Phong Nha
This beautiful town in the middle of Vietnam is set against a backdrop of karsts –
those crazy big limestone mountainous formations often full of caves. There are a number of caves
in the Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park, including Son
Doong which is the largest cave in the world and costs $3000 to enter. We
didn’t go to that one…
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Paradise Cave
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We decided to take a scooter out rather than do an organised
tour and it worked out a lot cheaper. The scooter was 100,000 Dong and we
needed about 3 litres of petrol for our trip. The two caves we wanted to see
were about 30km from the town. We visited the Paradise
Cave or Thien Duong. It is a dry cave which is 31km in length, although
normal folk can only walk about 1km in. There are other tours to see more of it
but we paid 250,000 Dong each then walked about 2km to the start of an uphill
500m trek to the entrance. There were buggies available but the walk was lovely
through the park. The cave was huge, around 100m high and wide.
After the Paradise Cave we headed to the Dark
Cave (Hang Toi). This one is a bit different because it has a 400m zipline
over a lake before you have to swim into the cave. Once there, we walked
through the slippery, dark cave to a mud pool where we splashed around and had a
mud fight for half an hour. We then took a kayak back across the lake where
there was a flying fox and a mini assault course over the lake to play on.
Great fun and well worth the 450,000 Dong.
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| Zipline down to the Dark Cave |
Our bus wasn’t until 9pm on the following day so after
lazing around and checking out late, we decided to visit Phong
Nha Cave. This was the largest cave in the area before the Paradise Cave was
found in 2005 but it has a river running through it. It was only 500m from the
town to the boat and we paid 150,000 Dong for entry, and it was another 360,000
for a 14 person boat. There were 4 others waiting there so we decided to share
with them and split the cost.
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| Boat ride to Phong Nha Cave |
The boat trip to the cave took around 20 minutes and the scenery was
beautiful, with rain clouds rolling in over the imposing karsts. The trip
through the cave and back took about half an hour, then we were dropped off to
wander along the sides of the cave and take pictures before heading back. This
cave was our favourite cave, probably because of the water, although the dark
cave was the most fun.
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| Phong Nha Cave |
Hanoi
We had a pretty good journey up to Hanoi
on the night bus, getting in around 6am. The sleeper buses actually have midget
beds and they use them during the day too, so you’re constantly lying down. We
managed to get a little bit of sleep and we went off to find our hotel in the Old
Quarter. We dropped our bags off and as our room wasn’t ready, we went out
for a walk round the city which was slowly waking up.
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| Hoan Kiem Lake |
We weren’t far from Hoan
Kiem lake (lake of the restored sword), a beautiful serene place with a temple
(Ngoc
Son) in the middle of it on an
island. Around the lake were hundreds of people exercising, strolling or having
a coffee. This is where community-minded groups put on traditional games at the
weekend to keep the games alive, and to encourage social activity.
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| Fun round the lake |
We sat and
had a coffee and wandered about some more. Hanoi is a pretty city, less busy
and smaller than Ho Chi Minh City, with
an abundance of French architecture making it feel quite different from HCMC. We
found out that many of the roads were named after the shops that lined them.
Our first hotel's address translated to ‘Steel Street’ as it sold an array of steel goods
and there were several welders working along there. Some of the streets were
harder to work out. We think we saw ‘Paint Street’, ‘Religious icons Street’,
‘Load of old tut Street’, and ‘Rolled up stuff Street’, among others.
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| Steel Street |
We found the Vietnamese
Women’s museum which as the name suggests, celebrates Vietnamese women, as
workers, mothers, fighters and heroes in the country today and throughout its
chequered past. This was actually a really interesting museum and gave us a
good insight into the struggles of women throughout history and how they are
perceived by society.
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| Women's museum |
We soon discovered the backpacker area with its lively bars
and rip off restaurants selling dodgy western food and brilliant value local
food. Later that evening we went to the Thang
Long water puppet show which is a traditional form of theatre and uses
traditional instruments to perform the music. We sat down where we were told to
and about 15 minutes into the performance we were yelled at by a guy that worked there
to move, to make way for some latecomers who happened to be Vietnamese.
