Hola, Hoi An and Hue

We left Sa Pa glad we had been able to catch a glimpse of the Vietnam we had always pictured in our heads. Instead of catching the train back, we opted for a VIP bus, and were quite surprised to find that instead of seats, it was full of two storeys of semi-reclined beds. Now, the average Vietnamese person is slightly shorter than me, so these weren’t quite long enough for me, but we managed to get comfortable, and watch the valleys fall away behind us as we rolled downhill again.

We were back in Hanoi (for the third time, if you can’t keep up - I don’t blame you), and glad to have a night to chill out before travelling onwards, south again. I know people will scoff, but travelling is quite knackering! Not the sitting-by-the-pool bits, or the enjoying-tasty-food bits, but in the arranging transport, remembering the conditions of your visa and what the exchange rate is bits, all along with keeping an eye out for further shoe-related scams. So, pity us and our great ordeals.

The next day, we flew down to Da Nang, in the middle of the country. From there, it was a short taxi ride to Hoi An, another part of Vietnam that we were particularly excited about. We were staying in a lovely place just a short way out of town, called the Golden Rice Villa, overlooking the rice paddies and home to some very welcoming hosts. After making use of the pool to cool down by a few dozen degrees, we wandered in to town for our first night...

Hoi An is laid back and gorgeous, oozing with history and just a short distance from some promising beaches. It used to be a bustling trade town, and as such has taken influence from many surrounding cultures. The buildings are beautiful old warehouses which have been reimagined as tailors, tea houses, shops and restaurants. A huge part of the Old Town is pedestrianised a lot of the time too, which really added to our enjoyment of it - being able to let your guard down a little and not having to be prepared to lunge out of the way of a motorbike at any given moment allows a lot of pleasure to be found in ambling about.

And, saving the best for last, the place is famous for being decorated with hundreds or thousands of pretty lanterns, scattered around between buildings like bioluminescent bunting. I spent a long time trying to capture just how pretty it all was, but still feel that my pictures can’t do it justice. I’m sorely tempted to cheat a little, and use Google Images instead of my own.

We spent a couple of days exploring the Old Town by bike, seeing such treats as the Japanese Covered Bridge (complete with mini-temple at the halfway point), and a quite impressive merchant house. But our favourite aspect about the place was just wandering around and drinking in the atmosphere.

That night we were invited to a party! It was hosted by the owner of our hotel (Van), and she had invited all guests to come along to encourage us to mingle. A big part of it was that this place had only been open for a couple of months, and they were excited to start seeing good numbers of guests staying, after the first intrepid explorers had left glowing (and deserved) reviews. We ate tasty local food (including deep-fried wontons, a new favourite of Zoe’s), had tasty local beer, and had fun getting to know some of our fellow guests. Here, we got some good tips for future travels in Laos and beyond, and also re-learned the lesson that, no matter how long you’re travelling for, there will always, ALWAYS be someone who can say, “oh, that’s lovely! We’re travelling for four times that long”. It’s the way of the world - there’s always a bigger fish.

On our third day, we took ourselves on a nice cycle through the paddies to the nearby beach (An Bang, if you’re curious). There’s not much to say here, except that somehow, after travelling for over a month at this point, this was our first beach! We had a pleasant day shade-bathing, and I even managed to entice Zoe into the water, after she had performed a thorough visual patdown on the water to convince herself that she wasn’t under threat from a million jellyfish. We had a good swim!

Stoic cow, admiring the views

Zoe met a nice dog, and wants me to record it for posterity's sake.

In the end, we stayed in Hoi An for 6 nights, instead of the 3 we had originally booked. We were really happy with the place, and happy to stay a little longer somewhere after feeling like we had rushed a little around the country so far.

On day 5, we took ourselves on another pretty cycle, and had another day of worshipping the shade at the beach. It was, and no doubt remains, very nice.

Look, just LOOK at how hard travelling is!

We made friends with Stoic Cow!

For our final full day in Hoi An, we had treated ourselves a little, to a cooking course! It came highly recommended, and we were very keen to be able to bring back some tasty recipes for our friends and families. We were collected, along with 10 other tourists, given embarrassing hats, and taken to the morning market to find our ingredients!

