The lovely Hoi An

Vietnam has continued to impress me...At the beginning of this week, I spent 3 days in amazing Hoi An.  In contrast to the bustle and excitement of Hanoi and the bigger Ho Chi Minh city, Hoi An is a laid back, charming town with lots of culture, great shopping and beautiful beaches.  I had heard that everyone loved it there, so I purposely booked a nice long stay to do some relaxing.

Of course, my travel luck did hit a brief snag on the way there.  I thought I was quite clever taking an hour long flight from Hanoi instead of the overnight train (because they're the same price!) but my flight ended up being delayed 9 hours, leaving me in the Hanoi airport all day long.  About 2 hours into this debacle, I grudgingly decided to pony up the $15 to get into the Vietnam airlines business class lounge using my lovely Delta status card...this ended up being the best decision of the day.  I took more than full advantage of the free food, drinks and wifi to do some trip planning and relax.  I also decided that the $15 was my daily budget for food so besides the free breakfast I got in my hostel, I ate all the rest of my food from there for the day, plus a few beers. Not too shabby!

Now, about the town itself and my time here... Culturally Hoi An is full of old Japanese merchant houses and Chinese temples from its past as a port.  The first day I was here I decided to go see the "old town" where all of the history was.  Here are a few of the beautiful highlights...

A view of the town overlooking the river

The old town streets lined with Vietnamese flags and colored lanterns - it lights up at night!

I loved this dragon / lizard display fountain

Too cute - same display as above

Here are some of the temples...all of them are statues representing Buddhist and Hindu deities.  All smelled of the burning joss sticks that people lit to show respect to their gods.  

  

Close up of the one above...If you look closely, you can see the smoke of the joss sticks coming from the middle figure and trailing off to the figure on the left.

In addition to the joss sticks you could light, there were these huge joss ornaments hanging from the ceiling with wishes that people write on the yellow paper hanging off - these joss sticks slowly burn up their spiral until the wish is set free...

Cool fish ornament

Market meats

  

Beautiful 3 color tree!

Rivaling its culture, Hoi An is also well known for its tailoring and even the backpackers on a budget get loads of things tailored. I decided I would try it out and ended up getting 2 dresses.  First I was quite nervous that it wasn't going to look good (I already had the same dress in black, I just wanted another in a different color), but it ended up being so amazing when I came back for my first fitting that I got another one.  The whole process was quite fun.  These little tiny ladies measure every inch of you and help you decide fabric type, color and a variety of other style things based on your body.  Plus, when else was I going to have something custom fit to my body?  Pretty much never!  I did, however, tell her to make one of the dresses a little tighter because all of the rice and noodles on this trip had started to take its toll...

The first dress I had made - with my tailor!!  You can't really tell here but it fits perfectly!!

And I loved it so much that I had to get a second one...

I also ended up staying in an amazing hostel - huge buffet breakfast and you could rent bikes for $1 / day.  Hoi An is small enough that when I biked around the town or  was at the beach, I would always see at least one friend from my hostel and I even ran into a few friends I met up in Sapa.  After I saw the sights, I relaxed as much as possible.  My days essentially revolved around tailor appointments, eating, shopping and going to the beach.

Beach :)  so lovely

Oh hey!  Vietnamese lifeguard saying hi

Some views on the way to the beach...

More scenery

Random Vietnamese wedding I drove by

My favorite bread sandwich place - $1 for a delicious lunch!

Banh closed for the equivalent of "Vietnam labor day" - all the streets were lined with Vietnamese flags!

Yes, this wasn't the most exciting post, but hopefully you enjoyed the pictures...next up, the capital of Vietnam - Saigon / Ho Chi Minh City!

Northern Vietnam Finale: Hanoi and Halong Bay

Hanoi was the first city I arrived in from China and it's been a landing point and home for me for going off on different excursions.  Despite what some people say, I really love Hanoi.  It's an incredibly vibrant city with amazing culture and great food (if you're adventurous and try the local eats).   First off everyone rides motor bikes everywhere and there are few to no stop lights / signs, so at every intersection, people just sort of slow down and hope for the best.

One of the uncontrolled 5 way intersections...

This has nothing to do with traffic but I think it's awesome - street side barber! These were all over the place!

Remember those stereotypical pictures of people with the pointed hats?  Those are also incredibly real and people wear them all the time.  My favorite is the women who walk around with the large wooden carriers selling a variety of things, from fruits to fish to flowers, in the baskets hanging on either side of them.

Selling all sorts of fish and sea food

Hanoi is also ridiculously cheap.  I can feed myself 3 meals and have beers for 10-15$ per day, and the food is fantastic!  I also got an hour long massage for $10 and did 4kg of laundry for $3!

My dinner tonight - Ban bo - beef vermicilli.  It was so good I had two full bowls.  2 bowls plus a beer?  $6!! (Note: only my 4th meal alone since arriving :)  )

The Banh My (bread sandwhich) lady - one of many on all of the street corners - today's lunch - $1!!