He
insisted we were in the wrong seats and had already tried to manhandle an
elderly Aussie couple out of their seats. I refused to move and we (well, he) created a bit of a
disturbance in the middle of the performance. He wasn’t going to move me
without physical force and the Aussie couple sat down next to us too when they
realised I wasn’t budging. There was nowhere else to sit unless we went right
to the back so we were going nowhere – why should we move?! The seat allocation
system wasn’t being used, as our designated seats had long gone and it was
obviously a free for all. The guy pushed past me and stormed off when he
realised he wasn’t going to shift me. I was pretty pissed off all through the show, which
ruined it a bit for me, and after a couple of similar experiences it
does put a bit of a shadow on things and it affects your perception of
places. Most Vietnamese people are lovely, but it's the bad experiences that stick in the mind unfortunately. Makes for better stories I guess.
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| Water puppet show |
Anyway, the water puppet show was very entertaining. It was all in
Vietnamese but it was easy to follow each skit, which lasted a couple of
minutes. It was definitely more for kids but it was worth going to, and the
music accompanying the puppetry was fantastic.
The next morning we got chatting to a couple from New
Zealand over breakfast and we invited them to join us on our free city tour.
We were met
by Trang, a young Vietnamese student who is a member of a club called Hanoi Free Local Tours, which takes tourists
round the city and to different museums or landmarks, and whose members or guides get to practise
their English. The tour was completely free and we walked to the Temple
of Literature, then Hoa
Lo prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton.
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| Temple of Literature |
The Temple of Literature was the first
university in Vietnam and is a fabulous example of Chinese architecture from
the 11th century. It is now a temple as you might have gathered,
where students pray for good results in their exams. Personally I felt they
should try spending more time studying than praying and they might do okay but
what do I know?
Trang told us a story about the tortoise and the crane which appear in temples all over the country. The tortoise and the crane have the ideal friendship. The tortoise helps the crane in times of flooding to find shelter, and the crane helps the tortoise in times of drought. I don't get why the crane can't just fly during the floods but never mind, it is a nice idea. (I think I take things too literally...)
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| Tortoise and his bff |
Hoa Lo prison was used by the French primarily for holding
political prisoners where they were shackled in tiny cells in darkness for much
of the time. Many were beheaded using the guillotine and their heads displayed
to the public as a warning to toe the line. Later on it was used for captured
American troops in the Vietnam war and was dubbed the Hanoi Hilton because of
the apparent comfort awarded to the prisoners. The Vietnamese make a point of
explaining how kind they were to the prisoners and how comfortable the
Americans were but it seemed like they were trying too hard to convince
tourists about how nice they were.
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| Hanoi Hilton |
The last stop on the tour was to a real local café,
difficult to find, which overlooked the lake. We had the famous egg
coffee which is a lot nicer than it sounds. In the wartime when there was a
shortage of fresh cream or milk, the Vietnamese used egg to thicken up the
coffee and it is delicious.
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| Egg coffee |
We had booked the bus up to Sapa
for the following day and we were joined by our Kiwi pals. Sapa is in northern
Vietnam about 6 hours on a bus from Hanoi. It is on the travellers’ path
because of its lush green scenery, rice paddies, hiking trails in the steep
hills and the number of tribal villages outside the town where you can trek and
sleep over in a homestay of a tribal family.
Sapa
As soon as we got off the bus in the town we were accosted
by a group of women in traditional tribal dress, insisting we go trekking with
them and stay at their homes. We had seen the women running up the hill when
they’d spotted the bus even though some of them were knocking on a bit. We were
followed all round town and they waited outside a restaurant while we had
lunch. Eventually we agreed a price for 2 nights in a homestay including all
meals and a trekking guide for $40 each. We stayed in the town for the first
night and we were met by the tribal ladies the next morning to start the trek
to their village, Hau
Thao. We walked through stunning greenery for about 6 hours with our 2
guides, climbing some steep, rugged terrain but for the most part the hike was
fairly easy, especially in comparison with our trek in Nepal.
