A short stay in Hanoi

Well, I just spent a woefully short twenty-four hours trying to tour Hanoi. One of my great curiosities about Vietnam was what differences might be apparent between the north and south. I thought that comparing Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi might give me some insight, but I'm afraid my experience might not reflect reality for a couple reasons.

February 18th was the last official day of the Tet Festival, so most of the shops and local restaurants were still closed. I have heard that Hanoi is a much quieter and nicer city than Saigon, but it was hard to tell during a holiday. Whatever the reason, I was glad to find that the traffic was much less stressful than Saigon, and most other cities in Vietnam.

Had I more than one day to explore, I would have gone back to sleep immediately upon arrival in Hanoi, because I felt quite run down. Instead, I checked into a backpackers' hostel and set out on a walking tour of the Old Quarter. It seemed like a popular plan. Groups of tourists roamed each of the streets, following the suggested route in the Lonely Planet guide.

The Old Quarter is a nice neighborhood with a French feel. The prominent feature is Hoan Kiem Lake in the center of the Quarter, containing two islands. The northern of the two islands contains Ngoc Son or The Jade Mountain Temple and is connected to the lake shore by a colorful bridge. The temple was quite crowded--Vietnamese seemed to be spending their holiday there. The southern of the islands has no bridge but contains a smaller shrine called Thap Rua, or Tortoise Tower. There is a legend that a golden turtle rose from the lake to reclaim a divine sword that the gods had given the Vietnamese Emperor Le Loi.

After seeing the lake, I set out through the northern part of the quarter along narrow streets, lined by tall houses, that gave the impression of a network of canyons. There seemed to be trees on most blocks, giving the city a natural feel. Groups of children were playing with small firecrackers--throwing them into traffic, or at each other, or at tourists. The only storefronts not closed were very geared to tourists so it was hard to get a feel for what the neighborhood was like aside from that.

After stopping back by the hostel to lay down for a bit, I walked west to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. The avenues to the west of the Old Quarter are much larger but the traffic is still disciplined. The open space in front of the mausoleum was filled with Vietnamese families dodging the sprinklers to take pictures.

People seemed friendly. I met some children by the statue of V. I. Lenin that talked to me a little bit and wanted to take some pictures with my camera. On my way back towards the Old Quarter a man introduced me to his young son, who is studying English. The kid wasn't as keen on practicing his English as his father, but it was fun.

I was feeling much better after walking around, but ate a quick dinner and went to bed early anyway. I was sleeping in a dorm room with eight other people, but heard none of them getting ready for bed after I fell asleep.

The next morning I had time for breakfast but not much else before making my way to the airport to catch my flight to Bangkok.

Tet Festival in Hoi An

Hoi An is small town on the central coast of Vietnam a few hundred kilometers south of the boundary that split North and South Vietnam during the American War. Heavily influenced by both Chinese and French architecture, there are scores of beautiful temples and buildings on fairly quiet streets. The old town section of Hoi An contains charming architecture and was recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

I heard that the beach a few miles east of town was quite nice, but I did not go. I spent my days mostly exploring central Hoi An on foot. Aside from the beach and the architecture, the other large attraction to Hoi An are the numerous tailors which can be found everywhere, often more than two on a single block. Many people come to spend time on the beach while they have clothes custom made.

The Tet Festival, or Lunar New Year, is the most important holiday in Vietnam. I was quite worried about finding a place to stay and food to eat, but since the town of Hoi An caters to tourists, I did not have any problems. Probably nine-tenths of the shops and restaurants were closed, but given the sheer number of venues, that left plenty open to choose from. The actual Lunar New Year was Saturday, the 17th, but the 18th and 19th are also official holidays.

Music seems to be an important part of the Tet festivities. I woke up on New Years Eve at seven in the morning to someone behind my hotel blasting instrumental versions of old American pop songs. Walking around town I would often come upon a private residence that sounded more like a disco or dance hall than a house: sometimes American music, some electronic dance music, every once in a while some Vietnamese music, but more often than not it seemed to be the Scandinavian group Abba. Abba and more Abba, all day.

Generally, the Vietnamese spend Tet with their family and the streets are very quiet, but New Years Eve is a very large celebration. Banners hang over all the main streets wishing a happy new year and flower peddlers lines the sidewalks selling large bouquets. The city set up a lighted stage on the north back of the river that runs through Hoi An and put on skits and songs starting around nine o'clock at night. At midnight, there was a countdown, everyone sung the national anthem, and then a boat in the river shot off an almost continuous firework display for over ten minutes. Then, after the fireworks, a group of singers on the stage led everyone in singing the Abba song, "Happy New Year".

I've just arrived in Hanoi this morning at about seven o'clock on my second overnight bus. I'm beginning to detest these cramped all-night bus rides. Hopefully this will be my last for a while. Tomorrow, I fly to Bangkok on my way to Nepal.

