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So we took the night train from Hanoi to Sapa which was much better quality than the train I took from Bangkok to Chiang Mai. This one had a/c and a more comfortable bed which was a pleasant suprise. I did the gentlemanly thing and took the top bunk and we set off on the 8 hour journey. The cabins slept 4 people and we were in a cabin with two very chatty Spanish girls. They were part of a group of 6 and were very keen to try out their English with me. While this was lovely, they just wouldn't stop talking and I had to stop them in the end to get some sleep!
It was raining and cloudy on arrival and much cooler (around 25 degress) which was a welcome change from the humid and muggy climate in Hanoi. We were welcomed by yet more chaos outside the train station. Dozens of minibuses were parked out in the big village square along with lots of street vendors and drivers vying for your cash. We were marched onto one bus and plonked in the back with the other confused passengers! It seemed that all buses were headed for the same place so we joined a convoy of minibuses. cars and scooters on the winding trip up into the hills of Sapa. The views were amazing despite the cloud and rain so all looked promising. We found a decent hotel and then headed off out for a half day trek up Ha Rong mountain. It was all very picturesque with lots of locals and tourists doing the same route. It turned out we'd picked the middle of the Vietnamese school holidays to come to Vietnam so wherever we went for the next two weeks would be busy. I guess I should have checked that before I came eh? I must admit I was knackered after what we were told was the easiest trek in Sapa but I blame those Spanish girls for keeping me awake!
Sapa is renowned for it's hill tribes and there were dozens of them wandering the streets trying to sell their hand made products. They were all tiny little women of all ages dressed in their traditional costume and their standard approach was a beautiful smile followed by "You buy from me?", "Where you from?" and "What's your name?". It was all very nice to start with but despite my constant rejection they had a tendency to follow you around which got very annoying.
We headed out that evening and I had lots of pasta in preparation for our planned 14km hike the next day. Juliane met up with several of her German friends and we hit the bars of Sapa to find some fun. Sadly the bars all close at 11pm so we had to drink quickly but I was in good company with zee Germans! I got chatting to a guy from Switzerland called Sebastian who was cycling around the world for a year. He'd been to many obscure places such as Nepal, Iran and Oman on his trip and told me some fabulous stroies of his exploits. It certainly made my mini adventure so far look very tame.
We woke up the next day welcomed by more rain and clouds but decided to set out on our long trek regardless. To help fuel the walk I had pizza for breakfast! We were quickly set upon by more hill tribe women who we outpaced as we got deeper and deeper into the valley. The walk was great fun and we saw the steep curves of the valley with the stepped rice paddies stretching out for miles. The scenery was great but it was unfortunate that it was raining so hard as I'm sure the views would have been much better with less cloud. Along the way there was one little hill tribe woman who wouldn't take no for an answer and she followed us for almost two hours in the pouring rain. I started to feel a little sorry for her but Juliane helped me stick to my guns and not buy anything. Needless to say by the end of the trek she was more than a little fed up with no sales! I've never been wetter when fully clothed in my life and we were starting to get a little chilly so we took a motorbike taxi back to Sapa and tried to dry off. Lots of the shops and hotels offered a shoe and cloth drying service so we took full advantage. At the hotel we were welcomed by a group of Vietnamese teachers who were on their holiday and they shared some traditional green tea with us. It was very bitter but grew on you after a while and we had a very stilted conversation about where we were from, what we did and football. One mention of Manchester United and they got very excited and reeled off some names......Roraldo, Arek Rergulon and Rayne Rooley amongst them! Not sure they'd have known who Darren Fletcher was though!
Typically the next day was bright and sunny but we'd decided to head off to Halong Bay on the East coast so had a quiet day and caught the night train back to Hanoi that evening. No Spanish girls with us this time (although they were on our train) so I slept well. We arrived in Hanoi at 5.30am and it was very quiet. We needed a bus to Halong City which would have taken 4 hours but couldn't find anyone willing or able to talk English. At the ticket office I resorted to using my picture book for the first time and pointed at a picture of a bus along with stating where I wanted to go. We were given a train ticket! Undeterred we jumped on the train to Haiphong which was a 2 hour bus ride from Halong City so we were still on course time-wise. At Haiphong station chaos ensued once again and there were still no English speakers. Out of nowhere a little guy in a uniform pops up speaking decent english and after showing us his ID told us he worked for the government and there was a bus leaving in 15 minutes if we hurried. He seemed ok so we went with it and he put us in a cab and came along for the ride. We jumped out and straight into what turned out to be his mate's bus where they tried to overcharge us for our trip by about 400%. I got them down to a reasonable figure but we still payed way over the odds and were dropped 7km outside of the town we needed! I was not liking the Vietnamese people at all right now and they were quickly joined by the Germans when Juliane blamed me for the whole situation! I bit my tongue and we got a cab into town, found a hotel and settled in to Halong City. Not a good day!
Halong City was just as LP had described.....overdeveloped and underloved! There were lots of hotels, a small beach and loads of Vietnamese families and tourists and we found that the only way to Halong Bay was to booka trip so we did just that for the next day along with a ticket on the night bus to Hue for the next night. The trip was good fun with stunning scenery and we stopped at a fishing village and several caves on the way over to Cat Ba Island. One night on Cat Ba Island and we were back on the boat the next day with the same crowd who'd stayed on the boat the previous night. Everyone was more relaxed and we all had a good laugh on the way back to Halong City. I met an Austrian guy called Johann who was 6' 7" and sounded exactly like Borat and he was raving about England and the cheap beer at Wetherspoons....bizarre! Another good thing to come out of the day was several Vietnamese guys calling me a big man and squeezing my arms and poking my chest...one even called me Superman!! Clearly not true but it did wonders for the ego nonetheless!
