North to South Express

Continuing my journey South from my previous days in North and Central Vietnam, I explored Hoi An, the Meekong Delta and Ho Chi Minh City.

Hoi An

A shopping mecca, this city is well known for its markets, historic trading houses, and modern day fashion boutique stores. The best value shopping you can do is on tailor made clothing.

There are many tailors offering good prices on any design you would like made with a huge selection of fabrics and can make it in under 24 hours! Very impressive. They will also keep your measurements in file for three years in case you want more made and shipped home.

I could not resist the chance to purchase a new formal ball gown, and the price was a bargain. I gave them a photo of what l wanted and came back the next afternoon to find it all done, and looking beautiful.

On another day in Hoi An, I secured my bike helmet once again and headed onto a ferry to two main islands for a cycle tour. I had the chance to visit three local families and see how they made their living from the land around them.

One family showed us how they spent from 4am to 9pm using dried and dyed reeds from the garden to make floor, bed and table mats. I had a try at it and it was not as easy as it looked!

Another family invited us to sing together after showing us their in home process of making rice wine to sell to the people in their community. This was very impressive in its sustainability. For example the man (who was a one legged veteran – making it more impressive) kept pigs and he used the ‘pigshit gas’ as its locally known to fuel the fires that are used to run his operation!

Lastly, we got a chance to hand make our own rice noodles and enjoy a delicious lunch full of local ingredients.

The best thing was, in all of this, I never fell off the bike! Even when I thought I could pass out from the heat!

Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon

In the early hours of the morning we took a short flight with Vietnam Airlines to Ho Chi Minh City. The city is referred to by many as Saigon, as this is its former name. Since the end of the Vietnam War, the city was renamed after its victorious communist leader, Ho Chi Minh. There are many monuments and images of him throughout Vietnam, as his party still stands in place today.

In HCM City you can visit only a few attractions like the Independence Palace, former state home of the president, and the War Remnants Museum, which is an impressive and informative space to learn about the war history in Vietnam. It is really complex as many other countries have been involved in commanding the country and has left a lot of wounds behind.

I found the museum to be a little one sided but this makes sense as it will have been censored by the government, before publishing. The most striking elements of the museum was the information about the ‘agent orange’ chemical that had been used. It is now considered a war crime and has left many generations of people, severely deformed. I could see this on the street when some people may be passing or begging, and I suspected that they were victims of this.

Aside from these visitor attractions, HCM offers plenty of places to eat and shop, but it is very modern and definitely, for me, not the highlight of the trip.

In about two hours drive from the city you can visit the Meekong Delta. The most South I went, this wetland area offers plenty of boat rides to different islands where you can see different markets, temples and localised farming.

I spent the day visiting a few different islands by boat, and had the opportunity to see local coconuts being shredded up into coconut milk and turned into sweets and wrapped by hand. I did actually get carried away and bought 6 packets for the price of 5! I think I got a bit silly.

I also visited some local people’s garden and tried some of their homegrown fruits, including a Vietnamese Kiwi, that is a local delicacy, and tastes nothing like Kiwi from home! I also had a chance to play a monostring instrument that is traditional there, and much harder to do well then it looks! To finish off, I had a chance to enjoy a traditional wooden row boat ride through the bush before heading back to the city.

Overall, Vietnam was a great chance to dip my toe into Asia. The people have been super friendly; I always felt safe, and appreciated. The holiday was great value and I would happily revisit. In the Meekong Delta you can even take a boat cruise out there onto Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. This could be a lot of fun!

Booked only a week before, after my trip to Israel was cancelled last minute, I decided to have my first go at Asia this month. Vietnam was on offer so I went for it and discovered a crazy and unique way of life with amazing food and very friendly people.

Getting there

The travel to Vietnam was very very long, whilst the flight duration may say 16hrs by the time we had travelled to Heathrow, and waited around in Bangkok and then traveled to the hotel we had stacked up over 24 hrs of travel. I had thought I’d planned out to miss my jetlag but it actually took 3 days of waking up at 3am to get over it.

We flew with Thai Airways which had tight seating but plenty of hospitality from the crew and the aeroplane food was some of the best I have had. On arrival to Hanoi airport, our taxi driver was waiting for us and we got to our hotel in about half an hour, after seeing some of the cityscape lit up at night.

Hanoi

We stayed in a hotel for our first few nights in Hanoi city. The hotel was immediately a relief with a welcome drink on arrival, a porter to carry our bags and a free upgrade to a very nice room. It was all going well, until my 3am visit to the bathroom…

That is when I discovered scuttling across the floor, the biggest cockroach I have ever seen. When you are already sat on the toilet half way through a wee too, the only choice is to throw your legs in the air! I found myself doing toilet balances at 3am to avoid it. Unsure what to do I spent the rest of the night with a light on unsure what to do and worried if I fell asleep I would wake up with a cockroach on my face. It took me a few days to get past this fear and just accept the potential for creepy crawlies around me.