This was a nice opportunity to see some of the everyday lives of locals. The markets were packed with stalls selling all sorts of fresh and tasty goods, and divided up into sections - rice, fruit and veg, and the ‘wet market’, where seafood and other meat were sold.

The wet market was surprisingly eventful - for some reason, the sight of a zillion carcasses in various states of undress, combined with the heat of the morning sun, led to not one, but two of our group to faint in the street. Oops! I scurried over to offer what assistance I could, and achieved little except for knocking over a mushroom display and encouraging the girls to drink water. Thank goodness for med school!

After that bout of excitement, they were taken off to a nearby cafe to recouperate, and we pressed on into the wet market. Zoe, in particular, pressed on ahead of all of us (including our guide), and was lost in her own little world following another group of tourists in embarrassing hats. After shouting a gentle enquiry at her, she snapped back and joined back in (a good job, otherwise I might have had to rename this blog).

To cover the rest of the day briefly, it was a lot of fun. Each of the 12 of us had chosen a different recipe to learn, and our instructor talked us through them. Some of our group had gone for particularly adventurous dishes (stuffed squid? Beef bone stew?), but me and Zoe went for stuff we felt would be more realistic - chilli and lemongrass chicken stir-fry for me, and BBQ pork with satay sauce for Zoe).

Everyone spent a while preparing their dishes, then one at a time we were brought in front of the group to cook it. Once the applause had died down, each dish was shared amongst us, which yes, meant another 12 course meal. It was gorgeous, and everybody was rightly proud of themselves. Once finished, we were gifted recipe books, then rolled ourselves home, happy and stuffed, unlike our friend the squid, who was not so happy about his stuffing.

The next day, we boarded the train, to Hue, a city nearby, and thus still pretty central in the country. This had previously been the capital of Vietnam, and was pretty much the front line during a lot of the American war. Our train journey was pretty, hugging the coast and giving us lush views of the coast. And, as was becoming alarmingly normal by now, it was punctuated by someone else fainting. After that slight kefuffle, were in Hue!

We stayed there for two nights, before we were due to fly to Laos. It was a nice place, and on our full day we went to explore the old citadel, which was still very impressive, even though a lot of it had been flattened by bombing during the war. They are gradually rebuilding, but I really liked the contrast offered between delicate architecture, and overgrown ruins.

After a hot day of exploring, it was time to say goodbye to Vietnam, and make a move for Laos!

Salutations from Sa Pa

Sa Pa is a mountain town nestled in the Northern Borders of Vietnam, famous for the seas of green tiered rice terraces and spectacular landscapes. We desperately wanted to see this part of the country, and ended up taking the night train, which involved an 8 hour journey from Hanoi to Lao Cai station.

The train itself seemed comfortable enough and the cabin itself was quite nice. The only problem was that we ended up sharing it with a snorer in the bunk above us! Matt seemed to sleep through this quite happily, waking up fresh faced the next day, but I had very little sleep and also managed to leave my hat - okay, second hat - on the train! Boo! (As a side note, I'm actually on hat number four at the moment, but these are anecdotes for later dates I feel!) Despite these minor downers, the night train really was an excellent way to travel and I think we will end up opting for this mode of transport again at some stage on our travels!

Once we arrived in Lao Cai at the crack of dawn we were to embark on an ear-popping bus journey that wound it's way around the mountains through the clouds to get to the town itself. It meandered it's way through the foggy roads and on this day we didn't get to see too much. What hit us first was the temperature - much cooler than anywhere else we had been, at around 15 degrees. And the air was so fresh, it made a nice change from the big cities, where it's not uncommon to see the locals donning face masks.

Breakfast! Tastier than it looks, honest

Arriving at the hotel was a nice welcome introduction, as we celebrated our arrival into Sa Pa with banana pancakes (sooo good!) and a glass of Vietnamese tea (Matt was more of an avid fan than I was). We then had a wander into town down a steep hill as the fog had cleared up a bit. Sa Pa itself is lovely - it's quiet and has a different vibe to anywhere else we have seen. The place is full of Hmong ladies dressed in colourful traditional clothing, who try every method known to man to get you to buy from their sack full of souvenirs. We learnt this very quickly - they really don't take no for an answer! There are no shortage of shops in Sa Pa either, mostly selling knock off North Face trekking gear and coats. In the middle of town sits a big cemented area that looks like some sort of arena. We spent some time watching a local volleyball game here, which was cool! We had a relaxed day when we arrived in Sa Pa though, and ended up watching another one of our films from the Vietnamese collection: Platoon. This must have been a good film because I didn't fall asleep during it.

