Tag Archives: travel

The train to Da Nang (or not, as it turned out).

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We’re sitting on the train from Hanoi to Da Nang. We are in a sleeping cabin, a ‘soft berth’. Apparently the beds are marginally thicker than the ‘hard berth’ beds and there are 4 to a cabin in 2 bunks.

As soon as we got on last night a family asked us to swap so they could all be together, which was fine. Luke and I moved to another cabin, which we ended up sharing with an older man and a grandmother with her granddaughter. They were very quiet room mates. I slept like a log – the beds on the train are much softer than the ones on the Halong Bay boat.

We had dinner before we got onboard at 11pm last night and bought some bread rolls and cheese to eat for breakfast. We also had to buy a cutlery set yesterday so we could slice the cheese and spread our margarine. Another thing I should’ve thought to bring.

Yesterday we had to check out of our hotel at midday, so we sat around in the morning doing research and various things on the internet then left our bags at the hotel and caught a taxi to Saint Honore, a bakery highly recommended on Trip Advisor. I thought that, while we were in Vietnam, we should check out the bakeries as they are reputed to be the best in Asia. Which isn’t saying much if my experiences in Thailand and Japan are anything to go by.

Saint Honore was lovely. Certainly not any better than any specialist bakery in Australia, but definitely a cut above the street bread in Hanoi, which only comes in white baguettes and white (rather sweet) loaves.

We bought ourselves some take away lunch then walked south around West Lake, where it became apparent that Vietnamese people will grow anything anywhere, anytime. Even the small squares of dirt by the side of major roads where an ornamental tree had been planted, was also filled with tomatoes or mint or something I didn’t recognise but was undoubtedly edible. We walked past an allotment right next to the Hanoi Intercontinental. The garden was probably the prettiest thing I’d seen in Hanoi. Rows of herbs and vegetables with tiny white cabbage moths fluttering everywhere, which probably wasn’t doing the garden any good but they looked lovely.

City allotment.

We headed through a Japanese temple then past the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, which wasn’t open at the time. I’m not that into seeing dead bodies anyhow. Then to the Temple of Literature, the oldest University in Vietnam as it started in 1070 AD.

Flowers at the Japanese temple.

As we wandered around the central lake we were accosted by a group of young university students who asked if they could speak to us in English. We stood there for a while, laughing and chatting with them. More people gathered around to listen to what was going on and we ended up with a small crowd. We headed off after about half an hour and wandered through the back streets of the Old Quarter. The streets there are arranged by trade/goods, so if you’re looking for kitchenware you go to one particular street and all the shops sell saucepans etc.

We headed up to the cityview café for the last time to watch the sun go down and so I could take some long exposure shots of the traffic. We debated going to the place Sarah recommended but figured 19 floors up would be too high to get good light trails. Next time perhaps! It certainly did look nice in the photos.

A hand held 30 second exposure. Talk about a steady hand!

We picked up our gear then headed to a restaurant near the station where I finally tried Pho (pronounced ‘fur’). It was ok, but Luke and I both agreed that Bun Cha (BBQ pork in a thin soup) was much better.

Dinner was nice but made much more entertaining by the fact that we could see into the area where the waiters and waitresses were standing around and we watched them flirting we each other like high school kids and laughing lots. It was charming.

…ooo000ooo…

To jump forward in time, I am now writing from Hoi An, where we arrived last night. Our train journey ended in what we thought was Da Nang. We heard the announcement, gathered our bags and got off the train at the right time. Before we got off I asked the fellow in our compartment if this was Da Nang and he pointed to the exit, then I tried to ask another passenger who flat-out ignored me. So we jumped off. To cut a long story short, it wasn’t Da Nang, it was the previous stop, Hue, which we should’ve reached 2 hours prior. ARGH. We caught a private taxi into the town centre for $2.50 and then bought bus tickets for around $8 each. The bus was cramped with no airconditioning and took about 3 hours to get us to Hoi An.

We were both feeling pretty fed up when we got here but it turns out Hoi An is the prettiest place in Vietnam (in our experience). So clean and in such good condition it almost looks like the Disney version of what Vietnam should be. More on Hoi An later. With a million photos!

Halong Bay

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We booked a trip to Halong Bay through our hotel and ended up going with a package that cost $90 each for one night on a boat plus transfers from Hanoi and entrance into various sites in the National Park. All meals included but not drinks. We were told that water would not be included but it turned out that it was.