Venturing out of the hotel into the city was another experience of taking your life in your hands. The traffic is some of the craziest I have ever seen. There is no pavement due to mopeds being parked all over it and to cross the road you must do what the locals do and just walk slowly and confidently over (like you’re sleepwalking) and hope nothing hits you! The roads here are so congested that they even have a street that is famous for a train that comes through as well as all the pedestrians and bikes and ends up about an inch from your face!

We cautiously took the steps from our hotel down to the famous lake which thankfully is pedestrianised around the edge and began to explore our first attractions.

First on the agenda was a few impressive buddhist temples, and also the St Joseph Cathedral. This gothic cathedral looks so strange with all the little asian shacks around it and motorbikes everywhere. I couldn’t go in unfortunately but I imagined it was similar to other catholic ones I have seen. A little bit of Europe in the middle of this crazy South East Asia whirlwind. I later found out from my guide that the french actually governed Vietnam for centuries and is the reason for some catholism here and that they now use alphabetic letters instead of chinese characters. Something to be grateful for as a tourist!

Another day in Hanoi took us on our four hour bus ride to Halong Bay, the famous world wonder that is an absolutely huge bay and once a very important port full of huge bouldering islands. We had a relaxing overnight boat cruise here where the service was amazing and we enjoyed an impressive selection of seafood and bar service on a boat all to ourselves in our small group of nine.

There are many local caves on the islands to explore and we ventured into one, and then towards dusk I had the pleasure of exploring an empty and calm section of the bay by kayak. The only thing that was man made around me was a small floating pearl farm where oysters were floating below growing pearls for fine jewellrey.

At night all the boats have to gather in one part of the bay so you can enjoy the sounds of distant karaokes and good times from your neighbours all around you.

We also got the opportunity to see some amazing charitable organisations on our route from Halong Bay. Two groups of crafters that were helping their community by making things to sell, one was doing it for the environment and the other for the disabled. I will touch more on this in a later blog.

Back in Hanoi, we had one more opportunity to look around. We tried for a third time to see the train on train street, but this time at night. The train schedules on the internet were all wrong, so we got there badly timed and when we tried to wait the police made us leave, even though we were half way through a paid meal. Overall, I would say only go to train street if you are happy to waste a lot of time and maybe only see the tracks.

Something that was well worth it for only about £6 and 1 hour was the Thang Long water puppet show by the lake. This show was a traditional artform telling folk stories of Vietnam in their language and with singing, using puppets within a big pool of water.

I wasn’t sure if it would be entertaining enough, but it was actually very funny at times and the show somehow managed to use smoke and fireworks on the water aswell which I dont even understand how. The best part may have been the music though. There was an orchestra of local folk musicians playing traditional and strange instruments and all in vietnamese formal wear. Overall it was super impressive!

Hue

Writing this section of the blog at 4am from a twelve hour sleeper train from Hanoi to Hue. Sharing a bunkbed in a room with three other travellers, I feel quite at home and I am enjoying the bumpy swaying of the carriage more than expected.

At night I can see the reflections of the train in nearby waters and marshlands and the odd distant light of a farmer or two working in the fields and by day the scenery becomes many small villages and plenty of rain!

The train has different classes, we are in a 4 berth, but there are 6 berth and then soft reclining seats and hard seats (for those true hardasses – literally). My room is quite good with a little mattress, space under the bed and a table with a selection of sweets.

The only thing that has been a horror is as expected, the bathroom situation. There is either a squat room for guess what.. squatting, or there is a western style toilet. The toilet started off okay but now I can tell you that by 4am it is not okay. Its a horror show. I am trying to figure out how I can not pee now until 11am. Note to self, must purchase a she-wee for travels!

Once we got to Hue and freshened up at our hotel, with an umbrella in hand, we were guided to the ancient citadel. Hue was historically the imperial capital and home of the kings of Vietnam. It still has the 21 metre thick walls surrounding it and many of the original buildings either still exist or have been rebuilt or are in the process of being rebuilt after collapsing from weather or war bomb damage.

The site is very pretty and a bit of a maze to walk around if you do not have a guide. It is mostly an outside visit except for a few locations where you can visit inside after slipping off your travelling shoes. I Particularly enjoyed the king’s gardens with many bonsai trees and bright green foliage. Obviously, due to all the rain, but green is my favourite colour so I’m okay with that!

The stories about the kings were interesting too. Kings were seen as Gods by the people, but for many centuries the kings were actually puppets for the french to put their influence over Vietnam. The kings ranged from 7 year old boys to a man that went from being a king to a french pilot. So random!

Later in the evening I had dinner with a local family that had been there for generations and the lady’s grandfather had been a direct servant of the king. The family now are well off in the area but still cannot afford to travel much and still work very hard. It is becoming apparent how hard people in Vietnam work to make a minimal living.

The next day in Hue, we ventured around the surrounding countryside and the town centre by motorbike. This thrilling experience was one I will never forget I imagine, it was an adreline rush full of beauty and culture. As I rode pillion to a Vietnamese man named (‘kern’) I explored a king’s final resting place, a local fresh market (where it is so fresh that the animals are still alive), and a local monk community. What a thrill!

Next day we move on to the South to Hoi An… in my part 2 blog.