After feeling fairly zombified on day one, we decided to go visit the rice paddies on the second day, which was also much warmer and less foggy, fortunately. We arranged a tour via the hotel and were taken to a traditional Hmong village by one of the locals. We wandered down a steep mountain to finally get to see some great views of the rice paddies - just as we had imagined. The views were incredible and we felt very lucky knowing the weather had been forgiving enough to allow us to see it this time of year! At this stage it seemed we were being followed by a crowd of Hmong ladies who seized upon us vulnerable tourists with sweet talk and general pushiness to buy their things! Eventually they lost interest, apart from one old lady called Zu who ended up wandering around with us for some time! She was cute, and we couldn't deny her charm.

There she is!

The hike (which was more of a gentle stroll) took us around farmland abundant in all kinds of wildlife - it was animal paradise! Lots of water buffalo, some micro pigs (!), chickens, ducks, dogs... And the baby ones were adorable. It was amazing to think about how the small communities down there have managed to create such effective ways to grow rice too. I can't even imagine how much hard work has gone into creating the rice terraces, let alone sustaining business in the wet season when mud slides are not uncommon.

The tour itself was great and I think we were both grateful that we hadn't decided to go and visit Fansipan mountain, which sits at a meagre 3143 ASL and involves a gruelling 2-4 day trek. Doable, but I think we much preferred the scenic route around the village!

That evening, we visited an bar that had an excellent views of the mountains, a roaring fire in the middle and a friendly dog. It started to pour down outside and there was a huge thunderstorm that started up, which resulted in a power cut down the entire street. This was fun to watch and we were both grateful to be indoors at this stage. We miraculously avoided the downpours all night, which was another stroke of luck!

For dinner this night we ended up visiting the Hill Station, which is a famous restaurant that crops up in a few places in Vietnam. We ended up sitting crossed-legged on the floor for dinner and indulged in some Vietnamese and Sa Pa specialities: these included slow-cooked pork, roasted pumpkin and honey roasted chicken infused with ginger. Basically, foody heaven. The menu here was superb and a nice way to finish off our stay in Sa Pa - the only problem came when we had to hike up back to our hotel afterwards, so full of delicious food! You may have noticed that this is how most of our Vietnam adventures start and end, which I like to think is a testimony to how good the food is out here, but also a reflection of our priorities.

Posh nosh!

The following day, we were to head back to Hanoi by bus this time. Then we were to head down the coast to Hoi An, before moving on to Laos.

Hey, Ha Long Bay

One of the big highlights of Vietnam was Ha Long Bay. Matt and I knew that this was a must-see trip and had decided to book a three day boat cruise, setting off from Hanoi. Ha Long Bay is an area off the coast of Vietnam consisting of huge limestone islands in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but it really is hard to describe it in words so I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Click to embiggen

It takes a couple of hours in the bus North-bound to get to the Bay and once we arrived we were greeted with a thick fog over the distance and a fleet of docked boats that were all set for tourist cruises around the islands. Really, the scale of this was amazing and we could not believe how many cruise boats we saw at this stage. Weirdly, the water also had this emerald green tinge, which later made for some excellent photographs.

We weren't really sure what to expect with our package cruise but it wasn't long before our ship set sail and we were finally out on the sea. Hurrah! About half an hour passed and we were in the thick of it: hundreds of karsts (think that this is the technical name for these islands) emerged around us and all the strangest shapes and sizes! To make matters more exciting, lunchtime had arrived! Yay! Here we experienced about 10 courses of seafood. Yes, 10 courses! This was not the weight watchers cruise! Matt was a bit wary of the seafood menu I think, given his aversion to crustaceans (he would later overcome this, even ordering crab in restaurants..!), and even I was a little wary that we would end up with fish head soup or something of that nature. But needless to say, we were both very wrong in our trepidations about the food and ended up loving it all! We ate all sorts, from squid to shrimp to catfish, and I don't think there was one dish that we didn't enjoy. We were also both sooo relieved that Matt had finally recovered and was now ready to fully appreciate all the deliciousness Ha Long Bay had to offer!

