Three Farewells to Vietnam

Farewell 1 - Sapa

The sleeper train from Hanoi to Sapa was a truly Orient Express esque experience - except with a shirtless snoring guard propped outside our cabin instead of champagne deliveries and murder mysteries. The train doesn't get quite up to Sapa - only as far as the town of Lau Cai on the Chinese border, as Sapa is a further 1,600 metres skywards.

The winding connecting bus takes you into a beautiful mountain range. The iconic image of Sapa, which doesn't fail to amaze in person, is the countless carved out rice paddy terraces down every hill - a staple of livelihoods of the local hilltribes along with herding mountain goats, and, in recent years, tourism. In fact, it seems tourism is becoming the ever more prevalent money winner - as you find out by stepping off the bus into a scrum of brightly garbed women, with babies snoozing in back-baskets as they argue and jostle to be the one to take you on a trek to their village.

A trek seemed like the thing to do, and we managed to go a slightly less traveled route; traversing a 14km slippy mountain path that veered slightly into the jungle but mainly skirted rice terraces and trout farms, passing some shy villagers and kids playing with machetes. Our guide was a quiet 17 year old called Sa from a local Hmong village who rocked up with Converse trainers and a sports jacket over her traditional dress.

Sa called a car and bundled us in to see the Love waterfall, which didn't look very passionate but is in the shadow of Vietnam's highest peak Fansipan (apparantly not pronounced "fancy pants"). Also we had a gander at Heaven's Gate which is the majestic nickname for the highest road pass in Vietnam (2,083 meters) and has amazing views of mountains across Laos and China - when there isn't a thick layer of fog between them and you. Ah well. We hired bicycles to have another try - and after an exhausting 2 hours climb we could make out the shadow of a mountain-like thing (maybe). So we had a doodle about on the alpine roads and explored some fun little tracks. Not many people cycle here as it's crazy steep.

Weirdly, Sapa has a very Christmassy feel. As it's notably chillier, especially in the evenings, hearths roar away in the corner of cafes, hot mulled wine is the tipple of choice and roasted sweet chestnuts are dished into bags in the town square - even the Red Tzao hilltribe women wear red and white hats not unlike Santa's own. Maybe Father Christmas comes here on holiday...?

As usual we tried a little bit of food prepared in the local style - a favourite being juicy ash-baked trout wrapped in banana leaf. Definitely one for a future barbeque. However, it's hard to compete with surprise cafe Sapa O' Chau - who do straight up fish and chips as genuine as Scarborough's finest, with imported mugs (well, imported teabags) of Yorkshire tea to wash it down!

A small festival was meant to be happening during our stay, which seemed quite fortunate - but an epic storm drove us indoors. We could actually hear the rain coming down the road towards us! The storm knocked out the electricity to the town, and by the time we dared venture out, the stage for the festival had collapsed. I don't think anyone was hurt, thankfully, and some festivities continued including flute circles and a captivating show of hilltribe women with umbrellas spinning on the spot as fast as possible!

We tried sewing our fave hilltribe patterns - the snail and the elusive cucumber seed

Farewell 2 - Hanoi, again

The old quarter of Hanoi dates at least back to a time when roads were not built for Range Rovers. Shops and houses, often 5 or 6 stories high, tower above the tight maze of roads and alleys - yet the buildings are very narrow - an unusual consequence of a time when tax was based on street frontage. Some buildings, called "tube houses" can therefore be a bit Tardis like and extend far back in a tax-avoidance architectural frenzy. A good example of this is a, now heritage, guild house on Ma May street which doubles as a museum, and has very kind attendants who will teach you the rules of Chinese Chess if you pester them.

Each street in the old quarter is traditionally for a different trade, and this is still somewhat evident. All the bamboo ladder shops are together, as are shoe shops, toy shops, etcetera... One thing they have in common is bustle and noise - a rare moment being the one without any motorbike horns - and all have hazard-course pavements of sitting people drinking lemon tea.

A great little show in Hanoi is at the Thang Long Water Puppet Theatre, where puppets controlled from under the water get up to all sorts of sychronised, humorous mischief to live Chinese style music - with the occasional bit of fire to keep things spicy. A much more serious show is at the Hanoi Cat Tru Club which is a very avant-garde mix of warbled vocals and off kilter drums for a difficult but rewarding listen. At the beginning of the show they brought out a huge 1.7 meter long guitar and said hardly anyone can play it - and then didn't play it!! Rude. They let me have a go afterwards. I couldn't play it.

