Vietnam

We arrived in Hanoi on June 14th amid the downpour of a thunderstorm. After passing through customs, we found a guy from the hostel holding a sign that said "Chod Redmna". Close enough! I was sure glad that we had paid someone pick us up. The thunderstorm was pretty intense, and there were quite a few people trying to pull us into their cabs. The rain didn't deter the scooters from driving on the highway; it was still full of mopeds driven by people in ponchos. After crossing a beautiful bridge, we arrived in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. Here, we found that many of the roads had been closed for some reason known only to people who speak Vietnamese. We drove around for a full 20 minutes looking for a way into the streets. This was our first taste of Vietnam driving....at one point the driver backed up against traffic in a busy traffic circle (instead of going around and the circle one more time to get his turn). I just shut my eyes and hoped we didn't die. Finally, we got close and someone from the hostel came to the car and guided us to the door.

When we walked in the door, we were met by blaring music and a raging party. Apparently the first floor of the hostel was a bar, and Sunday night was like any other night. We shouted back and forth with reception until we had gotten our keys and been shown to a dorm room. It was probably 9 or 10 at this point and we were leaving at 6:30 the next morning for Halong Bay, so we just unloaded what we needed for the next three days and looked for an ATM. There are around 22,000 Vietnamese Dong to 1 USD, so we took at a total of 5 million dong between the two of us on the first night. To give an idea of prices, a cheap can of beer was about 25,000 dong, a mixed drink was 40,000, a bowl of pho was 50,000, and a plate of veggies was 35,000. That's an average for the places we were eating, which were neither the best nor the worst.

After a quick night's sleep, we set off Monday morning for Halong Bay. Neither of us had realized how far it was from Hanoi to the bay. We started with a 2.5 hour bus ride, followed by a 45 minute boat ride to Cat Ba island (the largest in Halong Bay), followed by a 30 minute bus ride across Cat Ba, and finishing up with a 20 minute boat ride to the island where we were staying. The hostel where we were staying owned a private island and beach in Halong Bay, and had turned it into a spring break party spot where we stayed for 3 days and 2 nights. They had not exaggerated the party scene in their description of the tour. It was almost exactly like Cabo Spring Break, but the scenery was more beautiful and I was 5 years older. They beauty of Halong Bay is not overstated in pictures- it feels like you've fallen into a picture on the internet. The islands are very steep, with trees and other shrubbery growing out of the crevices in the cliff. They look like hills popping out of the water, and reminded me a bit of New Zealand. As we were riding in on the boat, we saw little floating houses that the Halong Bay fishermen live in. There is a little shack, maybe 10 ft. X 20 ft., with a small outdoor porch for the family to live. Attached to the house is a grid of square nets attached to

floats that form little compartments. The nets were partially submerged, but I guessed they were to hold the day's live catch. Many of the fishermen are born and live their entire life in Halong Bay, only leaving once or twice if there is a very large storm.

After we arrived on the island, we went right to the beach and hung out in the water, drinking a beer or two. It had been (and continued to be) oppressively hot since we arrived in Vietnam, and it was much nicer in the water! The first afternoon was spent in a variety of "thrill activities". Chad and I had chosen tubing, so we went out tubing on Halong Bay for a bit, which was nice. When we returned, we found that the crew of people who had come the day before had returned from their booze cruise. It seemed that they were taking the drinking significantly more seriously than we had been, and the party picked up very soon after they arrived. After dinner and a shower the drinking games started, and it was fun to learn some international

games. Chad and I were among the very few Americans in the crowd. The group was mostly from the UK, with some Canadians and a few Americans. After that, they turned on the disco light, pushed the tables together, and tried to convince people to dance on them. I bowed out at this point, and like the old fogey I am, went to the beach to look at the stars. The cliff of the island rose up directly behind us, which created a sort of dome of stars, outlined by the island behind us and to the sides of us, then by the horizon, which was made of the nearby islands. I sat out there for a while and was eventually joined by a British guy named Chris. We talked until 12 or 1, when Chad came by to remind us about the phytoplankton in the bay! Halong Bay is home to fluorescent plankton that can be seen after midnight. They were quite cool, and shined even brighter when you disturbed the water around them. After a little while longer, it was off to bed.