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| Sapa to Hau Thao village |
The guides were funny, they stopped every minutes and walked
at a snail’s pace. One of them, Chu, took great delight in joking about bananas
and how married women didn’t need them. This joke carried on for the 3 days we
were with the tribe and it didn’t get old AT ALL. Much. She kept telling us she
was ‘just joking for fun’.
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| Beyn frogging in the rice paddy |
Once we arrived at the village (21km later) we were
greeted by a member of the family we were staying with. 4 year old Beyn was the
only one in, so we introduced ourselves, made ourselves at home and relaxed.
After a while Beyn disappeared so we went to find him, a bit worried that he
was on his own, and we soon found him at the back of the house in the paddy
field, catching baby frogs in a litre water bottle. We soon found out that children
run this village. There are loads of them running around unsupervised, having
fun.
Later on, the rest of the family returned including May, the
matriarch who we had met the day before when we arrived in Sapa, and her 3
other children, 12 year old Phu, 10 year old Ju, and 8 year old Hon. I’m sure I
have spelt all their names wrong. May cooked us a fabulous meal of local,
traditional food; morning glory, beans, rice, chicken, onion and carrots and
errr, chips. She force fed us rice and rice wine, and she and I prepared some
fruit that I’d bought in the village shop. The tribe's ladies drunk tea but insisted we
drank the potent wine.
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| Black Hmong girl and her baby |
May told us about her life and the tribe, the Black
Hmong. It turned out that the village we were staying in was probably the
least touristy, although the Black Hmong tribe was the largest tribe in the
area. May can’t read or write Vietnamese or English but her spoken English was
really good. The tribe speaks its own language, as do the other tribes in the
area. I ended up helping her by reading some messages she had received from
tourists interested in staying with her and replying to them for her.
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| Gorgeous May |
She told us how she grows her own rice in her paddy fields
and harvests it in July for storage in sacks in her house. The rice is for
their own use; they don’t sell it. She told us how her neighbours would try to
siphon her water for her paddies and how this would cause arguments in the
village. We were bemused by this; surely it would be obvious who was nicking
the water as May’s water hose would be diverted straight to the thief’s field?!
She also showed us how her husband made jewellery from copper – all handmade
and very intricate.
That night, the four of us tourists shared a room with a
rock-hard mattress each, fairly typical of Asian beds. Most of us had very
little sleep - mainly because of Baby D’s snoring – but not helped by the
cockerel, pigs, frogs, dogs and children who were up early! Ear plugs are a
must.
The next day we were greeted by Chang, a young girl and her
adorable 1 year old son. Chang made us an enormous stack of pancakes for
breakfast, along with some delicious omelette. Chang was our guide for the day
and once she got started, she did not stop talking. She pointed out different
plants and what they were used for; food, medicine, smoking (there were plenty
of marijuana plants, mainly for tourists to smoke, but also for the tribe to
make clothing using hemp).
She told us about how the girls marry very young –
sometimes as young as 14, but she was married at 17 and it was expected that she
would have a baby within a year of marriage. Halfway through we changed guides
and we were accompanied by Chang’s sister the very quiet Shu-Shu (or should
that be Ssh-Ssh?) She probably couldn’t get a word in with her gregarious
sister stealing all the limelight when they were kids. We walked 12km the
second day, so a bit easier than day 1. We were joined at our homestay by a
French couple and we joked that we would put Beyn’s baby frogs in their bed to
make them feel welcome.
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| Shu-Shu helping cook dinner in May's house |
Dinner that night was much the same as the previous night,
with an abundance of tasty local food, too much rice and even more rice wine. We had a much better night’s sleep as I put
the Baby D in my bed so I could give him a dig if he started snoring. We found
out after another huge breakfast of pancakes and omelette that May had put her
2 cockerels in a sack to keep them quiet after I had mentioned they had woken
us up early the day before!
