Da Nang
Since we were rapidly fleeing Cambodia because the heat and humidity were too much to bear, we decided to skip the similar climate of southern Vietnam, start in the middle of the country, and finish in the north. Our Vietnam travel plans were thrown together at the last minute (again, because of our sudden intolerance of the weather), so we paid a travel agent in Siem Reap to handle our Vietnamese visa, then flew from Siem Reap to Da Nang, a mid-sized city home to Vietnam's third largest international airport (after Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi). Our arrival was one of the smoothest and most painless airport experiences I've ever had: no crowds or lines (partially because we arrived late at night), a clean and modern terminal, and a friendly, English-speaking associate to sell us SIM cards.
The muggy weather in Cambodia followed by a sudden change to a much cooler climate was clearly not appreciated by my body, as I woke up with a cold the following morning. Lucky for me, we were staying in a hotel in a quiet, sparsely populated neighborhood that was almost reminiscent of a beach town, except without the people.
In fact, Da Nang as a whole baffled me with its apparent lack of residents. After multiple drives and walks through town, we had seen many multi-lane roads and barely any traffic. At first, I thought it was because we had arrived very late at night, but then I noticed the same absence of vehicles during a daytime taxi ride. In fact, I noticed this same phenomenon in multiple places throughout Vietnam, a country that's infamous for traffic so chaotic and dense that Westerners have to relearn how to cross a street. While we did eventually see some classic Vietnamese traffic, we saw just as much non-traffic. My best explanation is that the Vietnam War - called the "American War" in Vietnam - gave the country a clean slate for construction, as the old roads and towns and bridges were destroyed. Given this clean slate, they rebuilt things with future expansion in mind and the vehicular population simply hasn't caught up yet. Is this actually true? I'm not sure, but it sounds reasonable to me.
Given my illness and the rainy weather, we mostly took it easy in Da Nang for a day and a half: massages, some laptop work, trips to Vietnamese cafes, and the first of many breakfasts (throughout the country) of eggs, French bread, and strong coffee. After a couple nights, we left for the next destination, making sure to include a quick visit to the massive Lady Buddha statue, one of the big tourist sites in the area.
Hoi An
After a 20-minute van ride, we arrived in Hoi An, a very popular tourist destination on the coast. Besides the waterfront location, the city is famous for its Old Town, a historic part of the city with architecture that incorporates Vietnamese, European, and Chinese influences. The old buildings have been converted into restaurants and shops, mostly selling clothes. In fact, one of the must-do activities in Hoi An is to go to a tailor - by some estimates, there are upwards of 500 of them - and have clothes custom made. I sprung for a pair of "jeans" - the material is stretchier than denim - and a pair of shorts. Though I'm sure I could have shopped around or haggled more, I was happy to pay $40 for two perfectly-tailored pieces of clothing. Ayu and our new travel friend Kimberly got similarly excellent prices on several pretty dresses.
The rain was sporadic over the next few days, which thwarted our attempts at any real excursions, so we filled the time with shopping trips to old town, delicious food, a tea tasting, and a one-hour boat ride along the river.
When the rain finally stopped and the sun came out, we went on a gentle afternoon bicycle tour (with Heaven & Earth Tours) through the countryside, admiring local villages and homes, villagers showing us their crafts, traditional bridges, waterways, and the gorgeous green rice paddies Vietnam is known for. We capped off the day with an amazing dinner at Morning Glory, probably my favorite restaurant in Vietnam.
The next day we rented bikes from our hotel and set out on our own, riding through more rice paddies and villages before grabbing a late lunch, then riding to the coast for a well-deserved beer on the beach. We spent the evening, as usual, in Old Town, enjoying dinner, live music at a quiet garden bar, and the narrow lanes and strings of lanterns that make the quarter so atmospheric.
Hue
After our unexpectedly long six-day stay in Hoi An, we took the bus to Hue, the old capital of Vietnam and a city with a lot of historical significance. However, my first impression wasn't so great, as the bus ride there was awful. Instead of seats, we were each given inflexible, plastic half-coffins to slip into. Needless to say, sleeper buses in Vietnam aren't built for someone who is 6'2", so I spent most of my time readjusting my legs to find that perfect, least-terrible position. Once I had mostly accomplished that, the bus's air conditioning started to drip disgusting, black water on a select group of individuals on the left side of the bus, myself included. At our half-way rest stop, the bus attendant switched me to a seat in the very back of the bus, which turned into a sauna when the aircon was turned off, so I was wet with sweat too. It was a shitty four-hour trip.
For our first full day in Hue, we booked a daylong sightseeing tour, which included several ridiculously expansive and ornate mausoleums, the ancient city, a "dragon boat" ride on the river, and displays of martial arts, incense-making, and conical-hat-making. By mid-afternoon, the heat and humidity had drained all of our energy, so we called it a day and bailed on the last hour of the tour.
The weather hadn't changed much by the next day (our last in Hue), so we all scattered and had personal days; I worked on photos on my laptop, had more delicious coffee and veggie food at some local spots, and got massages with the girls in the evening.