We had breakfast the next morning, June 16th, then headed out on our booze cruise. This was actually the most pleasant part of the trip. We sat on the roof of a boat throughout the morning, cruising through the bay. It would have been incredibly peaceful and beautiful, except for the rap music blaring out of the amplifier. We had to settle for just beautiful :). We stopped once before lunch to swim, which consisted of jumping off the side of the boat and floating in the water. It was pretty salty, and I could float with my head above water if I held my breath.

The swimming was followed by kayaking, which was the best part of the trip. We got away from the music on the boat and kayaked into an inlet and around several different islands. After about 45 minutes, we returned to lunch. This was the first actual Vietnamese food we had eaten, which was nice. The party started after lunch and I moved to the other side of the boat to escape the speaker. I ended up sitting by Hanne, a Belgian girl who now lived in the Canary Islands and would soon be moving to Norway. Her English was excellent and we bonded over feeling like grandmothers next to party around us. She was also fluent in French, Dutch, German, Spanish, and Mandarin and had lots of stories from her travels. We ended up talking and drinking G&Ts on the beach that night instead of joining the party.

June 17th was the end of our time in Halong Bay, and we headed out on the very long journey back to Hanoi right after lunch. We arrived at 6, said goodbye to Hanne, and moved to another hostel. This place was (mercifully) quieter and until 11:00 p.m. that night we had a dorm room to ourselves. That gave us time to find some food, take a real shower, and Skype with our parents for a bit. We would stay in Hanoi the next day, leaving by a 6:00 p.m. night bus to go south down the coast. The last day in Hanoi was a giant shopping spree. The Old Quarter where we were staying consists of blocks upon blocks of small shops where you can get anything from bags to chopsticks to jewelry to clothes. I purchased a bag from one of the shops, which was fortunate as it held the rest of the souvenirs we had purchased. After a goodbye dinner with the British guy Chris, we showered and loaded into a packed shuttle to head to the bus. After some confusion with our tickets, which resulted in 45 minutes standing outside (read: those showers were useless), we got on to our first ever sleeper bus. These buses have three reclining seats per row, with two aisles separating the seats. The seats are stacked two-high, and are long enough to fit about 40 people. The bus company gives all the front seats to Vietnamese passengers, and start filling the foreigners in at the back, near the bathroom. This proved true on all three of the sleeper buses that we took in Vietnam. The reclining seats lie nearly flat

when you put them all the way back, and were tall enough for people up to about 5'5". It wasn't too bad for me, but Chad was definitely squished. This first bus was also overbooked, so there were people sleeping on the floor of the aisles for the whole trip.

The last people on the bus were five drunk Vietnamese guys. They were nice enough, but were loud. Nothing made them happier than saying "Hello" or "Where you from?" and receiving an answer. This was endearing the first few times, but maybe a little tiring after that. They were also showing a VERY loud Vietnamese movie on the A/V system. This was followed by a TV show and some music videos. I can tell you that I would not categorize Vietnamese among the romance languages. At midnight, we stopped and the TV was finally shut off. We had stopped for the driver to eat and rest. Thinking this would be 20-30 minutes, we stayed on board as the ringing slowly left our ears. After half an hour of no A/C, it was not possible to remain on the bus any longer, and we went outside to find that they were replacing one or more belts in the engine at the back of the bus. This took at least 45 minutes, and when the driver tried to start it, we found that the battery had died from keeping the lights on for that entire time. They tried once to push start the bus without any luck. After about 20 minutes, they decided to try again, and all the guys pushed the bus backwards as the driver cranked on the key. The engine started! We took off again, now very behind schedule, and all was quiet until around 5:00 a.m. At that point the drunk guys started yelling again (I think they only had one volume) and woke me up to see the sunrise. Around 7:00, the TVs started again with a collection of music videos. These were interesting from a cultural standpoint, and I watched those and the scenery until we arrived at 10:00 a.m. on June 19th in Hue, Vietnam.

