If I had let first impressions get the better of me, Vietnam would have been quite an unpleasant place to visit.
We were predictably pestered by xich-lo (motorcycle taxi) drivers before we had even set foot on Vietnamese soil (or concrete in this case). They were shouting at us whilst we were being screened by customs, in all sorts of languages just to cover their bases. Quoting seven times the fare price (thank you Lonely Planet) to the train station meant negotiations didn’t really take off, so we opted for a normal taxi with a meter. The taxi driver seemed nice enough, and the meter wasn’t whizzing up at ridiculous speeds, so when we arrived, I was pleasantly surprised when he even got out to open my door for me.
I handed him the amount it said on the meter, but he shook his head and actually had the cheek to demand twice that amount, as there were two of us. I flatly refused, but he was blocking my way out and grunting that I give him more. At this point I had two choices, the first of which involved forcing my way out of the cab and finding out if he was truly up to a physical confrontation with a man twice his size. However it was the second, much more effective, option I opted for: “Lise call the Police please”. He seemed to understand the fourth word in that sentence, and we were on our way. He even helped take our bags out of the boot and smiled.
Of course, we’ve been privy to dozens of attempts to lull us in to all kinds of scams over the previous months, so it wasn’t a huge shock. But when you’re trying to find your feet in a new country, it can sometimes test your patience.
Lao Cai was the town on the Vietnamese side of the border with China, and we were only interested in one thing – getting on an overnight train to Hanoi. We did have to wait several hours in hall, but the time passed fairly quickly.
One thing you notice all over Asia is the amount of card games going on in all sorts of places. In parks, outside cafes, on the street, in the back of vans, and anywhere else there is a flat surface and somewhere to sit. I don’t know if there’s money involved, but I suspect there may be, judging by the crowd some of the games attract. However, it seems the potential exchange of dosh isn’t the sole reason for their curiosity, as five minutes after Lise and I got the Uno cards out in Lao Cao train station, we had a handful of men peering over our shoulders in subtle interest. This promoted a surge of adrenalin, and suddenly I was no longer in a cramped, smelly waiting area in Northern Vietnam. I was taking part in the Uno World Championships Final, in glamorous settings, and my opponent was the infamous crafty French woman, Lise “Draw Four” Haegeli. We played like we’d never played before. It was an epic battle of wills.
I managed to defeat my valiant enemy eventually, and (in my mind) it brought a rapture of applause followed by the throwing of flowers and ladies underwear in my general direction.
A trip back to reality followed, and it was time to take the train to Hanoi.
As we slept in the uber-comfortable cabins of the rocking train, I dreamt of what awaited us in “South East Asia” over the coming month or two. I had visions of smiling women in conical shaped hats, riding their overloaded bicycles of whatever it was they were selling, and pictures of street-side stalls where locals ate the most delicious meals for next to nothing. The dream was so real, and was a compilation of every typical image one associates to the region.
It was thus a very strange sensation when, as I walked through the streets of Hanoi the next day, all of these images found themselves before my very eyes. Dreams had literally become reality.
Hanoi’s old quarter is what most people unknowingly picture when they hear the words “South East Asia”. I spent almost a week wandering the buzzing streets and narrow alleys, and it never got tiresome. It took less than a day to master the traffic, and as the guide book says, I confident stroll in across the street is like parting the Red Sea – it’s like all motorcyclists and pedestrians are plugged in to each other here, and collisions are not part of the programming.
Entering Vietnam also felt like the beginning of a new holiday for Lise and I. The presence of an endless number of tourists was a far-cry from most places in China, where we were quite often the only Westerners within one hundred square kilometres. Given the time of year though (Christmas), we sort of liked being amongst our “own-kind”.
Lise, of course, didn’t speak Vietnamese either (what a total failure with languages she is!), so we were back to not knowing what the hell was going on a lot of the time. Truth be told, I didn’t mind this. One month in China of letting my girlfriend do all the talking for me was beginning to take the toll on my manhood.