The following day was our 16-hour train ride to Hanoi, so after a leisurely lunch and some window shopping, we took a cab to the station to catch our mid-afternoon train. The three of us booked beds in a sleeper cabin and the fourth bed remained unoccupied until a train employee hopped up there in the final part of the journey to catch a few hours of sleep. It was a pretty standard sleeper car experience, with the occasional noisy stop as passengers shuffled on and off the train and food vendors shouted on the platform. The food sold onboard the train wasn't vegetarian at all - which we had been warned about in advance - so we were very thankful we had brought with us some takeaway from our favorite Hue restaurant. Most of the time on the train was spent sleeping or reading, but we did make sure to savor the incredible view; from our western-facing side of the train, we had a picture-perfect orange sunset over the lush rice paddies of the countryside.
Hanoi
After a quite decent night of sleep, further extended by a multi-hour delay due to track maintenance, we grabbed our luggage, disembarked, made our way through the crowds, and were promptly scammed by a taxi driver while trying to get to the bus station. Clearly we didn't realize we were being scammed at the time, but it happened. I hadn't done my homework with respect to researching Hanoi public transportation (mistake #1), so when a driver approached us offering a metered taxi, I agreed without walking to the street first (mistake #2). In other countries in Asia, a metered taxi is worth its weight in gold, as the price will be much lower than the end result of haggling. As I learned later, some of the metered taxis in Hanoi have doctored meters that race through the fare at about ten times the normal rate. We didn't realize this until we arrived at the bus station and since our luggage was being held ransom in the trunk, we had no choice but to pay up (almost $30 for a fifteen minute ride).
The one silver lining - besides learning a good travel tip the hard way - is that our driver got us to the bus station very quickly and, by complete dumb luck, we arrived just a few minutes before the next bus to Cat Ba Island was leaving. Still feeling the burn of getting ripped off, we triple-checked the posted bus fare against Lonely Planet and other online travel resources before buying tickets.
Tickets and seats acquired, our long travel day continued with a multi-hour bus ride to the coast, followed by a 45-minute boat ride to Cat Ba Island and a 45-minute minibus ride to Cat Ba Town. The boat and van rides were normal, but the bus ride was very aggravating. When the driver wasn't laying on the horn or blasting Vietnamese variety shows on the TV or driving like an escaped convict, he was picking up packages or Vietnamese passengers from the side of the road. And since all the seats on the bus were full of tourists, the locals sat on tiny plastic stools in the aisle, filling up any remaining space until the bus became a multi-ton fire hazard on wheels. No doubt the money from all the locals bypassed the bus company entirely and went right into the driver's pocket.
The pinnacle of irritation was that because of all the unscheduled pickups, the bus was running late, which meant no stops for food or water and one completely botched bathroom break. We stopped at a bus depot, where nearly a dozen people (myself included) got off to use the bathroom, but about one minute later the bus started to leave as the attendants yelled at everyone to get back on. One poor woman was in the restroom at the time and the bus actually left and started driving down the road without her. The driver had to pull over and wait for her to get a ride on the back of a motorbike to get back on the bus. Most everyone was pissed at the driver and the company by the time we arrived at the pier to catch the boat.
Cat Ba Island and Ha Long Bay
The main reason we were going through all this hassle was to get to Cat Ba Town, a small island town that serves as one of the jumping off points for tourists going to Ha Long Bay, the popular home of some of the most beautiful scenery in Asia. Once we were checked into our hotel, we explored the town and the waterfront a bit before booking a full-day tour for the following day.
Early the next morning, we were picked up and taken to our boat, which spent the rest of the day cruising Ha Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay as we admired hundreds of beautiful limestone formations, kayaked, ate a fantastic lunch, swam (or watched others swim), and took lots and lots of photos. It's not easy to capture the magnitude and beauty of Ha Long Bay in photos, so I'll include a number of them here in the hopes that enough quantity can somehow add up to quality. The photos aren't spectacular since the skies were overcast the entire day, but the perpetual clouds meant the temperature was very agreeable and not too hot. Given that we were outside for almost eight hours, I was happy to sacrifice favorable photographic conditions for comfortable weather.
The day after our spectacular outing was a free day, so we did some travel planning, got massages, rented bicycles, and went to one of the local beaches for a bit in the afternoon.
The following day (our last in Cat Ba), we went on a half-day hike through Cat Ba National Park, which essentially meant getting very hot and sweaty as we climbed stairs through the warm, humid jungle. The big payoff was reaching Ngu Lam peak, which offered breathtaking views of green, jungle-covered hills and mountains in every direction. Again, photos won't do the scene justice, but here they are anyway.
Hanoi
On our last full day in Vietnam, we took the five-hour, minibus-boat-bus-bus combo back to the Hanoi bus station, where we successfully dodged the unscrupulous fast-meter taxi drivers and found a proper taxi company (Mai Linh, the one with the green taxis) to take us to our hotel in the Old Quarter. With only one night in the city, we went out immediately and wandered aimlessly, grabbed beers at a local watering hole, took a pedicab ride around the lake, had snacks in a small restaurant, smoked shisha in a lounge, and had an excellent Indian feast for dinner.
The next morning we made our way to the airport for our flight to Bangkok, again noting the massive difference between Hanoi city traffic (crazy!) and highway traffic (none!).
I can admit that I was ready to leave Vietnam after spending a few weeks there, but I definitely had a great time everywhere we went. For reasons I can't explain, Vietnam was never on my radar when I was making my Southeast Asia travel plans, but Ayu's desire to see the limestone islands of the north was enough reason to encourage me to go and I'm really happy I did. We met a lot of very friendly people, had a lot of great coffee and cheap breakfasts, and saw some of the most beautiful nature I've seen on my travels.
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