We were staying in the Hue Best Western. That may not sound like

much, but it was a luxury hotel. We tramped in sweaty and gross, and were greeted immediately with someone to take our bags to the room, a welcome drink, and a nice lady to walk us to reception. The room was perfectly air conditioned and there was a beautiful pool. It was quite a change! After settling in, we walked over to the Forbidden Purple City, which is the remnant of the ancient capital of Vietnam. It used to look like a smaller scale of the Forbidden City in Beijing before it was destroyed in the 1910's and 1970's. They are currently working to restore it, making for an interesting combination of impressive architecture and ruins. On second you're in a beautiful walkway, turn the corner and you're looking at an overgrown field with some stones barely visible. We spent maybe 2 hours walking around, enjoying the fact that there were no rules guiding our tour. We could have walked right onto the construction site! We would have had exactly the same amount of safety gear as the workers in our shorts and flip flops. After this, we walked back toward the hotel,

stopping at one of the only bars with A/C. Here we got a couple of beers and a Hawaiian pizza, which was a nice little cheat from Asian food. After a rest in the hotel, we went back out in search of a bar with air conditioning. We eventually gave up and went to an Indian food restaurant that advertised A/C. It they had it, it wasn't turned on. We stayed anyway and ordered some curry and a bottle of Vietnamese wine before heading home to bed.

The next day, June 20th, we slept in until 1:00 p.m. Either the wine or the Indian food hadn't agreed with our stomachs, and after a brief trip to find lunch, we retreated to the pool. We were going to Hoi An, famous for its tailor-made clothing, the next day, so I spent four hours picking out the clothes I wanted to have made. Around 8 or 9 we decided it was time for dinner. We had a nice Vietnamese supper and made friends with one of the waiters, who showed us the difference between how Chinese and Vietnamese people use their chopsticks. Afterwards, we went for one beer, which turned into about 5 as we made friends with someone from South Africa and met people who had gone to Pomona and to Eastern. We got home in time to Skype with our parents, then hit the sheets for about 5 hours before the next day's adventure.

8:30 a.m. on June 21st found us trading our big backpacks for two semi-automatic scooters. We would be riding from Hue to Hoi An, over a beautiful pass that had been featured in the Top Gear episode about Vietnam. This episode had inspired me to plan this the trip, so we had been planning to do this ride for quite a while. At first, we thought the traffic was too crazy and we would just ride on the back of a scooter. However, a week in the country had given us confidence. It seemed like you just gassed the bike, honked your horn, and other people would ride around you. Armed with that strategy, we would be taking on a ~100 km ride. The traffic in Hue on a Sunday morning isn't anything like Hanoi, but it was still a little scary. We stopped for gas, then continued on our route along the coast and through residential areas. I thought the little towns we passed through were pretty cool. Whenever anyone noticed us, they yelled "Hello!" just for the fun of having it returned. We gained confidence and speed as we went, and eventually remembered that we hadn't eaten breakfast that day. We stopped the next time we saw a little stand with drinks, and found that they only thing they had that might qualify as breakfast was a family pack of individually wrapped cream biscuits. We then sat on some old steps and unwrapped about 15 apiece while the locals looked at us like we were crazy.

We reached a small town just before the pass and stopped for lunch. This was the first time in Vietnam that we had eaten at a local place. What a different experience from China! The woman who ran the

place was far from friendly and had a menu with about 6 options in English. She did not seem pleased with our selection, but eventually brought out a couple of simple dishes. I had tried seafood because we were near the sea, but it was nothing special. After about 45 minutes, we started out again. It had started to rain now, so I put on my raincoat. Chad fine getting wet, given that you could never be cold in a place like this. It didn't pour, thank goodness, but my pants were soaked by the next time we stopped. We continued on over the pass, which was beautiful, even in the clouds. On the other side of the pass was the city of Danang. We were only supposed to make two turns here, which would take 10 minutes and put us directly on the road to Hoi An. However, we missed our first turn and got an extended tour of the city as we tried to fix our mistake. This is where we really encountered Vietnam traffic. We were in a sea of scooters, dodging out of the way of cars and buses. We had to go through a couple of round-abouts and I'm sure the Go Pro strapped to my helmet

captured some uncouth words. We had to stop for directions twice, but at last we ended up on the right path. It had now started to rain harder, so we powered through the last 15 km to Hoi An, where we arrive 9 hours after we had left Hue. It was a relief to be off the scooters, which were not very uncomfortable, and we checked into a private room at a hostel. From there we found some pretty good Vietnamese food for dinner. Hanne was also traveling southward down Vietnam and arrived around 8:00 p.m., wondering if we wanted to go to dinner. Chad was still feeling the effects of the Indian Food/ Vietnamese Wine combo, so I left him to sleep it off, and Hanne and I went for dinner and a chat, returning around 9:30 for an early bed time.