We were all dropped off at a restaurant for lunch which was packed with locals and tourists and reminded me of an old Butlins dinner hall. It was very noisy and busy in the restaurant and we were quickly joined by some local guys who were drinking rice wine. They offered us some and it seemed rude to refuse so I had a shot and thought I was going to explode! This stuff tasted awful and must have been 80% proof! They were drinking it like it was lemonade and kept plying our table with the stuff but as this was literally the first act of kindness I'd seen from the Vietnamese I went along with it. Not to be outdone, one of the American girls on our table necked a half pint of the stuff to rapturous applause from all the locals but she was all over the place within 5 minutes and disappered to the loo soon after!
We left the restaurant and were driven to Hanoi to pick up the night bus. This was another first for me and totally not what I expected. The bus was basically a normal coach split into 3 rows of very narrow bunk beds. 12 hours on this was going to be fun! 2 hours into the journey we stopped for a break and the bus wouldn't start when we went to set off again. Cue lots of messing around by the locals and several vain attempts to bump start the bus! One battery change later and we were off again and heading to Hue.
Hue is basically the crossover point from North to South Vietnam and first impressions were good. The locals and hotel staff seemed very friendly and it was almost like turning a switch as we switched from Northern to Southern Vietnam. We got a decent hotel and I quickly booked on to a couple of trips (one city trip and a visit to the DMZ) for the next two days. Juliane didn't fancy the DMZ (Demilitarised Zone) so decided this was where we would part company. The trips were good although the DMZ trip was a little disappointing as many of the sites of the big conflicts have now been cleared by the locals. Hue turned out to be great fun as I met up with a couple of guys from the Halong Bay trip and met an English guy on the DMZ trip so wasn;t alone for long. A couple of good nights out and it was off to Hoi An for the next stop.
Walking from the bus, I was surprised to bump into the Spanish girls from the Sapa trip and a couple of guys who were travelling the same route from North to South who I'd met in Hue. Before I came away I was told this was likely to happen but this was the first time I experienced any random meetings. All of a sudden I didn't feel like I was travelling alone but was part of a bigger group following the same route......a good feeling!! Hoi An is the tailoring capital of Vietnam and once I'd found a hotel, I was taken to the hotel owner's sister's place where I ordered a new suit, two shirts and a pair of jeans. All this within 3 hours of getting in to town! Hoi An is renowned for it's Old Town and it was certainly very quaint and barely touched by commercial tourism. This was a refreshing change and there were no scooters or cars aloud into the old quarter so it made wandering around a very pleasant experience. I ventured out that afternoon and bumped into Peter (the guy from USA)...random meeting number three! We shared a few beers and agreed to meet up in Saigon later that week.I had a trip to the Cham ruins the next day which was interesting and decided to head off to Nha Trang that evening on another night bus.
Although it was very nice in Hoi An it didn't really have enough to hold me for long and as I was beginning to map out my remaining time in SE Asia to ensure I did everything I wanted to do I figured that time was beginning to run short and had to move on. The night bus to Nha Trang was slightly more comfortable than my previous experience but the bunks were shorter meaning that I couldn't stretch out fully. God knows how anyone taller managed but I got some sleep despite the heavy rain during the night and the occasional drip through the roof onto my head!
I was met at Nha Trang by the usual collection of touts selling their hotels and I took a chance and jumped on a bike to the nicest looking place. This turned out to be a good move as the hotel was bang in the middle of town and very nice. I was given a top floor room with great views of the bay so all good so far! A quick review of Lonely Planet (fast becoming worth it's weight in gold!) and I was off to an island off the coast where Miss World was apparently held last year. It was called Vinpearland and had a theme park, aquarium, water park and amphitheatre on site. You reached the island by cable car from the mainland but sadly it turned out to be a little disappointing. The highpoint was a free arcade with lots of old arcade games like Time Crisis and 1942 where I spent far too long reliving my youth and the aquarium. The aquarium was very well done and amazingly the fish seemed to swim over to look at you. I know this probably sounds a little odd but I had lots of eyeball to eyeball action with loads of fish which was a little surreal!
Ventured out that night for a cracking seafood meal in a nearby restaurant and saw AJ and Suzanne who were the couple I met in Bangkok on my third night of the trip. They were the guys who made me drink all the Sang Som buckets(!) and I was happy to discover that they felt as rough as me the next day and could remember even less than I did! This was another random meeting made even more coincidental by the fact that they are doing the opposite route to me. It turns out they are heading to China at the same time as me so we swapped details and agreed to stay in touch. I was looking a little scruffy so the next day I decided to head out and find a local barber for a shave and had my first ever cut throat razor experience. The girl was a little surprised when I said I wanted my head done too but she did a cracking job.
It's rained all afternoon (hence the lengthy update!) and I've decided that two nights in Nha Trang will be enough so I've booked a flight to Saigon for tomorrow (17th July).
Hope all is well with everyone at home. Next update to follow soon........
Andy
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