It was a bit of a rush, though I didn’t know it yet. I was at the Vietnam-China border at Lao Cai-Hekou trying to figure out which line to enter. At last I did (it took about five minutes) and that was when the trouble began. Three of them peered over and through my passport as though it was missing something. They kept flipping and looking and a Chinese couple came behind me and the officers gladly dropped my passport in favour of something easier. Everyone and anyone, it seemed, could get ahead of me, so I took the liberty of redirecting those walking up to ‘my’ window to another locale when at last a supervisor showed up. He flipped as they did and I showed his where the Vietnamese entry stamp was as well as the visa and the ID page. He didn’t like that the passport was not crisp and neat, but you trying wearing it on your body in the tropics and see how well it holds up. At last I was through Vietnamese customs, and that was supposed to be the easy part.
The Chinese customs officers were every bit professionals. They knew where to go, what to look for, and so on. This did not make their processing of my entry and faster, however, just more thorough. I had nothing to hide, so I wasn’t too worried, but it crossed my mind that if for some reason they refused entry I would be stuck in no-man’s land between two countries I had no ability to be in. Thankfully, this was not an issue as I finally got my visa stamped and moved onto to have my baggage x-rayed. They weren’t concerned with anything except for my books, which I had to take out and let them flip through. I know that the Chinese Lonely Planet is banned and often confiscated from travelers because its map draws Tibet too large and counts Taiwan as its own country but otherwise I guess they were looking for anything political or offensive. I had neither and at last I was in China, standing on the street, and looking at a bewildering display of Chinese characters and buildings surrounding the chaos on the streets.
Now what?
Bus station. Find out when I can get the overnight to Kunming. Finding that, or anyone who spoke English, was not as easy as I’d expected – and I expected a challenge. In the end I did not find an English speaker but did find the bus. It was 5:50 and the overnight bus left at 6. And she would not accept either dollar or dong despite being on the border. She also had a 6:30 bus but waved in a negative way that I assumed meant it was full or not a sleeper. So, ten minutes to get my money changed. I failed. I couldn’t find anywhere to change and every time I asked a local where I was pointed in a different direction. Finally I went into a store (one of many I’d tried) and a woman came with to show me where and then saw the bank closed. So the store did the exchange for me and I ran back to the bus station as fast as possible, making it at 6:25. I had the money, I had no breath, and still the woman shook her hands that I couldn’t take the bus. Then, seeing I’d run and gone to great effort, pointed me towards the bus with my money. Kunming? He nodded and asked me for, I assumed, a ticket.
I pointed at the window which accomplished nothing and then took out the money so he understood I had yet to pay for it. And they found me a spot on the bus for 120 Yuan, at the very back, a big bed for 5 people with room for three comfortably. You haven’t been properly welcomed to China until a 70 year old man is dangerously close to spooning you or else playing footsy as you hug your backpack in terror. But I made it, I passed my first ordeal and somehow found sleep that night. I awoke in the morning as the bus emptied in Kunming and pulled myself off the bed, off the bus, and figured out that it was bus “san” (three) to the place I wanted to go. When I got on the bus, I let the driver know assuming that if I missed it, she’d let me know. There were only seven of us on the bus and I sat at the very front trying to follow our progress on the map. And soon I realized we’d passed it. She looked back at me and waved her finger in a circle in disdain and I assumed meant we’d be there on the way back. But twenty minutes later we were on the same roads back as we’d taken. I figured out where we were at one stop and resolved to get off – it was walkable. But she waved me to sit until the next stop and at last, at last, I found a hostel.
Yes, China was to prove a lot more difficult – and fun – to get around than other countries in Asia. At times, this would be frustrating, but the necessity of communication and lack of English means I’m hoping to learn a bit of Chinese in my one month here. Already I’m learning some of the characters as I go from place to place and I can count to one hundred rather shakily. I don’t expect to be speaking it, but I’m hoping to at least make getting around more fluid. Anyway. There I was on Jin Bi Lu in a fairly good part of town and my hostel was right there, The Hump. It was a good place and I really didn’t realize how much I miss the hostel experience as a solo traveler. I met up with a German guy named Grieg that morning and over a shake at the hostel met a girl from New Zealand named Aimee. The three of us wandered the town, heading north to the university district and Green Lake park, then getting lost as we made our way south to the Bamboo Temple bus.