We were picked up from our hotel at about 8:30am. It’s a 4 hour drive along a pot-holed, debris-strewn highway to Halong city. The mini bus was small and cramped. I’m tall (177cms/5 ft 9) but I’m not *that* tall. Like our visit the previous night to the water puppet theatre, I couldn’t help but curse the Vietnamese for their short stature. If you can avoid taking any sort of bus in this country my advice is to do it.

We stopped at an elaborate tourist trap for a break on our way there and on the return trip. The bus driver dropped us all off with instructions to walk through the building and meet the bus on the far side in half an hour. We filtered through rooms of clothing, pottery, embroidery, food (chocolate bars for prices equal to Australia) and various tat. We looked around but spent most of our wait doing stretches and wishing we didn’t have to get back on the cramped bus.

When we reached the harbour it was chock-full of tourists waiting to get on the 100+ boats. There were a lot of boats. All the boats where white, wooden and in noticeable disrepair. I’m starting to guess that paint is more expensive than gold in Vietnam, since no one seems to have used any in the last 30 year. Anywhere. Our boat was no more or less shabby than any other, but I was somewhat dismayed to noticed, as we approached it from behind, that one of the crew members was chucking garbage (a small amount and it might have been food but… urgh) out the back door. Charming. This tallied with the Trip Advisor reports I’d read about how rubbish-strewn the bay was and how little thought the locals put into environmental awareness.

The boat was nice enough. The food was good, the other passengers friendly and our guide spoke reasonable English, even if he finished every sentence with a firm ‘Yep’, as though encouraging us to agree with him. It was odd.

On the first afternoon we all got into the little boat and went ashore to walk up a lot of stairs and look through a cave. I was under the impression we were actually going kayaking and nothing else so I didn’t take my camera. AGAIN. The caves were enormous and colourfully lit and would’ve been more impressive if they weren’t full of tourists. But since I was part of the tourist horde I guess I can’t complain. My enjoyment of the place was mitigated by the fact that I don’t really like caves (all that weight above me..*shudders*) but at least these caves were huge. Small caves are on my opposite-bucket-list. As in, things I hope to never experience before I die.

Due to the weather the view was monochromatic. The clouds through the mountains were pretty spectacular.

After the caves was kayaking, which I felt slightly wary of. The last time I kayaked was in year 6. I recalled enjoying it then but I also recalled getting very wet, and I’d worn my sneakers on this trip and soaking shoes are a right royal pain. However I managed to get into the kayak, paddle around for half an hour with Luke and get out again without getting a drop of water on me, which is a lot more than I can say for Luke, whose pants were wet through. By the end I was really enjoying the kayaking, to the point where I was quite sorry that there is nowhere near Heathmont for me to continue doing it when I get home. I really like that feeling of slicing the paddle through the water and pushing myself forward. Being so close to the water is really lovely, too.

Our cabin.

I think the highlight of the day was getting to know Andrew, a kiwi of Chinese decent, who was traveling solo as part of our group. A great font of knowledge on all things travel-related and particularly on New York, where he lived for two years, he entertained us all evening with terrific stories and advice. We sat up til nearly midnight in the dining room of the boat and staved off any attempts by the crew to inflict karoke on a bunch of strangers. Whew!

The next morning was a visit to a floating pearl farm. I found all the fish swimming around it more interesting than the pearl stuff, then we had a cooking lesson onboard. Simple spring rolls, deep fried and very tasty. Then we had lunch and cruised back to Halong City.

I haven’t mentioned the scenery, which was what we were there for. It was exactly like the postcards, albeit very grey under the cloudy sky. I wished for some sunlight but it never appeared. A shame as the water would have been much more green and picturesque. The monoliths of limestone were fantastic and the layers of shapes receding towards the horizon and growing more pale as they went back was like a delicate ink painting.

The bus ride home was as bad as the one there. The traffic was adrenalin-inducing. I just couldn’t watch the traffic and was extremely thankful that I am not one to get carsick, because I read my kindle nearly the whole way back.

In summary, the highlights of Halong Bay were the natural features and the people we met. The rather glaring down sides were the crowds, the pollution and getting there. The pollution was a *real* downer for me. When you see so many plastic bags in the water and know that chances are they’re going to end up choking some animal it’s just plain depressing. If I could grab the Vietnamese government by the collar and shout one thing in its face it would be ‘CLEAN UP YOUR COUNTRY’. Seriously. It’s disgusting. In city areas there are street cleaners who get around really regularly but in the countryside there are fields of trash.

On a high note, we were happy to be back in Hanoi and even in the same hotel room as last time. It’s amazing how little it takes for something to feel like home. We walked around the corner for dinner, had some vodka with freshly-juiced pineapple for $1.50 each and headed back to sit in our room and veg out. Tomorrow: the train!