We were to walk with May back to Sapa, around 16km,
but first she dressed us up in the traditional tribal clothes which was
hilarious as we westerners are giants to the tiny Hmong ladies.
When we got back to Sapa, we said our goodbyes to May and
Chu who had appeared from nowhere and we were presented with a handmade bangle
each. We had to say goodbye to our fellow travellers from NZ too. It’s strange
when you travel, you make some firm friends in a short space of time – everything
is kind of magnified, so it’s always sad to say goodbye, and there are a lot of
goodbyes.
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| Call the top number |
Back to Hanoi for Baby D and I, and a trip to the
hairdressers for me the next day. 7 hours later…no disaster this time
thankfully. Did I speak too soon?)
Ha Long Bay and Cat
Ba
Our last stop in Vietnam was to Ha
Long Bay. This was about 4 hours from Hanoi on a bus and we had paid for a
day cruise around the bay, including kayaking, lunch and a visit to Sung
Sot (or Surprise) cave. Lunch was great – plenty of choice, fresh fish,
prawns, pork, spring rolls. We found out that kayaking would cost extra but our
fab little hotel had booked us in for it so we didn’t have to pay any more.
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| Ha Long Bay |
We
have since found out that kayaking is banned in the Bay and has been since
April this year, so I have no idea how we were able to get away with it. Ha
Long Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site, famous for the beautiful, imposing
karsts which are common all over SE Asia. Ha Long Bay stands out because there
are over 1500 of them. It makes for a magnificent skyline.
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| Ha Long Bay |
We were dropped off near to Ha Long City where we were to
stay the night before going over on the ferry to Cat
Ba island. We stayed in a lively area on the mainland called Bai
Chay, about 3km from the City, with plenty of bars, and a huge cable car
and rollercoaster. The next morning we headed over to get the 8am ferry to Cat
Ba. Luckily we got there bang on 7.30 as the ferry departed at 7.31. An hour
later we were on Cat Ba island and we soon found a nice, cheap hotel and
wandered to 1 of the 3 beaches there.
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| Cat Ba beach - Cat Co 1 |
The island was nice, with a huge
national park in the centre, and lots of hotels, bars and restaurants. There are 3 beaches, each around a 10 minute walk from the town and imaginatively called Cat Co 1, Cat Co 2 and Cat Co 3. The
beach we went to, Cat Co 1, was pretty and clean, with a small bar and shop. We only
managed an hour of beach fun before the clouds rolled in and a huge thunder
storm ensued. That was that for the day and we were picked up the next morning
at 8am to head back to Hanoi for a night before saying goodbye to Vietnam; destination
Penang, Malaysia.
#phongnha #darkcave #paradisecave #hanoi #catba #halongbay #sapa #hauthao #hoalo #hanoihilton #hiltonhanoi #templeofliterature #hanoifreelocaltours #eggcoffee #womensmuseum
Set in gorgeous, quiet surroundings, metres
from the sea, the motel was a relaxing retreat for a few days. It had shared
kitchen facilities so we prepared our own food most of the time, saving us a
bit of cash. The first day, we found a fish and chip shop nearby but the food
was average, overpriced and took ages to arrive. If there had been any other
restaurants nearby it would be shown up as being pretty crap, but apart from the local roadside
eateries, it was the only ‘proper’ restaurant around.
Set in gorgeous, quiet surroundings, metres
from the sea, the motel was a relaxing retreat for a few days. It had shared
kitchen facilities so we prepared our own food most of the time, saving us a
bit of cash. The first day, we found a fish and chip shop nearby but the food
was average, overpriced and took ages to arrive. If there had been any other
restaurants nearby it would be shown up as being pretty crap, but apart from the local roadside
eateries, it was the only ‘proper’ restaurant around.