Chad felt better after sleeping for 13 hours, so after a free breakfast we started walking along the streets, looking at tailors. There are at least 420 tailors in Hoi An, and we had been warned not to trust anyone- in person or online- for a recommendation. Our strategy was to window shop. As we walked along the road we were catcalled by every store we walked by- "Hello! You buy something?” We had a policy against going anywhere that yelled at us, which narrowed the field significantly. From there we just looked for places with nice suits and dresses. Chad also wanted to get a pair of shoes, so we were looked at leather shops as we walked. After stopping into a few places to get price quotes and business cards we came across an upscale looking tailor shop that was busier than the others. They had some nice looking women's suits and we liked the people that we talked with, so without further ado I started ordering a four piece suit with the pictures I had found online two days earlier. I looked over and Chad had picked out three shirts, a wool coat, and slacks. I first showed the pictures, then picked the fabric and lining, then got measured and took a picture. The custom fitted suit cost about $220. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped at another two tailors for other dresses I wanted and at a leather shop for Chad's riding boots. After lunch, we continued walking around and each of us ordered a laptop bag to be custom made. After that, we decided we had overdone it, had dinner, and went back to the hostel. We found a few people drinking around the picnic table outside and ended up meeting some new UK and German friends.

The next day, June 23rd, was full of fittings. It's amazing how close they can get on the first try, and the two casual dresses just needed to be taken in a bit to be perfect. Chad's shoes were great, as were the leather bags. The fancier store had not hemmed any of the clothes yet, but waited until the next fitting and told us to come back in 24 hours. The women who worked at the shops were all very nice, with varying levels of English. The lady at the upscale tailor knew far better than I did how to make the suit fit correctly. This took most of the second day, and in addition to all of our clothes and leather goods, we had also gathered a variety of other souvenirs. At 6:00 p.m., we met up with Hanne for dinner, as it was her last day in Vietnam. She and a few other people were going to one of the nicer Vietnamese restaurants in town, so the five of set off together. After dinner, we crossed the bridge and explored the night market. One of the streets is completely lit up with lanterns, both as decoration and for sale. It was nice to walk slowly through and count the number of times we heard the phrase "Hello! You buy something?” One time we

heard it 6 time consecutively in the space of a minute. After our walk, we headed back to the hostel so that Hanne could get some sleep before her early flight the next day. Chad and I spent the rest of the night packing all of our new purchases. We had added 4 new bags to our 2 original backpacks.....whoops.

The next day was our last in Hoi An. We would be catching the 5:00 p.m. overnight bus to Nha Trang, then switching to another bus to Ho Chi Minh City. Altogether we were looking at 24 hours of bus rides. We spent the day in Hoi An doing final fittings for my suit. Chad was pretty much done, but I needed a second fitting for all my pieces, and the dress required a third. It turned out great! Nothing

has ever fit me so well as that dress. Between fittings we found probably the only sports bar in Vietnam, where we drank beer and ate their version of chips and salsa, which were actually quite good. After that, we had a last meal in Hoi An, then showered and waited for the bus. It was maybe 45 minutes late, but we got on easily enough. These buses weren't quite as nice as the last one. They didn't have bathrooms and the A/C didn't work as well. This first bus to Nha Trang showcased the lack of quality infrastructure in Vietnam. We were on the main southern highway through the country, and the road was bumpy enough to almost rock you out of your seat. The driver hit one pothole so hard that Chad flew up 2.5 feet out of his bunk and hit his head on the ceiling. He was less amused than I was.

24 mainly sleepless hours later we arrived in Ho Chi Mihn City around 8 p.m. on June 25th. We had a hostel reserved, which amazingly ended up being about one block from where the bus

dropped us off. After checking in, we walked into a dorm room full of people getting ready to go out for the night. Our only goal for the night was food, so we started walking the streets in search of something Vietnamese for our last night. In our brief walk, it seemed like Ho Chi Mihn City was more developed than the other cities we had visited so far. It was a shame that we would not have time to explore the city or the Mekong Delta. On the bright side, we found an awesome restaurant on one of the main streets. After that, we turned in for the night, tired out from the long bus ride and recharging for another one the following day into Cambodia.