Cat Ba
Five hours on a bus took me via a vehicle ferry to Cat Ba Island in Ha Long Bay and to my hotel, the interestingly named Victor Charlie Hostel 2 in Cat Ba town. Victor Charlie… VC… Viet Cong?? Naming mystery notwithstanding the hotel was no frills but at £5 a night it made my previous accommodation look expensive.
In the evening, wandering along the almost Mediterranean like front I was invited to join a group of Thais who I had met on the bus. After a pleasant beer with them I set off in search of a pharmacy. Despite having my ears syringed in Hoi An they were now so blocked I could hardly hear what people were saying even when they were right in front of me. I was looking for something to soften the wax but the pharmacist insisted she could clear them for me; how I didn’t know, but I put myself in her hands and hoped for the best. She used a tiny probe to dig out the wax, something that isn’t done in the UK in my experience; it worked a treat and suddenly everything was very loud. I headed back along the front and once again the friendly Thais asked me to join them; this time I could actually hear what they were saying. Another beer and a couple of shots later I was ready for bed.
Ha Long Bay is famous for more of the karst limestone hills that dominate Tam Coc, but here they rise out of the ocean. A boat trip was called for and my hotel sold them at a good price so the next morning at 8.00 I was picked up and taken to the harbour where I joined 40 others on a day long excursion that took us past a floating fishing village before heading out through the bay to transfer into kayaks for an hour and a half. We paddled through low caves into quiet lagoons surrounded by towering jungle covered cliffs and then back to our boat for lunch. In the afternoon we anchored off a beach to go for a swim; we were issued with snorkels but there was nothing to see, and as the beach was some way off and the water was deep my swimming was not good enough to let me stay in for long.
We completed our tour with a stop at Monkey island where there were, you guessed it, lots of cheeky monkeys on the lookout for food. Here we climbed a hill, a crowd of us scrambling over a steep jumble of jagged rocks while another crowd were trying to come down. It was frankly bonkers; I am sure there must be regular nasty accidents. Just short of the top there was a long hold up and the more I looked at what was left to do the less I liked it; in the end I decided to turn back and live to climb again another day. I was relieved to reach the beach again unlacerated.
That evening I returned to the pharmacy for a check up; all was fine, although I have to use ear drops and antibiotics to guard against infection. We got chatting. I expressed surprise at the opening hours: 7.00 am to 10.00 pm; she said they need the money because her husband’s sister’s husband died a month ago leaving his penniless wife with three young children. There is no support from the state so the pharmacist and her husband are providing food and clothing for the family, as well as their own two children, putting their own plans on hold. Vietnam may be a socialist state but it cannot afford welfare payments; despite benefit freezes and cutbacks in England we are fortunate compared to much of the world.
Leon, my kayaking partner, had recommended visiting the Cat Ba national park up in the hills, so the next day, still flushed with my successful drive at Tam Coc, I rented a motor cycle and found my way to the park, where a steep climb awaited me. Rocky it may have been, but compared to Monkey Island it was a piece of cake and there were great views from the top.
I had decided just that morning to take the night bus to Ha Giang in the far north of the country, near the Chinese border, so had to head back to the hotel ready for the 3.30 pick up. It was going to be a long journey: expected arrival time 4.00 am.
Ha Giang Loop
On the first phase of my travels from May to October I had almost all the accommodation, with the exception of Australia (where I rented a car), booked in advance. For phase 2 I have a draft itinerary but hardly anything booked; this has pros and cons: it requires me to spend more time planning while on the road, but gives more flexibility. I changed my SE Asia plans slightly when Corriene decided to join me so that I would be back in Thailand in time to meet her. In Siem Reap I was told about Tam Coc so amended plans to go there, and in Tam Coc I heard about the Ha Giang Loop and decided I had to fit that in. Consequently my bookings have become ever more last minute but I have had no trouble arranging transport and finding accommodation – so far at least.
The night buses have a cunning seating arrangement that allows everyone to be almost fully reclined, allowing one to sleep. In theory. In practice I don’t sleep well on planes and now find that applies equally well to buses. Although this bus from Cat Ba was clean and reasonably comfortable (unlike the buses I had read reviews on in central Vietnam) I probably slept for only 1.5 hours out of the 12 I was on the bus. Fortunately the fare included a transfer from the bus station to a hostel where I could stay until midday without additional cost. Less fortunately, my upper bunk bed was in a slightly noisy corridor and shook like a jelly whenever someone moved. However, I did manage to get enough sleep to see me through the day.
