viet nam

for the holidays, chris and i decided that it would be a cool idea to visit a southeast asian country that we hadn't been to before so we planned a weeklong trip to Viet Nam. my little brother derrick flew over from the states and met up with his gf who was studying abroad in Beijing last semester in Hong Kong. they met up with us in Bangkok and we all flew over to Hanoi together.

usually, i do all the trip planning once we get to a certain location. this time, however, i was busy with work and couldn't be bothered so chris made a lot of the arrangements. our wedding photographer, zim, was a real lifesaver and gave us a lot of great travel advice. even better, she booked hotel rooms and a driver for us in hanoi since she had just been traveling through a few weeks earlier. in any case, we arrived in viet nam with me not having researched much, a 2000 copy of Lonely Planet Vietnam, and some emails from Zim. it all worked out though.

our main plan was to spend 2 days in three different locales - Hanoi, the capitol, Sapa, a mountainous town on the border of Vietnam and China, and Ha Long Bay, a bay filled with thousands of rock formations (similar to the South of Thailand, but on a larger scale). Here are the highlights of each city we visited:

Hanoi. Hanoi is a very colorful city with no traffic lights and no traffic rules. There aren't too many tall buildings but a lot of them are very long (you used to have pay taxes based on the size of your store/house front, so people just built really long houses instead of wide ones). Although there are sidewalks, Hanoi takes 'street life' to a whole new level. It is basically impossible to walk on the sidewalks because they're filled with parked motorcycles, tea/coffee/noodle/snack shops (basically stools and small folding tables where you can watch the traffic go by), fruit/vegetable sellers, and the overflow of shop goods onto the street. This means you have to walk in the actual street, which is also overflowing with motorcycles, bicycles, cars, tour vans, more vendors, and people. There are hardly any traffic lights (and people dont always obey the ones that do exist) so it's mostly chaos, with people making their way through the traffic by using their horns. Hanoi is the first place where we noticed 'pimped-out' horns - echoing horns, horns with different tones, melodic horns. My understanding of the horn is that it indicates that you better get out of the way/go faster or you're going to get run over. Craziness.

Highlights of Hanoi included:

The Temple of Literature (first university in Vietnam, with 'doctor steles' - basically, if you get a doctorate, your name gets engraved on this plaque on a stone tortoise, which is one of the four holy animals of Vietnam).

the 'Hanoi Hilton', where Vietnamese (and also American) prisoners were held (and/or executed) during different wars.


a water puppet show (where the stage is a waist-high pool of water and puppeteers stand behind a grass curtain and control the puppets on these bamboo poles - crazy!) Other highlights included the Vietnamese Women's Museum, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, and various pagodas around the city. Many of the pagodas and ancient artwork in Vietnam are very similar to Chinese art and architecture (Vietnam won its independence to China in the 1400's). We also had yummy dinners at Wild Rice (where we met up with Karyn from TTAG) and Bobby Chinn's.

Over the weekend, we took an overnight train to Sapa. The train was really dirty (they didn't change the sheets at all, and there ) even though we took soft sleeper seats. Sapa is known as a trekking destination because of its mountainous location, but we came during the weekend to also see the weekend market, where ethnic minorities from the surrounding area flood the city to buy and sell local goods. They all dress in their traditional clothing, and it's really amazing to see the different colors of cloth, headscarves, etc. all at once. Chris and I picked up a few indigo-dyed pieces of clothing at the weekend market and took a walk to Cat Cat Village, a local Black Hmong village that's been flooded with tourists and unfortunately litter (everywhere!). The second day, we booked a 16 km 'easy' trek through the mountains with a local guide and visited three villages, Y Ninh Ho, Lao Chai (both Black H'mong villages), and Ta Van (Giay village). We only ran into a few other people on our trek and it was really nice and peaceful. Most of the scenery consisted of water buffalo, chickens, rice paddies, and mountains. We also saw some cool irrigation systems built out of bamboo cut in half and a wooden pestle to ground grain driven by the flow of a small waterfall. All the children in the different villages said 'hello' and 'bye-bye' to us and some tried to peddle bracelets and other things but often got bored and just ended up tagging along for awhile. Eating highlights included: 'Sapa' style beef/pork/fish (much like Chinese sizzling plate, or tie ban, dishes), pho, stir-fried noodles, an omelette at a special restaurant run by an NGO that teaches disadvantaged young people how to cook/run a restaurant, and the ever classic traveler's food, banana pancakes.

Ha Long Bay - this part of the trip was the worst part as we booked a tour through our hotel in Hanoi and they ended up cramming us into a van and a boat. it was foggy so we couldnt appreciate the whole seascape with all the different rock formations, the food wasn't good, and we didnt get to go kayaking (as promised) through different caves. we spent christmas dinner in a 'three-star' hotel (maybe a one star hotel in the US?) and that was ok, but i flooded the bathroom since the tub and the wall had nothing in between them. thank god for satellite tv though - i watched lots of it when i couldn't sleep. overall, disappointing, so if you're headed out there, book your own private car and boat so you don't suffer the same fate as us.

Best part of the trip by far (conversation between Tanya and Chris):
Tanya: What's been the favorite part of your trip so far?
Chris: The plane ride over here.
Tanya: Seriously?
Chris: Yes. I want to go home.
Tanya: The plane ride doesn't count as part of the trip.
Chris: OK, the water puppet show.

This was like three days into it. In retrospect, we did enjoy our time in Vietnam (esp Sapa and Hanoi) but were just exhausted from doing all the planning and frustrated at a lot of the dirtiness (can we have a shower curtain without blood stains on it?). Chris said that maybe we've become snobs. I dunno, but I feel like we are getting old. Traveling with Derrick and his gf (age 20) also put this into perspective for us. In any case, I like being married. And there is a sense of comfort in getting older as well.