Christmas in Hanoi was nothing spectacular. It did of course provide an opportunity for Lise to be introduced to the weird and wonderful “hot Christmas”. Growing up in Australia, the festive period rarely reached below 30 degrees Celsius, and thus afternoons would often be filled with drinking (only once I turned eight) and eating more than one would usually eat in a week. I therefore felt an overwhelming sense of my childhood when we chose to fill our Christmas day afternoon in Hanoi in almost exactly the same way (minus the embarrassing relatives and a trip to the beach). I passed out sometime in the early evening, to the soundtrack of an army of motorbikes tormenting the old city streets. It was strangely hypnotic.
The food in Hanoi was brilliant, and unlike China, easy to find. Tiny street stalls run by chatty old ladies required sitting at colourful kid-size tables and chairs, sprawling out on the road sometimes, giving you a view of the city passing you by (and sometimes almost running you over). 15,000 Dong (€0.60) for a very satisfying and authentically delicious meal banished any concerns over your own safety.
After 7 days of indulgence in this truly charming city, we reluctantly moved on, and began to look forward to probably the big natural attraction of Vietnam – Ha Long Bay.
Although Cat Ba Island lies only a few kilometres from the Vietnamese mainland, it felt like a world away.
Getting to Cat Ba town involved a bus ride across the island, and it was during this trip that I was forced to ask myself the question of whether we’d in fact been transported to Jurassic Park or King Kong Island, or something similar. I spent the 40-minute journey furiously scanning the thick jungle infested hills for signs of angry T-rex’s or humungous black gorillas. I’d decided early on that, if given a choice, I had a preference for King Kong . I’d heard he had a thing for classy, blonde-haired dames, and as luck would have it, the person sitting next to me fitted the description perfectly. Only thing was, I wasn’t entirely confident of her fidelity should Mr Kong choose to kidnap her. After all, she’d already fallen for a big, dark-haired, simple-minded ape before.
All these fears were put to the back of our mind though the following day, when we blindly signed up for a 4-hour jungle trek deep in to the island. No paths. No cosy little snack-stalls on the way. No promises of personal safety. No worries.
What we did get was one non-English speaking local guide wearing ultra-worn Dunlop volleys (no socks) and with a machete in hand. We weren’t sure whether the latter was to clear any unwanted obstructions in our path, or to chop our bodies up in to a thousand pieces in order to feed his family for a year.
We were joined on the trek by another couple (from Europe), and I thought this was great, as if I was to die on this trek, I wanted to take as many people with me as possible.
The first two hours of the trek were a joy to behold, as we passed through lush, moist undergrowth, bursting with animal and plant life (including a few monkeys). We were led by our cannibal guide to the top of a hill, at the top of which we came across the sharpest limestone I’ve ever seen. And boy, have I seen some sharp limestone in my life! (It’s practically a hobby.) Precarious is the best word to describe our balancing act as we moved from one rock to another. To fall over up here meant to cut your hands up pretty bad. We all already had a few cuts and scratches over our arms and hands from it all, and should we not have had good shoes, it would have been hell.
Lise struggling for comfort on the ultra-sharp rocks, whilst our guide
(machete safely between his feet) laughs.
But our guide persisted (with the trusty low-cut Dunlops), and patiently stopped and waited every five metres or so, grinning and laughing as we all made our best attempts to navigate the treacherous terrain, and to catch up with him. Perhaps he wasn’t going to eat us after all.
The final hour of the trek was tough. As I mentioned, we weren’t really on a marked out trail, but rather climbing over massive, sharp rocks, quite often with a 1-2 metre drop to get down. Add the fact that it had been raining the night before, thus making the rocks very slippery, and it slowly began to takes its toll.
For Lise, it was day 1 on the Nepal trek all over again. Her legs had given up, and were filled with jelly (possibly Aeroplane Jelly – the “jellyist” kind!). The last 2 kilometres I carried her on my back like a wounded comrade on the brink of death.*
*This may not actually have happened.
Alas though, we survived yet another death-defying adventure, and at the small village (population about 7, including chickens) at the end of the trek, we were greeted by a feast of Vietnamese dishes, which we promptly devoured whilst planning our next adventure with the lovely couple who had joined us – Boris and Sheza.
The destination was Ha Long Bay. The means of transport , a modern Vietnamese Junk. The occasion – New Years Eve.
For this next part about Ha Long Bay, I want to get the negative aspects out of the way early. It is, unfortunately, an exhaustive list, so bare with me, and try not to gasp and faint as you read over it;
-The weather was undoubtedly shite, but not so bad that we couldn’t see anything.