On the 11th of April, an eclectic electronic music showcase called the Hanoi Sound Stuff Festival kicked off at the National Museum of History. We went to to see Micachu (a UK alt-pop artist) but her set was fairly tame compared to the sound manipulation of Vietnamese group Dom Dom - turning live harp sounds and percussive noises into a violent soundscape. After their sets things went a bit awry with a train wreck of a show by Belgian singer Benjamin Schoos who led an over-enthusiastic wedding band - the singer climbing through the audience and rolling on the floor screaming "China man versus China girrrrrrl!!". OK, actually it was pretty amazing.

And lotsa good food here; bún chả (cold rice noodles with grilled pork and sweet sauce), chả cá (fried fish with salad to roll in rice paper) and the strangest... insects! We heard about a restaurant called Quan Kien (143 Nghi Tam Street) which serves creepy crawly cuisine so had to try. The fried white crickets and locusts in kaffir lime leaves were actually lovely. After the disconcerting initial crunch the taste is somewhere between crab and duck. Good news for the future of the ever expanding human race.

Farewell 3 - Cat Ba Island

Almost missed the bus here as we were busy snaffling noodles round the corner when the driver decided to leave 5 minutes early (surely a first for South-East Asian buses). Glad we didn't as Cat Ba Island is wonderful.

The big draw is that one might have a chance to spot one of only 70 golden-headed langurs (frizzy monkeys) that are left on the planet - all of whom are in the national park that takes up most of the island. We looked but didn't see any. There is plenty of other life, a lot of which is unique to this ecosystem. In our modest trek through the park we saw some crazy stuff like a tree covered in furry caterpillars, butterflies as big as your face, long spindly spiders that float through the air like a jellyfish (I kid you not) and a giant injured centipede being eaten alive by flies. Isn't life lovely?

A little further exploration on both a bicycle and, finding the island was bigger than we expected, a motorcycle - we saw some of the mangrove forests that line the North-West of the island and forested karst towers like fiercer versions of those seen back in Ninh Binh.

These formations also transform the seascape, most famously in Halong Bay and Lan Ha Bay which we visited in a wooden passenger boat, and kayaked through caves and lagoons under the stone structures. I gave into peer pressure and jumped off the 20 meter high boat into the jellyfish infested waters below (checking everyone jumping before me had survived intact). Our tour of the bays included a quick peek at a fish farm which floats in the bay keeping scuttling cuttlefish and a 60kg monster fish under the floorboards (much like a James Bond villain keeps a shark).

Elsewhere on the island is Hospital cave, so called as it's a cave and was used as a hospital during the war. Chock full of bats - the cave has some rather spooky acoustics and an indoor swimming pool (now unfortunately drained). Also used during the war was Cannon Fort (again, appropriately named) which stands above the town with astounding views over the harbour (all the better to keep the Americans at bay). On Cat Ba there are always birds of prey circling above and geckos scampering past below - the island being full of life as it is.

- Jon

Vietnam Cycle Tour - Vinh to Hanoi

Day 40 - Vinh to Quang Binh (125km with baby hills)

Out of Vinh, the land became hillier but maybe not for long as intensive quarrying is cutting away the landscape. We stopped at a petrol station to go to the loo and when I came out it seemed like Jon had wandered off - but it turned out that the petrol station attendants had invited him for tea (as you do). We ended up having a lovely conversation (in body language), drank several cups of green tea, guessed each other's dates of birth (a strange game) and exchanged a US dollar for dong to aid one of the guy's foreign currency collection.

All over rural Vietnam we were constantly being cheerily hello-ed and waved at by children, teenagers, grown men and the occasional toothless granny. One instance today was particularly memorable - a boy playing with his friend turned excitedly to shout with perfect timing to get a football to the crotch. The poor kid folded to the ground still trying to wave, and Jon's eyes were still streaming with laughter a few hundred meters later.

We pushed on an extra 20km thanks to a Cu Do sugar rush (a delicious rice cracker-ginger-peanut-toffee snack), and pulled in to Quang Binh village in a golden rice paddy sunset haze.

Day 41 - Quang Binh to Ninh Binh (75km with baby hills)

It was a good job we covered the extra distance the previous day as we slept through the alarm and set off about 2 hours later than planned. Breakfast was in the city of Thanh Hoa, and involved a sort of steamed rice-batter pancake rolled with herbs, pork and crispy bits (bánh cuốn), plus some mini burgers and fish sauce. Another new meal. I'm really going to miss Vietnamese breakfasts.

As well as cuisine changes as we moved further into to northern Vietnam, we noticed the cafés now had special smoking tables for customers, including tea pots in wicker cosies and large, intricately decorated bamboo tobacco pipes. We decided it best not to partake before a strenuous day of cycling however!