Unsurprisingly, meal times do take some time and it was well past midday until we got the chance to do some exploring. After passing by various vessels (some of them with their own sea dogs! Super cute!) we stopped at a floating village, which is exactly what you'd expect it to be: small communities going by their daily lives on the river. Here we got to kayak or take a rowing boat around a few of the islands. After our fun rowing in Kampot, we opted for the kayaking option and were pleasantly surprised by just how quiet and calm the waters were here. It is really quite a relaxing experience - or at least it is until you become aware that you are surrounded by literally MILLIONS of jellyfish! Matt wasn't half as bothered by this as me but I knew there was no way I would let this boat capsize among all of this freakish sea-life! Anyway, I tried not to let my weird (and probably irrational) fear of these critters get the best of me and we had a pleasant little row around the floating islands before hopping back on to the cruise ship. Such amazing sights. And I'm pleased to say that we didn't capsize.

After this, the boat set sail again and we were on our way to a lagoon where we we would stop for a swim. Apparently less jellyfish here - but I wasn't willing to risk it. Matt was the guinea pig and took the plunge. I used the excuse of having a cold (no idea how I managed to catch one in Vietnam?!) so just watched and took some pictures, also making sure there were no jellyfish giants lurking around waiting to attack haha. Matt had an explore in the water; he even did a full loop around the ship, (also ending up with a lung-full of boat exhaust pipe fumes, not in a hurry  to do that again!). I hear the water was fairly cold but the swimming looked like lots of fun actually!

Where's Wally???

After this the boat set sail again from our night time spot and the sun began to set. Although the sky was fairly cloudy on this day, we got some excellent views that we admired from the top deck as the sun set with some happy-hour cocktails in hand, and felt very lucky to have experienced it this way.

It also didn't seem too long after our mammoth lunch until it became time for dinner: a twelve course seafood banquet this time! It was excellent and we had dinner with some interesting people. After this, we had the chance to go squid fishing so headed to this area to see how it was done. Coincidentally one of our new-found friends had some experience in fishing and managed to catch two small ones with an interesting technique of bobbing the fishing rod up and down near the light. It was unbelievable to see how much ink came out of them when caught, and not to mention weird to think they would be ending up on the menu the next day.

On day two we were to set sail for a more alternative route around the bay, which involved a pearl farm and more kayaking - this time around some of the natural caves and with the hope of seeing yellow crested monkeys, which are supposedly quite rare sights. So we departed onto a day boat and headed to the pearl farm, where we were to learn about the ins and outs of this lengthy process which takes years apparently! So according to our guide, a pearl is formed when a grain  of sand is embedded between the two shells of an oyster, (in a process that is comparable to artificial fertilisation) and time and care is taken to develop a perfect gem. Some of them are perfect at least. The others sell for less! It was all very fascinating.

Life is hard on the high seas

Following this, we visited some weird and wonderful caves via the kayaks, which made for some excellent rowing experience. We even saw the monkeys! And quite a few of them in fact! They didn't seem too perturbed by all the gawping tourists, and were quite happy to sit and stare at us by the shore. The baby ones were especially cute. We spent some time here before visiting a private beach, which turned out to be an excellent spot for a panorama!

At the end of the day, we ended up back at our night boat with a 12 course meal ahead. It's hard to remember some of the specifics about all the food we had but the dishes that stood out in particular for both of us were the monk fish and barbecued crab. We also got a cookery demonstration this night, which involved steaming shrimp with vodka, which is a speciality in Vietnam. This created a steam-room in the restaurant (definitely something to remember, but not sure we will be trying this at home!)

On day three we had half a day left to explore Ha Long Bay and were taken to one of the biggest (if not THE biggest) cave in Ha Long Bay. This was an incredible sight, laced with some magnificent stalagmites and stalactites, and a small Buddhists shrine which created the smell burning incense throughout the passages. So cool!

We then head back for a spring-roll demo and the chance to try our hand at rolling a few. The process seemed easy enough, involving some clever folding of pre-made shrimp, pork and veg mixture into little rolls with egg yolk. They were then deep fried and formed a part of another mega-brunch buffet, as we said our final goodbyes to the Bay and our glorious cabin!

After this feast, we practically rolled off the boat onto the shore, very happy to have seen these superb sights and bound for Hanoi once again!