A quiet few days in Mui Ne

I've been having difficulty updating my blog the last couple of days. Some internet cafes here can't seem to load the Blogger start page at all, and those that do are so painfully slow that updating takes forever. At least Flickr works consistently.

The town of Mui Ne is a small fishing village on the southeastern coast of Vietnam, about a five hour drive from Ho Chi Minh City. It has a reputation for being much quieter and less commercialized than Nha Trang, the main beach resort town in Vietnam. The village itself is a dense group of narrow dirt side streets splitting off the paved main street for about fifteen blocks. The market on the south side of town is smaller than the others that I've seen in Vietnam and there's not much to do in town.

A long, nice beach stretches along the shore to the south for several miles. The road that runs out of town to the south stays several hundred yards from the beach and hotels are packed side by side, facing the ocean. A variety of restaurants, small shops, and travel agencies are located across the road on the inland side. The road itself is not very aesthetic, but the beachfront makes up for it.

The tour bus that Tiffany and I took from Dalat deposited up at a travel office just next to a hotel that was charging twelve dollars a night for their rooms. It seemed a little steep, but since we had planned to split the cost, and the hotel was quite nice, we decided to stay there instead of walking around bargain shopping. One of the reasons that the tour buses are cheap in Vietnam is because they are subsidized by the restaurants they visit and the hotels where they choose to end. I don't like being shepherded into a hotel at the end of a bus trip, but if the hotel is reasonable, and the staff is not too pushy, it's alright.

There are several sights around Mui Ne other than the nice beach. On Tuesday, Tiffany and I rented a motorbike for about three dollars and visited the white sand dunes, the red sand dunes, and a small canyon. We spent so much time at the first dunes, that we did not get to see the waterfall, the Cham Tower, or the lighthouse. It was refreshing to have our own transportation and choose what to see and when to see it.

The white sand dunes were definitely the highlight. The white sand dunes are about ten miles north of Mui Ne and the road that leads to them has fantastic views of undeveloped coastline. The map we were using was drawn in an inappropriate scale on the back of a business card advertising our hotel, but after asking directions once or twice, we found our destination.

We arrived at the parking area just as another tourist couple we had seen previously pulled up. They had also rented a motorbike but had not asked for helmets and had mentioned earlier that our helmets were a good idea. We sat down at the small shack at the trail head and ate lunch with them: Guy, a Frenchman, and his Serbian girlfriend, whose name I forgot. Guy spoke almost no English and his girlfriend spoke English about as well as I speak French, so we all got to practice languages other than our first.

After lunch, we rented plastic mats to use as sand sleds and hiked over to the highest dune we could find. The dunes stretched for perhaps five square miles and beyond, the countryside was dry grassland over rolling hills as far as we could see inland. It reminded me more of pictures I have seed of Africa than Vietnam. We spent perhaps an hour goofing around on the dunes, sledding, rolling, jumping, and running down them.

Guy and his girlfriend had to get their motorbike back by five in the evening, so we decided to caravan back towards town, looking for the red rock canyon. About halfway back we spotted it and pulled over. The canyon sat at the end of a trail about a hundred yards above the road, overlooking the ocean. The red "rock" was actually more eroded dirt, like parts of Bryce Canyon, but much, much smaller. We explored the whole thing in about five minutes.

After the canyon, Tiffany and I stopped at the red sand dunes, which were neither as big or as steep as the white dunes, and only spent a few minutes there. On our way back through town, we stopped at the fishing beach, took pictures of sunset, fooled around with some school children and bought some snacks from a street vendor.

A lot of our time on Mui Ne was spent arranging travel in the coming days. The Tet Festival complicates all aspects of touring. All domestic airplanes and trains are booked, buses and accommodations are more expensive, and I'm fairly certain that the unfavorable dong exchange rate that just changed the other day is also related.

The beach in front of our hotel was a nice place to relax from the sometimes stressful business of figuring out our itineraries. It was not a wide beach, probably only fifty feet from the hotel to the water, but the views both up and down the coast were beautiful.

On Wednesday afternoon, Tiffany and I boarded our buses, mine to Hoi An, and hers to Ho Chi Minh City. It has been nice to have such a good travel partner, and it was sad to part after only a few days.

My bus ride from Mui Ne was long and a little trying. The tour operators tried to seat a group of older French tourists in the aisle of the bus on plastic chairs, but they very obstinately refused and gave up getting on our bus. During our stop in Nha Trang, a woman boarded the bus without a ticket and then refused to either get off or buy a ticket for ten minutes. Then after the sun set, our bus driver played chicken with the oncoming headlights while passing slower traffic on the two lane highway. We drove overnight and arrived in Hoi An at about eight o'clock in the morning.

Three Days in Dalat

The town of Dalat is situated on the rolling hills surrounding Xuan Huong Lake at about five thousand feet above sea level. The narrow streets wind around closely packed buildings. My hotel was in the center of town, downhill from the market.