It was a 45 minute ride out of Kunming to the Bamboo Temple and 20 Yuan ($3) return, but worth it and the $1 entry. It was an expansive temple filled with clay and papier-mâché figures. It is famous for two things, one is a temple whose walls are lined with surfing Buddhas riding the waves on various animals. They are not painted, however, they are clay and project from the wall like a 3D movie. The other is a small room that is filled with over a hundred clay figures of ordinary people from all walks of life, sculpted in fine detail and very lifelike indeed. After this, we returned to Kunming and decided that since Yunnan is one area of China with a large Muslim population (esp. Kunming) we should get a muslim meal. We finally found a place listed in the Lonely Planet as having dozens of muslim restaurants and found one, but we ate there and the food was delicious even if we ordered far, far too much. We were treated like VIPs there, with two girls standing over the table ready to answer to our most random whim, top up glasses, and whatever we may require – or not require.
The next day I took another excursion with the Grieg and three Israeli girls staying in my room – they’d come to the table and invited us to go with them the day before. We went to Xi Shan (she-shan), in the hills on a lake outside Kunming, and it definitely was not worth it. The pollution here is unbelievable, honestly. The smog here – in the countryside – is worse than Jakarta, worse than LA, worse than anywhere I’ve ever seen. The lake itself, which apparently hosts a lot of heavy industry on its eastern banks, is full of algae and a toxic shade of green. We were on the west bank (with Israelis, hahaha!) in the hills and maybe the pollution was good in that we couldn’t SEE what was causing it. We climbed the hills passing many-a-stall on the roads and paths and ate our picnic lunch up near Beauty Peak. Then it started to rain a bit and we went up to the pagoda at the top then back down and returned to Kunming.
That night, we went out to the ‘bar area’ to see Kunming’s famous nightlife. The girls had already been here and loved it but when we returned there was little open and still less happening. That didn’t stop us from sitting in a busier place and grabbing a drink and some food – not to mention sitting on the steps of the police station drinking a really cheap and awful bottle of vodka. Before long, it was time to call it a night. And the next morning, I was on a bus to Dali with another Israeli who I’d traveled around with yesterday, a guy named Ori. The girls were staying another day in Kunming (which I probably could’ve used but at the same time my time is limited) and Grieg is heading south rather than north so we said goodbye and made our way to the bus station. I am excited to find myself somewhere new in a country that is still new to me.
After the three hour bus from Halong Bay back to Hanoi, there was just enough time for me to find some mosquito repellent and dinner before boarding a night train to Lao Cai, a city on the Vietnam-China border. I met a Dutch girl named Laura at the train station and was relieved that I would indeed be with backpackers until we were separated at the train station by the guide. And then I was grouped with a retired Kiwi vet and his wife and their friends. Whom I then was separated from shortly after to take a 'soft sleeper', meaning only four beds instead of the usual six. The rest of my car was Vietnamese but aside from talking loudly they had little bearing on my train ride. It was comfortable, fast, and I was refreshed suitably by the time the train stopped in Sapa that morning. Sapa, my last stop in Vietnam, an old French hill station which, like Dalat - another old French hill station - would prove to be one of the highlights of Vietnam. I was there for three days of trekking through rice paddies, mountains, and minority villages and, unlike the trip to Halong Bay, I was not to be disappointed in any regard.
The first stop was the rather posh (by backpacker standards, especially) Sapa Summit Hotel to drop our bags, have breakfast, and meet our trekking group. The group: Laura, myself, two Belgian girls who had the weekend off from volunteering at a Hanoi orphanage, and an older Montreal couple. We were, in all respects, extremely lucky. Or at least I was. They were a great group and we had a spectacular couple days, but I'm getting ahead of myself. We set off around 9 AM from the hotel, stopping at the market to pick up a snack and some water for the trek. Our group was more than simply those listed above plus Doong, our guide, however. We were also accompanied by several girls and women from the village where we would be lunching, Lau Chai. While this sounds really tacky and fake, and certainly they have ulterior motives in guiding you down, it was actually a great experience to walk down with these sure-footed guides and talk quite easily in English with them about life. In fact, I would go so far as to say that far from being really bad and detracting from the day, their presence made the morning walk all the better. They did not, until the end, ask or even mention us buying anything, they just walked, talked, joked, and helped people less sure-footed than them.
That's twice I've mentioned their sure-footedness and it has to be seen to be believed. While we were covered to our knees (and for some varying patches on butts and arms) in mud their feet were always impeccably clean - and they were wearing sandles! I thought I did pretty well on the track, especially when the locals commented on it, but in comparison to them I was a tripping, clumsy fool. From the market, we walked down the road from Sapa and eventually turned off and plunged headlong into the rice paddies. Sapa is on one side of a valley and mountains framed the opposite side of the valley which were themselves framed and accented in wisps of cloud. It being rainy season, the sky was not blue, but this misty spread set before us was not only refreshingly cool but perfect for adding some mystique to the area. We passed local kids riding water buffalo as they foraged in the mists, villagers making the trek up to the Sapa markets laden with goods or empty, and the endless undulating and weaving path through and above the valley offered heaven-worthy vistas. I had taken over 200 photos by midday (though luckily for you, I have filtered many repetitive views and alternate angles, leaving only what I consider the best).
We made the village in plenty of time and found ourselves sitting around before and after lunch, about the only complaint I could conjure for the trek. It really is set for all types and so I found it neither demanding nor lengthy, finishing as we were quite early in the days. But lunch itself was great as were all our meals, and though I had no use for it, I bought a trinket from Mor, the girl I'd spent the most time talking with. All of us agreed the girls and women (one older one named Sue, I called her 'ba' which means grandma) were worth the price of a few handicrafts and no serious haggling. And then another couple kilometres to the village of Ta Van where we stayed in a village homestay and ate a delicious dinner, chatted around the table, and discussed the extremely large butterflies that are abundant in the hills. We also looked around the town and riverbank a bit until it finally started raining hard and we retreated indoors.
The next day was quite short. We didn't get going until 10:00 or so and were finished by 2:00. This is somewhat impressive as the trails were completely slick and every single person - save for the minority guides - fell at some point in various degrees of severity. Even I had a good slip a couple metres from a high path to a low one, though I managed to surf the mud down in a shaky and low centre-of-gravity surf crouch. It was also raining a lot and my poncho, well, they're really only good for one wear and don't travel well, so let's just say that it was difficult to ascertain which holes were for arms, heads, of due to ripping zippers and stretching backpacks. I enjoyed my shower back in the hotel after a nice lunch and, quite frankly, it's the nicest room I've had to myself since leaving home. I suppose the apartments in Manly would beat it, but I was sharing. The hike had been somewhere between 12-16km and while it wasn't much, the clean up was well overdue and appreciated.
Finally, the third day of the trek. It started a bit randomly as there was no guide around in the morning, but soon Doong was leading Laura, myself, and some Chinese tourists down to Cat Cat (or is it Cat Ba?) village, a tourist trap in comparison to our last two days. It was a nice walk though, in weather that made me want to walk all the way to Fanxipan mountain, the tallest in SE Asia. An almost perfect blue sky, bright sun, and an amiable breeze made it a pleasant though warm walk into the valley. Laura and I also had another chance to chat with the girls we'd walked with a couple days ago before leaving and soon we were at a three-waterfall junction at the bottom of the gorge. Then I wandered off at the guide's suggestion that I "go up and take a look" and it just kept getting better and better so I kept going up. Not to mention I wasn't sure if the group would be coming back this way so I didn't want to backtrack down and then back up again. Eventually I came across three boys sitting under a tree beside a mudhole dug into the mountain and filled to the brim with water buffalo. I took some photos and it was here, at a corner in the path, I decided reluctantly to go and see what had become of my group.
I made it all the way to the waterfall without seeing anyone, which left me with two options. They had either taken my path but turned off on a dirt track I'd noticed running along the rice terraces, or taken another path. I ran into another guide and asked about Doong at which point he let me know that Doong had left a message for me to catch up with them along the dirt path. This may sound worrying, but it was not even lunch, a beautiful day, and I knew exactly where I was and how to get back so it wasn't in the least. I contemplated exploring on my own but then decided I'd better let the group know where I was so I caught up with them just as they were boarding motorcycles to drive back up to Sapa. Doong waited for me and I went back with him, had lunch, and then my Sapa experience was over. I wanted to rent a motorbike and explore until the bus arrived at 5:30 to return to Lao Cai but discovered that I could get an earlier bus and - maybe - make it to the Chinese border with enough time to catch an overnight bus to Kunming. It was 30 days to my flight home on August 5th and I wanted as much time as possible for China, so I chanced the 3:30 bus back, waving bye to Vietnam and some great times in this beautiful country and, I felt, to the end of a saga: my adventures backpacking Southeast Asia. China awaited and it was an adventure all its own. I had no idea just how much of one it would prove to be...
It was a foreboding start. I sat on the street 40 minutes after the bus was supposed to pick me up for a 3-day, 2-night tour of Halong Bay. This is not unusual in Asia, but is extremely frustrating. The amount of time wasted waiting around that could instead have been spent getting other things done (like this blog) or, more often (and more truthfully), sleeping is criminal. No bus showed up, rather a man walked by on the street and asked me if I was going to Halong Bay today. Yes? OK, then follow him. We didn’t walk to where I’d booked the ticket, but rather to one of the ever-present Sinh Cafes that have spread through Hanoi and indeed southeast Asia like the bubonic plague. And there, waiting for a bus, was Nathan, my kiwi friend that I seemed fated to travel with. Whenever we parted paths, purposefully or not, we always found each other again. And now here we were, of all the places to book a Halong Bay trip, on all the days, not only in the same city, but on the same boat. Or so we thought. After they herded us onto a bus half an hour later (bringing total waiting time to one hour 20 minutes) the bus drove several feet then stopped. A woman ran on and told me I had to get off the bus. And then another twenty minutes I was on another bus bound for Halong Bay with, I imagined, the group I would be boating with. I should’ve known better; Nathan was not among them.
Indeed, the organization at Sinh Café exists at an unprecedented level of neglect. It is probably the most fantastically disorganized but still functioning thing I have ever witnessed. We arrived at the Halong City harbour where we waited 15 minutes in a sea of people coming and going and general confusion before being herded onto boats. Again, I was separated from the people I’d made friends with on the three hour journey from Hanoi and put on a boat with yet more strangers and some familiar faces, Nathan among them as well as an obnoxious American I’d SCUBA dived with in Nha Trang. Then we learned that contrary to the itinerary as given, we would not be sleeping on the boat that night. We’d be staying in the hotel. And so we cruised through the beautiful karst landscape of Halong Bay and on to Cat Ba Island where all of us – except for Nathan and the American – were instructed to get off. Apparently Nathan would be sleeping on the boat that night while the rest of us wouldn’t. I don’t think I can put into words the sheer amount of confusion and disarray felt by both us and our “guides”. Yes, plural, they changed from day to day and boat to boat so that nobody ever knew what was going on. If you were going to run a criminal organization and wanted to be at the top with your minions having no idea of your identity or evil intentions, Sinh Café (which I would soon learn was, in fact, a criminal organization) had the model perfected.
So I didn’t see much of Nathan in the end, unfortunately. But for all the mess I was lucky enough to find myself with a pretty great group. A nice couple from England and three really cool English guys with whom I spent most of my time. We got to our hotel on Cat Ba (not as advertised) and had the evening free to explore the town. We did just that and had some fresh beer which had far-too-high an aluminum content to satisfy the Alzheimer’s guidelines and a pretty early night. We had to be checked out of the hotel by 7:30 the next morning for our 3-hour trek to the top of some of the karst pillars. The morning came with some really bad (and chilled) pancakes served with honey that, I suspect, had been mixed with soy sauce and had bananas tucked between them. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; at least there was no rice or water spinach. And then our trek. Our guide wasn’t much of a guide at all. He did bring us up the hill but left many in the dust as he set a new speed record for the trail all the while going incommunicado. We stopped at one point and he told us to continue to the top and then come back down. We did.
The view from the top was beautiful, which was no surprise, as we’d been treated to some amazing glimpses of the landscape on the way up. It was not especially challenging, though the heat and particularly the humidity were a bit much. And then back down to find our guide was not where we’d left him nor anywhere to be found, but we made our way on our own with the other group’s guide, by now soaked in sweat, and waited for lunch. Our three hour trek had been just over one and we had some time to kill before getting taken back to Cat Ba. We returned and then set out right away for the beach as the day had grown ever hotter, bypassing Beach 1 in favour of the more secluded Beach 2. Both had pounding waves and the day was spent playing in the surf and stretching out on a towel that, inevitably, was placed to close to the water and had to be moved back as the crashing tide came in. And then back to the pier.
We were supposed to be on a boat by 4:00, but arrived with no guide or boat to get on and watched them all sail away. We were left on the dock alone without explanation or guide for over an hour, left to fend off the women selling drinks and Oreo cookies for far too much money. 5:00 and one of our company’s boats arrived, but the guide on that boat told us it was not for our use. When asked what was going on with us, he neither knew nor cared to know or look up anything. Could he call and find out? Could he even stop to answer a question? No. Oh, we got in his way. It had a been a long day, a lot of waiting, and they had our passports, these unorganized and unmitigated clods. He wasn’t going anywhere until we had some answers, or that was the theory we had. Of course, if you’re not willing to really follow it up, then yes, he was going somewhere. So we let him go away, the only man who might’ve had the power to answer why we were left high and dry.
It was almost another hour before another boat arrived – by now, we’d been sitting in the middle of nowhere for two hours after we were supposed to be aboard. Were we supposed to be aboard this? Nobody was sure and then one man rudely waved us on as if quite perturbed to have to pick us up. Did he have our passports? Another, grumpier wave. Passport? ID? We knew he understood but just increasingly annoyed waves and dirty looks. Where’s my passport? Then he practically spit on me and turned away in disgust, as if asking if they had been given our passport from the hotel was the most unreasonable question ever. By now, as you might have guessed, I had about had it with this company and these people. With being treated like a virus instead of a customer. With being lied to. With being scammed. With being ignored and treated like I was an idiot. I took the small corner left of my over-priced Oreo and threw it at him. Yup - not my most shining moment. But he was paying attention again.
And then he was shouting and spitting and I was demanding my passport and he was calling me every name in the book and then grabbing a piece of wood. I stood and looked up at him on the boat and asked if he was going to hit me with it. And finally, word of someone that spoke English – a guide? – coming to the boat. Fine, I’d sort it out with her. She was having a perfectly good conversation in English but when asked by one of the English guys about our passports, she suddenly lost the ability to communicate. Great. While I don’t defend losing my temper (nor do I really regret it, if I am to be really honest – though I am embarrassed about the oreo), you have to understand the amount we had been and were being jerked around. That we had been given little of what we’d been promised and paid for. And that there is a scam here where they ‘keep’ your passport for a couple of days and return you a decent fake of it, meanwhile selling the original. You, most likely, don’t notice until the airport. And pretty much all of us were concerned that this was precisely why we were so steadfastly ignored when the question of passports came up.
Regardless, we were able to ascertain from this woman (eventually) that we were on the right boat and that they had my passport somewhere. Not really good enough, but as good as we were going to get. At least it seemed like the hotel had gotten it to the boat, though no, they couldn’t show me MY passport. And finally, 15 minutes later, our guide arrived. The man I’d confronted, who then confronted me with a stick, had been glaring daggers at me the whole time not to mention complaining to anyone who’d listen. I have little doubt he never mentioned threatening me with a board or being a rude and arrogant $@#^%&. The guide had the nerve to lecture me before having heard anything from our side. Apparently I have to respect him but he doesn’t have to return the favour. A while after that was dealt with, I sat the guide down and told him exactly what had prompted our collective annoyance and my angry response. And then, easy as pie (except for an eye-roll from our captain), he finally showed me my passport. Why, oh why, couldn’t they have just done that when we asked?
We had enough time to kayak 40 minutes (again not the three hours paid for) before it got dark and then left only to realize we were missing the English couple. We picked them up and had a good night on the boat with some of the new people. I partied with a Dutch couple who were very nice as well as Hazel and Alice (two English girls), who were likewise nice and good fun, too. Of course, it’s difficult to party when beer is so expensive, but we made the most of it and a cigar the Dutch guy had. And then our final day, which was supposed to include a swim, a climb up Monkey Island (some were told, not me), and who knows what else, but only included breakfast and a very slow ride back to Halong City. And then, a few hours in Hanoi after a pretty decent lunch and a crowded ride back before I was aboard a sleeper train to Sapa. In retelling this, I was forced to underscore the negative aspects of this company’s tour but if you put aside being lied to, scammed, and maltreated, the actual area itself was terrific and worth at least two days. Unfortunately, I think most of the companies are equally corrupt, so I’m left without someone to recommend, but I hope that if you do get here you’ll not be stuck with some North Vietnamese people endeavouring to keep stereotypes of extreme rudeness alive while undertaking to ruin your trip. Whether they succeed or not is up to you and I.
As my clothes were finally finished in Hoi An, it was time to start thinking about my plans for Northern Vietnam. It was already June 30, and not only did I want to maximize my time in China (I’m allowed 30 days all of which I want to use), but my visa for Vietnam expired on the July 10. As I sat and plotted, I came to the stark realization that I didn’t have time to see everything I wanted to in northern Vietnam. So great had the south been that I was out of time and I hadn’t even crossed the DMZ border to the north. I can’t imagine how I would’ve traveled this country in 2 weeks. So it was that I took the morning bus to the nearby city of Hue, a city with emperors’ tombs, walled citadels, concubine housing, pagodas, and the Perfume River. Arriving just before lunch, my first order of business was getting an evening ticket out to Hanoi – as much as there was to see in the city, I was confident I could use my travel skills to get a taste in an afternoon. Overnight busses – booked. Trains – booked. So my options were spending a whole extra day here or a plane for $30 more than the train. With plane ticket in hand, I set out to unravel Hue’s secrets in time for dinner.
On so short a schedule, the best bet was a driver, and I found one for 40,000 ($2.75) to take me to the citadel, pagoda, and one of the tombs. The citadel: a massive enclave of temples, homes, gardens, and areas once forbidden to the public now have the gates thrown open (for 55,000) to explore. Where that money is going is anybody’s guess, it certainly isn’t being spent on maintenance. The place is crumbling all around, overgrown with weeds in many areas and restricted in others. Some of the key areas (Queen Mother’s House) are pristine, and to be fair, parts ARE under restoration, or at least there’s scaffolding to give that appearance. It is surrounded by two walls and two moats, too. It’s funny to think they went to so much effort to protect it and now can’t even be bothered to keep it up.
Next stop: The Pagoda. About 4km from the city sitting on a hill overlooking the Perfume River and looking like the Tower of Babel or perhaps the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was worth a quick stop, especially as it’s free, but nothing to write home about in more than two sentences. The final major destination, and one in which I had to argue to get included on the itinerary (he claimed we’d not agreed on the tomb), bringing total cost to 60,000 was the tomb of Tu Duc. En route, we passed a bunch of incense makers rolling sticks of aromatic elixir. The tomb itself was beautiful. It was littered with lakes, ponds, and streams, and had separate tombs for the Emperor, his wives, concubines, and other affiliates. It is essentially a large and elaborate hillside garden dedicated to the emperor. By himself. He died just over twenty years after it was finished.
And then the night flight to Hanoi, arriving in the city proper around 11:30. Arriving on a fairly dark street in front of a Sinh Café somewhere in the Old Quarter. It was tempting to simply take him up on his offer of $12/night and be settled, but I had until midnight to come back and I thought to shop around a bit even though most guesthouses, hotels, and even shops and restaurants were closed. And sure enough, $8 a couple blocks away. It was still June 30 and I needed three days each for a cruise of Halong Bay and a trek in Sapa, but before I could do either of those, I had to book a flight to Bangkok and nevermind exploring Hanoi. So I stayed in Hanoi the next day, explored the Old Quarter, and discovered that I couldn’t afford Hong Kong in any way. $300 for a flight there, nevermind over to Kunming after. This was something I’d been looking forward to since I decided to go to China, up there with the Great Wall, Three Gorges Dam, and Yangtze River.
But I took a little solace in the fact that this meant I definitely DID have time to do both Halong Bay and Sapa fully, and so I booked a trip to Halong Bay for the next morning, spending one night on the junk and one in a hotel and three days in total. I return to Hanoi at 4:30 on July 4th and catch an overnight train that night to Lao Cai where I begin my trek in Sapa, finishing on the 7th and catching an overnight bus into China and Kunming. I will be absolutely exhausted, I have little doubt, upon my arrival in China. But I wasn’t there yet, I still had to explore Hanoi some more, and I did just that after also booking a seat for the water puppet show that evening. Then I discovered the best Bun Cha in all of Vietnam, where Hang Mam becomes Hang Bac (C3 for LP readers). It’s right on the corner, and they barbecue what are basically meatballs (they taste like rissoles) and thin-sliced pork (like bacon) and throw them into a brown almost citrusy broth (lemongrass?) with vermicelli and some greens and mint. I’m not a soup lover, never have been, but I had two bowls of the filling stuff.
I had dinner sometime later in Cam Chi, the food street of Vietnam, and was the only white person there in the hour I looked and sat. I thought it amazing there weren’t more foreigners and was proud of myself until I got my meal and discovered that being a foreigner, at this particular restaurant anyway, meant getting the worst pieces of chicken, greens, and not getting one of the dishes you asked for. I didn’t even want to pay but what can you do? Indicate displeasure and then off on a cyclo for the water puppets. They were really good, mostly because of the traditional music which was in danger of stealing the show. The puppets themselves were cute and at times, despite a language barrier, had everyone laughing out loud. And then another short night in the hotel and I was off yet again for Halong Bay. It was already a tiring two days and the busy part hadn’t even started yet!
The road was perilous. It writhed and undulated around mountains as though the pavement itself was trying to shake us from its spine. The irony is that out the window, this vengeful road is nowhere to be seen. Only the earth falling away below is visible, ever waiting to swallow you whole. Dalat is situated 1500m above sea level and as any physicist will tell you, that's a long way to fall. Almost 5000 ft for the metrically challenged and for those who've been up flying with me, about 5 times the height I generally fly around the city. The driver would let the bus accumulate speed to the maximum possible turning speed, holding down the brake just enough to keep us on the road. An hour and a half of this and there was more of the brake pad in the air than on the wheels, so acrid that even the driver couldn't ignore it and pulled over. 15 miuntes overlooking the abyss while they dumped cool water from a mountain stream onto the brakes and then we were back on the bus, still not using the engine to slow our mad rush to the bottom. It was only a matter of time, I knew, before our brakes would fail entirely. I just hoped that it would be somewhere near a runaway lane or where we wouldn't have too far to fall.
Although I'd brought a book to read and was quite tired due to a lack of sleep there was no closing my eyes. The valley floor materialized in the distance and the brake pads were vapourizing once more and I watched intently in the hope we would reach it. As fast as we seemed to be moving, the valley seemed agonizingly far but finally we turned one last corner and there was no longer a dizzying drop out the window. I was going to make it to Nha Trang, a city on the coast of Vietnam, after all. I arrived with Nathan, the Kiwi I'd met up in Dalat and a couple other girls we'd met on the bus and began the hunt for a place to stay. The first thing we noticed were how aggressive the touts are here. Where others would take a "no" or two, they'd eventually leave you alone. Here, short of ripping them off their bikes and introducing them to a left and right, they will stalk you no matter how much you ask, demand, and yell. After all, they want to claim the commission for herding you in to a hotel even if you did your level best to shake them and ignore and do the opposite of everything they said.
Nathan and I checked into a place called Sunflower Guesthouse, quite central and $4/night each. We had the worst meal I'd had in some time at a place that had relatively decent and cheap beer, explored the city, and I booked myself on a SCUBA dive for the next day. Nha Trang is pretty well known as the place to dive in Vietnam, and while not comparing with other dives, it was well worth the price. For $45, I had lunch and three dive sites and saw my first octopus! Finally!! I have been wanting to see an octopus since I first started diving and there, where I least expected it, an octopus left the shelter of the rock and swam off, quite a big one. We dove off an island not far from land at three sites, Madonna Rock (my favourite site), Pipe Beach (home of many many pipe fish, relatives of the seahorse), and Moray Beach (famous for Frog Fish and where I saw my octopus). On the dive I met a nice couple from Melbourne and after dinner they invited me back to their five star hotel for a swim. I didn't turn them down.
One more day wandering the beaches and relaxing around Nha Trang and we were off on a night bus to Hoi An twelve hours north. Hoi An is also a beach town, but more importantly it's famous for the sheer number of world renowned tailors at quite reasonable prices. So after getting off the bus at 7:30 in the morning, checking into the Grassland Hotel (equally far from everything, but beautiful rooms and free bike rental) I was tailor shopping. The hotel gave me a free ride into town, or rather, the tailor "Blue" did, and I checked them out. My first inclination was to simply get prices and start shopping around, but I quickly realized this was more complicated than a simple "a suit costs x" and moreover, I had no idea what I wanted. What colour? Black? Gray? Brown? Stripes? Even if different fabric cost different amounts, how could I compare prices when I didn't even know what fabric to look at. And so I spent over an hour looking through magazines and realizing that I definitely wanted a gray suit as well as a black one. And I thought a brown one would be nice too after seeing them in the catalogue.
Finally, I'd decided on three suits and styles and therefore fabrics after a lot of comparison and gleaning what knowledge I could from Ms. Yum Yum, who ran the store with a sister and a few other friendly girls. I got a price from her, quite reluctantly, and then went on the town. I got a really good price from Nhu Trang - the owner came to see me personally. I didn't feel so confident there, although I had no reason not to. She certainly told me of some things to be wary of with other tailors, and then I went comparing some more. Another tailor seemed quite good and I'm somewhat convinced I could've gotten a great gray suit from. It gave me some confidence that after our chat and picking out some materials to price out, and when I was about to leave, she wanted to assure me of the quality and brought a suit jacket out. It was one she'd done for her husband, in gray, and - I quietly noticed - the same material that she'd picked out for me. As well, there was an Australian couple in the store who swore by her and said this was their fourth time here. And she offered, reluctantly, to match the price I'd gotten from the other tailor. I probably would've stayed there, truth be told, but for two things: 1) I really didn't think her black fabric was anywhere near as good as at Blue. 2) I couldn't remember the design for the black suit I liked - quite unique.
So back to Blue, where not only could she not match the price, but she realized she'd made a mistake in her math and couldn't give me the price she'd quoted. Perhaps a wiser man would've left at this point and gone to the tailor with a much better price who was either honest enough to pick me out a suit the same as her husband's or devious enough to let me fill in the blanks on my own. But Blue had the design, it had better material for the black and brown suits, it had people who I could communicate with a bit better, and she had the design for the black suit I wanted. I don't want to get an average suit, I want a nice, quality, tailored one. So I stayed with Blue and while it took a few days and fittings (the Aussies I'd met, who admittedly didn't look that savvy, said the other woman always got it right the first time), in the end everything turned out exactly as I'd hoped it would and I'm very excited to wear these clothes at home in a not-so-sweaty environment. And more importantly, I'm pretty sure the extra I paid was worth the extra attention to detail, the quality, and the experience.
Enough about suits and clothes, though. While my tailoring was never far from my mind the whole time and while I was in and out time and again throughout my stay, there is much much more to Hoi An than tailors. The old town is exceptional, authentic, and alive today as ever. Towards the end of the year, it is transformed and more specifically submerged as the water level rises 3m and motorbikes are kept in attics while boats become the primary mode of transport. Families move upstairs and the entire town bears only the vaguest resemblance to what it is. The famous Japanese An Hoi footbridge, rather than being a simple decorative piece or a backdrop to a really bad band, actually crosses water. Obviously I never had the opportunity to see it this way, but you can imagine the magic of such a place that people have been living in for many years, moving up and down as the river floods and ebbs.
The food of Hoi An also gives the city its charm. In addition to many places for great Vietnamese food, it has some delicious specialties that would probably be world famous were their recipes not closely guarded secrets. Cao Lao, for example, a delicious noodle dish that I call the Vietnamese Phad Thai. All I was able to find out about its creation is that water comes from a certain well, they take certain types of wood and leave it in the water around sunrise, mix in 'some ingredients' later in the day, strain the broth, heat it and then moisten the noodles which are mixed with some greens, pork, fried croutons of a sort, and enjoyed. Fried wonton, with a homemade sweet and sour. Special 'Quang' noodles. In addition to finding a great restaurant with cheap beer and delicious Cao Lao and a restaurant called Co Dam that Nathan discovered with amazing dishes the owner made us that don't even have a name I decided to take a cooking course here. I'd met a couple having some street food the night prior and joined their cooking course at Hong Phuc the next evening. We stuffed a fish with some fresh ingredients we chopped, diced, and sauteed, wrapped it in banana leaves and barbecued it. We shredded, wrapped, and booked our own spring rolls. We sliced, diced, and fried up some squid with lemon grass, garlic, and chili. And we brewed up our own sweet and sour sauce and smothered some fried wonton in it. Yes, Hoi An has some of the best and most unique food in Asia and I definitely took advantage.
Nearby are some ruins called Me Soon (spelled My Son) that are 1800 years old. Unfortunately, the Viet Cong took to hiding here during what they call the American War over here and naturally the Americans dropped bombs and leveled many of the ancient towers including the crown jewel, a once 24m high tower now 2-3m high. Some of the buildings were still intact, however, or listing into a bomb crater, and the red brick seemed to age the buildings all the more against a fresh blue sky and green landscape. We took the boat back, a mistake as there's little to see except a small village that is essentially a tourist trap. And the old town is filled with historical buildings and sites worth a visit. But if that's not what you're in the mood for, you can always head to the nearby beach, which is nice and hawker free compared to Nha Trang. I spent my last evening there and maybe stayed a little too late as it was getting pretty dark on the way home. But a local guy pulled up beside me and drove alongside or behind to light the way. And, eventually, pulled alongside again and basically pulled me home. Yes, it will be a hard place to leave, but tomorrow morning I'm off once more to Hue a few hours north.