The ‘Loop’ is 250 miles of tortuous mountain road that climbs and snakes its way around the Dong Van Karst Plateau. The way to do it is on a motor bike; every day hundreds of tourists, some of whom have never ridden a motor bike before and most of whom have no licence, set out on what for most will be a 4 day, 3 night journey. Now I enjoyed my short rides at Tam Coc and Cat Ba and felt fairly confident, but the idea of riding all day for 4 days on dangerous, narrow and often poorly surfaced roads where trucks are likely to force you into a ditch or off a cliff and when the weather is cool and rain likely – well, that was frankly unappealing. It sounded more like an endurance test than a pleasure trip. Many visitors choose the ‘easy rider’ option: riding pillion behind an experienced local rider. It didn’t sound very easy to me; a little safer maybe but still hard work. So, call me a sissy, but I took the really easy option: I hired a car with a driver and sat back comfortably in the passenger seat while he did all the work and I could cast my gaze with pleasure at all the poor suckers on bikes. It was all arranged in no time; I got up at the hostel, had breakfast, discussed my options and an hour later I was not only booked but away.
We hadn’t gone far from Ha Giang town when the road conditions confirmed the wisdom of my decision; I was glad someone other than me was avoiding the potholes, overtaking on blind bends and squeezing the car through impossible gaps between trucks and ditches. I am sure there must be lots of accidents, although I only met one person who had come off her bike. She hurt her hand, not seriously but enough to make driving impossible, so found a local to drive her bike back while she continued on her boy friend’s pillion.
Road conditions may not have been easy but the scenery was magnificent from the start for the whole 3 days. This is definitely a world class journey. The first day we drove via Quan Ba to Yen Minh, up and down over passes, admiring the stunning views of steep, green-clad mountains and waving to the H’Mong children playing, and sometimes working, by the road. They are one of the many ethnic minorities that live in this remote area and seem to be the most numerous. The women wear colourful, heavily pleated swirling skirts, usually over a pair of trousers. Some of them cannot speak Vietnamese, conversing in their own tongue. My driver, whose English was extremely limited, managed to tell me that his father was H’Mong and his mother Vietnamese, but he didn’t speak H’Mong, knowing only Vietnamese.
Roadworks could be a challenge. On more than one occasion we had to wait at least 30 minutes while road rollers crushed gravel into the surface. Motor bikes were generally allowed through, weaving their way around the heavy machinery.
My driver, whose name I never did discover despite attempts at introduction, was tasked with finding accommodation. I used Google Translate to tell him I wanted somewhere quiet and comfortable. The first place he took me to was quiet but the bed was rock hard. The second place was right on the busy main street with a bed almost as hard. I took matters into my own hands and found a suitable place on Booking.com; he rang it up and was told it was full. I found another, he rang and got the same result; not believing it I booked online and sure enough all was well when we arrived.
On day 2 we were held up for another 30 minutes by roadworks as we left Yen Minh before climbing to another pass where H’Mong girls were selling flowers.
Further on we stopped again to look at the view and I was rather bizarrely roped in by a group of Vietnamese touring photographers to pretend to discuss flowers with an elderly H’Mong lady while they clicked away. At the end I told them to pay the old lady for her trouble and that my fee was quite modest.
We then stopped at a H’Mong village where I visited a house built by a wealthy opium trader in 1947; it was the setting for a film called ‘The Story of Pao’. Outside beautiful traditional dresses were on sale, while close by a new house was under construction, its timbers being fashioned on site from tree trunks using some kind of axe.
We then had a 15 mile side trip up to Lung Ku, the furthest north point of Vietnam close to the Chinese border where a huge flag flies from a tower on top of a hill affording great views. On the way at another stop for photographs I discovered what must rank as the most ‘interesting’ lavatory I have so far encountered. And I emphasise the word ‘rank’.
Returning to the main road, if you can call it that, we stopped at the H’Mong king’s palace or castle. Described as an ‘architectural and artistic masterpiece’, to my eyes it more closely resembled a very large abandoned farmhouse built around a number of courtyards. Living from 1865 to 1947, this ‘king’ became wealthy through trading opium and saw off rivals both local and external to rule the Dong Van area.
Continuing our drive we stopped briefly to visit the rather uninteresting market in Dong Van town before climbing to see the highlight of an always impressive landscape, the Ma Pi Leng Pass. Far below the road a hydro-electric dam holds back a winding narrow lake in a deep gorge; it really is very beautiful, even when, as for the whole trip, the sun isn’t shining. We stopped at a number of points to photograph the views.
Not much further on was our stop for the night just short of Mao Vac. I had picked this guesthouse on Booking.com from a limited selection in the area. It was a little odd and not that great. The room was small, cold and dark with no heating, there was no glass in the window, nor a curtain, just a wooden shutter and the bed was very hard. The doors to the communal dining area had no way to latch them shut without locking people out, so to prevent them blowing open and letting in the cold draught we had to prop a chair against them. Just a small oversight. I did manage to sleep, waking from time to time to turn my aching body. I wanted to rest well because after completing my tour the next day I was booked on the 8.00 pm overnight bus to Hanoi and did not expect to arrive until 4.00 am.