On Thursday I decided to do my own walking tour around Dalat. The weather was beautifully clear all day. First, I walked across the dam to see the quieter side of town which contains the cathedral, several dozen small hotels, and more cafes than I could count. There is a nice trail around the entire lake that I walked next, stopping at the flower park. Dalat is known as the city of flowers because it can grow flowers year round that cannot be found elsewhere in Vietnam. The flower park was impressive but the landscaping was a little gaudy. As the sun set, the air got quite cold. Many of the locals were wearing thick coats and hats, but I enjoyed it.

On Friday, I rented a bicycle to ride around the outskirts of Dalat. In the morning, I saw the two impressive pagodas Chua Linh Son and Thien Vien Van Hanh. Chua Linh Son was very nice but Thien Vien Van Hanh was very different than the other pagodas that I've visited. The pagoda was much wider than it was deep and the whole front opened to a grand view over the city. I stopped to take in the architecture and several monks came over to talk to me.

After the pagodas, I stopped at Dalat University and looked around the campus. I found an open classroom and took some pictures. I stopped at a bakery for lunch on my way over to the other side of town to see the Lake of Sighs, so named because of a legendary tragedy that befell two lovers there.

I continued my circuit around Dalat to the south and headed out of town on one of the main roads looking for several other pagodas, which I never found. What I did find was a huge hill, descending, as it wound south. It was probably two miles later that I gave up on the pagodas and turned around to climb back into Dalat. After getting a little lost on the southwest side of town on top of a large hill that overlooked the farms and flower greenhouses to the west I headed to the war memorial, which sits atop another large hill.

I spent about thirty minutes at the war memorial looking around before returning to my bicycle and starting back to town. A short ways down the long hill immediately outside the monument, I squeezed my brakes, only to find that neither front nor rear were working. I stomped my feet down to the pavement and turned the bike towards the ditch at the side of the road, but luckily stopped before I went into it. I examined the brakes to find that both front and back had been partially dismantled and some of the parts stolen. I stormed back up the hill back to the memorial, wheeling my bike and heatedly talked the the attendant.

Unfortunately, the old man tending the office spoke absolutely no English. He mimed to me that he had seen several children bent over my bike and had scared them off. Then he invited me into the office, telephoned someone, and poured some tea that we shared in silence. I had no idea who he had called until a young boy showed up. They talked for several minutes and the boy ran off as we still sat in the office drinking more tea. I was making plans to walk my bike back into town when the boy brought several other children to the front gate of the memorial, where they left a pile of my missing parts. I spent fifteen minutes reassembling everything by hand without tools. I never got the front break working, but made it back to my hotel safely with only the rear.

When I returned to the hotel, there was a bit of a crowd waiting to get rooms. As I waited to talk to the woman at reception about repairing the bike, I met Tiffany, who had just arrived from Hoi An and was looking for a room. We decided to share the room that I already had. After she settled in and I haggled with the bike mechanic, we went out to dinner at a nice local restaurant.

Many of the sights around Dalat are further than any tourists care to walk or bike, which makes motorbike guiding quite popular. The Easy Riders are a group of guides, sanctioned by the government that speak very good English and have fantastic knowledge of the area. From what I'd read and heard, getting an Easy Rider guarantees a good tour.

On Saturday, I had asked the manager of my hotel to call an Easy Rider for a day tour. Tiffany was hoping to hire another driver for the tour. I was disappointed to find that my guide, although seemingly competent, was not a registered Easy Rider. To make a long story short, after an exceptionally unpleasant thirty minutes of talking to the guide, the receptionist, and then the manager via phone, I took the guide, but Tiffany and I moved hotels immediately.

After a bad start, the tour turned out quite well. Our guides, although not Easy Riders, were pleasant and professional. We drove out of Dalat to the west and toured some flower greenhouses and stopped at some coffee fields before a mid morning stop at a roadside cafe. The road wound through a valley between two ridges first covered by jungle and then by coffee plantations down into a broader valley where we spent the afternoon. We had a fantastic, home cooked lunch at a local house consisting of at least ten different dishes and then went to see an impressive waterfall. After the waterfall we started our drive back to Dalat stopping at a silk factory and a passion fruit orchard. The silk factory was absolutely amazing. We got to see the different stages of the silk worms, the machines that unroll the silk of the worms' cocoons, and the machines that actually weave the fabric.

Today, Tiffany and I took an open tour bus from Dalat to Mui Ne, which is a beach town on the southern coast. The lunar new year, also known as the Tet Festival, is the most important holiday in Vietnam. Travelling in the country is a little difficult these days because Tet is next weekend and many of the Vietnamese are travelling to meet their families. Our bus stopped to pick up people on the way out to the coast until they were sitting and standing in the aisle. Luckily, the whole trip was a quick four hours.