The previous day Jon had got a puncture from a pesky shard of glass so we'd changed the innertube. His bike now felt particularly rumbly, and after a bit of fettling we decided it was due to the slightly-incorrect size of the spare. We fixed the first tube and switched it back - drawing an interested crowd, who helpfully poked things and explained stuff in enthusiastically rapid Vietnamese.

We'd bought some pineapple from a cycling pineapple vendor (!) in Thanh Hoa - and ended up having a quiet break on a bridge over a rice paddy irrigation channel, looking like a scene Turner might have painted had he gone on holiday to Vietnam.

Days 42 to 43 - Ninh Binh

In Ninh Binh is a quiet neighbourhood between the bus and train stations which has become a minor hub for backpackers. It's still predominantly Vietnamese - students hang out in cafés and kids play in the street, but everyone is used to confused foreigners.

We went to a restaurant serving goi ca, a meal of fish wrapped in leaves with herbs and dipped in thick sauce, but initially staff tried to direct us to a Western style eatery. They were still wary as we tried to assure them that we weren't after pizza (on this occasion) - however they'd cheered up by the time we were ordering seconds.

One of the main reasons we stopped in Ninh Binh was because of the famous riverine karst formations there - sometimes referred to as 'Ha Long Bay on land'. The area is very popular with domestic tourists, as we discovered on our visit to Trang An grottoes. We cycled out to the entrance, a restaurant -come-harbour complex on a wide green river where we bought our tickets (something of a scrum - there isn't quite the same queueing culture as in the UK) and boarded a tiny boat along with a Vietnamese family. Our captain was a grinning lady who encouraged us to pick up the paddles provided to help her row. The boat was one of what seemed like a hundred, all fully loaded with tourists who seemed almost as interested in the few foreigners as the surrounding, breathtaking cliffs.

The trip was excellent, taking us beneath the mountains through six or seven river caves (or grottoes), many times very low and narrow. We had to duck to avoid hitting our heads on stalactites. In between grottoes we rowed through lush vertically sided valleys.

Day 44 - Ninh Binh to Hanoi (92km pretty much flat)

Our final day of riding. A guy at our hotel had offered to buy the bikes already, saying we could catch a bus to Hanoi, but we explained that having come this far, we kind of wanted to see it through.

The road was flat but busy. We were glad when we peeled off the new noisy dual carriageway onto the old lesser-used road, which passed through several towns and villages and was still busy but minus the big lorries and coaches. After a while there weren't really any gaps between the villages anymore, as they blended into the suburbs of greater Hanoi.

Arriving in the capital at last we were greeted by ferocious traffic, one-way systems and a very carefree attitude towards which side of the road one should drive along. Saigon may have been crazy, but Hanoi's older, narrower streets are on another level. I think our expressions probably looked a little manic by the time we were fighting our way through the hectic Old Quarter, the oldest and most squiggly part and also Hanoi's tourist centre.

Day 45 to 47 - Hanoi

After celebrating the completion of our cycle tour sub-adventure with a lavish mushroom hotpot, we turned to working out what to do with our bikes. We couldn't take them home, so decided we'd have to sell - the problem being our short time remaining in Vietnam. We would have to advertise quickly, but we still wanted to visit a couple more places so wouldn't always be on hand to speak with buyers... Tricky! Thankfully, Hanoi has much more of a bike culture than Ho Chi Minh City, perhaps because cycling around the many lakes is a popular pastime. We decided to take our bikes to a shop called the Hanoi Bicycle Collective to see if they could help out.

The Hanoi Bicycle Collective is part bike shop, part tapas cafe, set up by a Spanish expat to spread his love of electric bikes and cycling in general. The staff were friendly and immediately offered to hold our bikes for us until they were sold, which certainly took the onus off us. All we needed to do was give them a final clean, assemble all the various accessories we would be selling with them and say a teary goodbye!

Being relegated once again to pedestrian status felt pretty strange at first. We distracted ourselves by starting to explore Hanoi's Old Quarter maze of cool little streets and visiting its many cafés. We were only staying there for a couple of days though before heading off to Sapa, a mountain town in the far North. There would be more Hanoian exploration on our return!

Overall, our Vietnam Cycle Tour took us a month and a half, during which we rode over 1700km and saw an amazingly friendly and varied country. Every province had its own local food speciality, products and cultural peculiarities. The landscape went from mega-urban to pine forested mountains, palm-fringed beaches, epic coastal passes and green rice-paddy plains. There were no crashes, only two punctures and on the whole we actually felt safer on the roads here than cycling back in the UK. Plus we saw so much more than we would have stuck on a tourist bus and we enjoyed every day of it. We will definitely be going cycle touring again!

- Kath

Elevation profile from Vinh to Hanoi

Elevation profile for the whole journey - