Greetings from Northern Vietnam.
Photos:
https://goo.gl/photos/Ms7qXDMg7b1AE8mo7Hanoi is not for me. Too many people, all driving scooters, with no sense of pedestrian right-of-way. They drive the wrong way down one-way streets. They drive on the sidewalks. There are no rules. Crossing the street here is a battle every time. There's also some pretty serious pollution: air, litter, and noise from all the traffic horns.
The pollution thing in SE Asia is very real. I haven't seen the sun since I've been here. Contributing to the air pollution is, I think, that parts of Asia have recently gone through an accelerated period of industrial revolution. The most prominent cause, however, is large scale burning of land for agricultural purposes. I haven't seen a lot of burnings yet in Vietnam, but there were many in Laos. It's very common to see people wearing facemasks -- though we've been told they wear them for protection against the sun as much as protection from the smog. As for the litter, there doesn't seem to be any infrastructure or education in place to allow the people here to make more responsible decisions. There's no trash cans, so people just throw their garbage on the ground, or in the river. It's a shame. There's some real natural beauty in this part of the world that isn't being cared for.
Many Hanoi locals are rude as well. Maybe they don't like Westerners? I don't know. It'll be interesting to see if there's a change in character as we head south. A lot of the locals in Old Town are out to scam anything they can off tourists. I paid about six times the going rate for a haircut, for example, by not asking for the price up front... It was a sweet looking older lady, and I let my guard down.
The currency here is also bonkers. $1 equals just over 22,000 Vietnamese Dong. So much Dong. Although sometimes there's not enough Dong. Sometimes shopkeepers simply won't have the correct change, so they'll give you back what they can then supplement with small hard candies. It's a trip, but a practice we should consider adopting back home, because pennies are useless and candy is yummy.
And they eat dog, that's not a myth. While I haven't encountered it personally (as far as I know), I've seen the pictures of spit-roasted dogs taken by other travelers.
It's different here.
So after only two nights in Hanoi I was burnt out on the chaos of it all. The most fun I had in Hanoi was drinking "bia hoi" on the streets with Jake and Spencer. Bia hoi, as I understand it, is kinda like home brewed beer, but it's sold on the street out of kegerators, and at 30 cents a beer it's all too easy to drink it by the gallon. So that was a lot of fun, but you can't have too many intensive bia hoi sessions before needing a change of pace.
In hopes of finding some quality chill out time -- and maybe seeing the sun -- I left Hanoi and traveled a few hours east to Halong Bay. Jake and Spencer also left for the bay but they took it a step further and boated out to Cat Ba Island, where they had a much better Ha Long experience than I. I didn't join them on Cat Ba because my plan was to cut time in Halong Bay so I could visit Phong Nha-Ke Bang National Park before reaching Hoi An. This plan radically backfired and I ended up wasting two nights stuck in Halong city with nothing to do.
Halong Bay was nice-ish. I stayed in more the resort side of town, where countless unfinished construction projects block view of the bay. Developers have big plans for this place. I think maybe in 5 years Halong Bay will look more like Disneyland.
There's also the problem of the nearby port of Hai Phong dumping loads of human waste and trash into the bay. Again, a real shame. So naturally I ate a bunch of delicious seafood.
Before actually visiting Halong Bay, my impression was that I'd very simply be able to rent a kayak and paddle around. This was not the case. Accessibility to the bay from Halong City proper is in fact quite limited: there's one man-made beach with a roped off swimming area. I saw this beach of imported white sand on the night I arrived, but thunderstorms prevented me from visiting it the next day.
The weather cleared on day three and I took an overnight boat tour of the bay where I got to swim amongst the beautiful karst formations. The tour also included visit to an unimpressive cave on Cat Ba island, a "cooking class" which was nothing more than the rolling of an egg roll, and was supposed to have included kayaking the next morning, but thunderstorms once again messed with the plan. My enjoyment of the tour was further mitigated by the fact I got upsold the "deluxe" package, which turned out to be identical to the "basic" package. 100% identical.
In all, Halong Bay was fine, I am happy to have seen it, but it was not what I had envisioned for a relaxing beach getaway. No matter though, as my highest of hopes for seclusion still lied with Phong Nha-Ke Bang, a national park home to the world's largest cave. I like caves.
An overnight sleeper bus -- where essentially everyone gets their own Lazy Boy -- delivered me to Phong Nha on the 25th, the same day Jake and Spencer were flying to Hoi An. I had originally planned to take a multi-day caving expedition, but because of the wasted time in Halong and because busses heading south only leave Phong Nha at 4am, I had to mix things up -- I couldn't keep the guys waiting for me forever. Instead I rented a motorbike and took a do-it-myself make-it-up-as-I-went tour of as much of the area I could see in a day, and it was easily one of the best things I've done all trip. Phong Nha is gorgeous and rural and I had some really zenned out moments riding the mountain roads. This place was the antithesis of Hanoi. All I had to dodge here were cows in the roads.
I ziplined into a cave. I took a mud bath in a cave. I kayaked a bit on a sleepy river. And I found a bar in the middle of nowhere called "The Pub With Cold Beer", where the proprietors let you slaughter your own chicken. Phong Nha was incredible! Bookmark it.
From Phong Nha I continued south to Hoi An, where I reunited with Jake and Spencer. The guys were good and I was super jealous of the good time they had in Halong, though they definitely missed out on Phong Nha.
In Hoi An we stayed on An Hoi island. We visited An Bang Beach and the Marble Mountains outside Da Nang. We played ping pong in Ding Dang. And we even found a very high quality Mexican food joint run by an ex-pat from California. Also, I had a suit made, because eventually I have to go to work.
Hoi An is a neat city. There's a lot to see and do but without the frantic pace of Hanoi. And the people here are super nice. Jake and I spent a few nights in a homestay, living upstairs from a family who waited on our every need. It was actually too much niceness and consideration for my tastes... For instance, the young boy of the family insisted on rubbing tiger balm on my hurt ankle. That was weird, but kind, and another nice contrast to Hanoi.
Of course, we can't stay any one place too long... We still have much ground to cover, and tomorrow we leave for Nha Trang, then Da Lat, then who knows where.
In more broad scope updates: my ankle is slowly returning to 100%; I can't stop eating soup; and I might be pregnant.