We didn’t stop so much the last day. The road surface for the first 30 miles was pretty dreadful with my driver constantly avoiding holes and driving slowly over rough surfaces. Later on we turned off onto a very narrow road that wound over the hills before becoming even narrower and finally ending in a little village. We got out and I was told to walk along a little trail for 1 km. I set off, not knowing what was in store, following two little girls herding a small flock of goats. Soon the girls and goats took another path while the main trail led up steep steps around the hillside, eventually leading to the Lung Khuy cave. I am a bit blasé about caves; I have seen a lot over the years and am hard to impress, but I have to say that the stalactites and stalagmites in this large one were worthy of my climb.
After a late lunch stop at Quan Ba we drove back to the hostel in Ha Giang, arriving shortly after 3 pm. I had a cup of mulberry tea then confirmed the bus booking to be told that there was a 4 pm departure I could catch if I wanted; I jumped at the chance to get to Hanoi at midnight rather than 4 am and before I knew it was in a taxi to the bus stop.
Hanoi
My bus from Ha Giang arrived earlier than I had been told and was at the bus station by 10.00 pm. After getting out of one taxi whose driver had met the bus but refused to turn on his meter, I flagged one down in the street and was taken to my hotel for slightly more than one third of the price the original driver wanted.
My room on the eighth floor of a hotel on a relatively quiet street was a haven from the frenetic world of old town Hanoi, whose narrow streets are crowded with shops, sidewalk cafes and, of course, motor bikes by the thousand, many of them parked right across the pavement forcing you to chance your life walking in the road. Despite this, if you can relax and accept the noise and bustle it is not an unpleasant place to stroll around – for a while at least. I was quite tired after several days of travelling including night buses, so took it easy my first day by having a walk around Hoan Kiem Lake and its Ngoc Son Temple, which sounds much more exciting in its English translation: Temple of the Jade Mountain. I then sat on a park bench where I was soon joined by An, a Vietnamese student keen to improve his English. We chatted for well over an hour about his studies, his girlfriend (studying in Taiwan) and that nearly universal topic of interest, football. Vietnam are currently competing in the SE Asian (SEA) games, a multi-sport event this year hosted by the Philippines; football is definitely the main area of interest, with every café screening matches on TV.
The next day I was still tired but set out to venture a little further and take in more of the city sights. My first stop was the Dong Xuan Market; housed in a cavernous building, the little stalls are piled high with goods leaving the narrowest of aisles between them.
I next headed for where the entrance to the old citadel of Thang Long appeared to be on my map; there was no entrance there, so I continued down the street and around the corner, found the entrance and also found it was closed for another hour. Not to waste time, I took myself to the Temple of Literature where for many centuries students had studied and then taken the extensive exams required to become a mandarin. Their first lesson was to behave respectfully and then acquire knowledge with the final goal of becoming both virtuous and talented; perhaps a model that we could learn from?
A visit to Hanoi would not be complete without visiting the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh, the man who created the modern state of Vietnam, leading the fight against the French and then the Americans. He died before the final victory but ‘Uncle Ho’, as he is affectionately called, is held in huge reverence and respect by the country, as is evident by both the scale of his tomb and the care with which it and its grounds are maintained. Next door is the Ho Chi Minh museum, dedicated to illustrating his life and the independence struggle. Clearly his achievement against enormous odds was extraordinary: the country is independent and unified and today appears to be thriving, a land of opportunity. Nevertheless, the cost was terrible: millions of lives lost and the land devastated; it took decades to recover and even now lives are blighted by land mines and agent orange. I can’t help but wonder what the result would have been if a different course of action had been followed, maybe along the lines of Gandhi’s policy of mass civil disobedience. Perhaps the same results could have been achieved without the bloodshed and destruction?
Putting this pondering behind me, I walked back to the citadel, which was now open, bought a ticket, went in and found that I was not in the actual citadel at all but in the Military History Museum that occupies the southern part of the site. Doh! Oh well, I was there so I looked around. It had exhibitions covering much of Vietnam’s war-filled history from ancient times to the present day with a good deal, naturally, concerned with the latter part of the 20th century. It was good if you want to know the ins and outs of regional competing powers hundreds of years ago, but that was a bit much for me and the more recent history is more dramatically and movingly displayed at the War Museum in HCMC I had already visited, so I skipped through many of the displays.
Having not felt very lively when I started the day, I was by now flagging a good deal, but was determined to find that flipping citadel, so dragged my weary body out of the museum, around another corner and up the road to find the entrance. Once inside I realised how big the site was; there was what felt like miles of it, with old buildings, wide open spaces and exhibition halls. Aching back and tired legs notwithstanding, it all had to be viewed, damn it. After all, this was the seat of power for centuries, where the Emperors held court, the French governed and the Vietcong planned their operations from a secure bunker. Finally I had seen it all and wended my weary way back towards my hotel and dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Rob's Roads 