Another Vietnamese specialty I tried was egg coffee.  First off, the Vietnamese have a special secret for their coffee because it's the best coffee I've ever tasted.  The egg coffee takes it to a whole new level - a whipped egg creates a sweet foam on top of the strong coffee.  My hostel recommended an amazing place that serves this but it's a roof deck that's only accessed through the back of an alleyway beside a silk shop.

Entrance to the cafe - secret!!

The kitchen of the cafe

After a day of hanging out and visiting a local lake with some two Canadian girls who now live in London, I headed off to another major must-see in Vietnam - Halong bay.  Halong bay is in the Gulf of Tonkin, about a 3-4 hour drive from Hanoi and I had booked an overnight boat cruise sleeping right in the bay.  It was incredibly beautiful and we got to go kayaking among one of the floating fishing villages where people actually live.  Sadly, the pictures don't do it justice...the colors were incredibly bright and were even better against the back drop of the many cliffs.

Me at the front of the boat

The fishing village we kayaked around - this was the smallest with 250 people living in floating houses, but there were many more in the area

A fisherman we met while kayaking, he was fishing for squid!

Kids selling fruit to us at the fishing village

View of the bay from the top of one of the rocks

My private cabin was also much more luxurious than I expected - it was so great to shower in a pristine bathroom, take more free toiletries (!!) and charge all of my electronics at the same time without having to watch them closely.  Yes, backpacker problems.

After our day of exploring the bay, we had a lovely dinner and a "spring roll party" on the deck with beautiful views and lots of drinks.  That night we all passed out quite early though, because we had to get up early for morning tai chi on the sun deck.  We then visited a cave and relaxed for the rest of the morning before heading back to Hanoi.

While Halong Bay was incredibly beautiful, there were two things that dampened the experience for me.  First, it has become incredibly touristy and is very much where everyone goes.  It's busy, you wait in lines,  you stop at these packed tourist shops on the drive to and from the bay and you sleep with dozens of other boats around you.  Second,the people on this excursion were quite different from the adventurous back packer types I've met so far.  Everyone was very nice and friendly, but they were much more about keeping a strong western experience even while in Vietnam.Note: definitely not complaining here, but just some observations and lessons I'm learning for planning the rest of my trip - stay off the beaten path as much as possible!!

I'm now heading down to the coast to a lovely town called Hoi An, which is well known for its custom tailoring, beaches and overall charm.  Stay tuned for more from central Vietnam!

Haha - if you made it this far - then you're a dedicated reader...I know who you are, so you'll definitely find this entertaining - on the stalls of many of the bathrooms..

National Geographic part 2 and 3

Here's another picture book of what happened on the final two days of the hike...

On morning numero dos, We woke up around 8 and had a "pancake breakfast" aka diabetes central.  Just kidding, it was actually delicious - crepe like pancakes that you spread with honey, sugar and bananas.  Then we set off into the heat and sun for the most aggressive day -10 miles through the villages of the Zao people before we ended up staying in the lovely village of the Tay people.  Sorry that some of these aren't as well captioned - rushing to post before a flight.

The little piglets were also having a good breakfast too....

Du found tons of these "elephant bugs."  They were huge and slightly scary, but he ate them as a special treat!

Graves of the Zao people

Love how vibrant the Vietnamese flag is in this picture

A Zao woman and one of her roosters

Tay school children

Walking into town on day 2 for a late lunch - again, love the vibrant colors here

Scenes from across the street at lunch...

Yes yes, very mature of me, I know

A Zao women in the rice fields - you can tell she's Zao because she is wearing a red head piece

Du killing a snake that followed me through the rice paddies - I led the group because Priscilla was going slowly - Du was about 15 ft behind me and saw the snake rippling through the water in my direction - good thing he did!  We were really on edge after this...

Some kids at the local Zao school

At the end of the 2nd day, we finished at a beautiful waterfall surrounded by the bamboo forest - I had to go swimming!

The homestay the second night - it felt like a palace compared to the first night.  In general, the Tay people are slightly better off...

We made it!  Du, Priscilla and I

n

Our awsome team plus the family from the second night home stay

One of the crazy things about the Sapa area is that there are many different ethnic minorities in a very small area and they all have their own languages, cultures and traditions which obviously sometimes come into conflict.  My guide, Du, for example, didn't really like the Zao people - when he was explaining to me how his father died, he said that he had disappeared while going to the bathroom one night after taking some opiates,but they thought that the Zao people had eaten him. 

After an amazing trek, I went back and explored the town of sapa for awhile and relaxed with some beer and fruit juice.  Finally it was time to head back to Hanoi on another overnight train. This journey was definitely different from the first train ride....I was bunking with a young Canadian couple who invited me to come drink with some Irish people they met while waiting for the train...3 hours of beer and great time put me sound asleep for the rest of the train ride  :)

View of an alleyway market in Sapa

Overall, the Sapa journey was phenominal.  It was incredibly eye opening to see the rudimentary conditions that these people lived in and being a part of their culture for a short time.   This will definitely go down in the books as an experience of a lifetime and making me more open and comfortable with things that are very different and may seem  a bit scary.