but they don't let people in there. HCM's simple house, 3 of his cars (2 Russian and 1 French) and his office which was like a summer house. The Ethnology museum was really interesting with examples of houses that had been built on site, and some beautiful textiles in the main building. Back through the crazy traffic to the Temple of Literature, the oldest university in Vietnam.

Vietnam for Xmas

We have made it to Vietnam. Flight with Air Asia was uncomfortable, but we got to KL on time. The LCCT looks like an old shed, but there is a Starbucks and air conditioning. We got the bus into KL, spent a couple of hours having a quick look around. KL has lots of big new stuff, and seemingly derelict old buildings, but a lovely modern city.
We flew with Vietnam airlines to Ho Chi Minh City to connect to a flight to Hanoi. Nice flight with good food. But then the fun started, transit tipped us out onto the street, lots of confusion, bus to domestic terminal 50 metres away, then delay due to technical difficulties. Terminal was bringing back memories of Africa 20 years ago, they sell warm drinks and meat trays and strange looking brown wrinkly things that maybe they cook for dinner. One of the shops was selling big wooden furniture. We were there so long Mike was learning to speak Vietnamese from all the flight delay announcements.
Eventually we got away on a big plane, and was very pleased to see our pre-booked taxi I found on the internet was still waiting for us. Drive into Hanoi was nuts, traffic coming straight at us on the wrong side of the freeway. But they seem to drive expecting to avoid on coming traffic. He could have been taking us anywhere but eventually we arrived at the correct hotel, very relieved.
On Monday we took a day tour to the Perfume Pagoda. The traffic was nuts getting out of Hanoi, we would travel on a highway for a while then cut across a farm track to another on ramp to another bit of road somewhere. Eventually we set off down the bumpy Highway One towards Saigon. We turned off at a village that had about 50 shoe shops, then through countryside and more small villages. We came to a river harbour and clambered into small boats where women rowed us down the river towards the beautiful limestone carsts. After an hour we came to the Perfume Pagodas, a bit like Lourdes with lots of shops selling stuff on the way to a beautiful temple. The cable car was stopped for maintenance so we walked up 4km to the temple in a cave. There were stalls selling stuff all the way up, many more being built for the festival season in Jan, Mar, April when 80,000 people a day turn up. There were only around 100 this day. The temple is in a cave at the top of the mountain, felt like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie.
We got the boat back - apparently the rowing is done by women who are war widows or whose husbands were badly wounded and families take it in turns to spend a day rowing on the river. Very hard work. They expect to be paid about $2 per person, so $10 for our boat.
We drove back through more crazy traffic and went for a walk in the evening around the small lake. Crossing the road even lights is a life threatening experience, the traffic doesn't stop, it just goes around you. We were getting a bit lost in the streets of the old city - the map doesn't seem to bear much relation to the real thing. After a bit of back tracking we found a really great restaurant some Spanish people on the tour recommended to us, and had a really great meal and some of the local beer.
Tuesday - we took another tour out of the city to the ancient citadel of Hoa Lu, Vietnam’s first capital. Very beautiful, then we rode bikes for 12km through country roads and villages to Tam Coc where we took another boat ride through more stupendous scenery. The river went through 3 caves and we could see temples on the top of the limestone mountains.