-The water was a bit chilly.
-I had a slight tingling sensation between my little toe and the toe next to it.
-My beard was too long, and I needed to shave it.
-My kayaking skills were not up to the level of an Olympic Gold Medallist.
-My lungs were not used to the unusually fresh sea-air.
-The captain of our junk was smiling too much.
-I was smiling too much.
It was, as you can see, a real struggle! I hated every minute of it. J
In all seriousness, apart from the weather, I couldn’t have had a nicer couple of days in Ha Long Bay.
It began when we boarded our boat in Cat Ba town. Knowing we’d be spending the night on this thing (New Years at that) out on the bay, and having heard some of the horror stories about other junks out there catering for tourists, those first few minutes were going to be crucial. We did a quick discovery of the boat, and thankfully our shock was not one of horror, but of sheer surprise at how comfortable the amenities were. Two couple, two cabins (with ensuites), and a massive boat to roam over.
A couple of hours after setting off, we were in the water, paddling our tandem kayaks in between, around, and under the many spectacular peaks which rose from the ocean like something out of Jason and the Argonaughts. The “under” part was the most fun (for me anyway), and I imagine there isn’t too many better kayaking places in the world. It’s hard to think otherwise as you drift down a dark tunnel in almost complete darkness, eventually emerging in to a small lagoon with only one entry point, and a secluded beach flanked by towering cliffs of jungle.
Whilst on the subject of deep, dark tunnels, we ventured in to quite an intriguing one on the second day. It involved a bit of an initial struggle to fight our way in (as the current was flowing out of the whole), but once in, we ventured further, Lise darting the flashlight from wall to wall at ridiculous speeds, searching for all sorts of imaginative creatures her mind had convinced her were there. Our boat captain had told us that the tunnel was no less than 200 metres in length. Only 40 metres in, the natural light from the tunnel’s entrance was completely gone, and with a rushing current turning the kayaks around relatively easy, we decided to turn back. I was actually quite keen to go further, but my lovely co-pilot insisted we leave, and I come back on my own. Exploring the cave with others was one thing, but on my own wasn’t an attractive prospect. Don't let the camera flash from the picture above fool you - without it or the torch, it was pitch black.On the final night of 2009, we spent the evening consuming wine, beer, vodka, and good food, and the conversation flowed well once the alcohol was in the veins. Lise was kind enough in the morning to point out that once I’d downed a few cans of Hanoi beer, I began to speak more like an Irishman. What a shame like!
Our captain and his first mate, oblivious to the relevance of the night, started up a card game which continued long in to the night. Anchored in the middle of a large bay means you don’t really expect any visitors to “drop by”. So it confused us all (personally I thought it was the beers deceiving me) when one minute there were three guys playing cards, and then soon after, four. My imagination ran wild – were these guys some sort of man-mermaids (would that be “mermans”)? Or were they in fact stowaways whom the captain had discovered, and then strangely invited to his card game.
Whoever they were, all of them were playing for money, a fact they were attempting, unsuccessfully, to hide from us (gambling is illegal in Vietnam). And the captain was losing big, which lead me to another thought – maybe he’ll get so far behind he’ll have to put the boat in the pot, and we’d wake in the morning with a new captain. Maybe it’d be one of those “merman” guys, and who knows what sort of lives they’d force us to lead as slaves in their underwater city.
(Incidentally, we discovered the reality to be far less, well, silly. The two mysterious visitors lived on a nearby floating fishing village, and they’d come over on a small boat. We visited the fishing farm the next day. Less outrageously amazing I know, but still interesting nevertheless.)
We headed back to Hanoi for a night after Cat Ba Island. We told ourselves it was for the better transport links to the south, where we were headed. But we both knew it because we wanted to spend one more night in the old quarter we had grown to love the week before. Lise said it well: “We haven’t had a chance to say goodbye to it yet.” There isn’t many cities you visit in your life that makes you feel like you need to say good-bye to it.
We ate once more at a street side stall, drank once more at a local bar, and walked once more through the fantastic streets. Once this was done, Lise spent 3 ½ hours cleaning her white rain-jacket with a toothbrush. A fitting end (not sure why though).
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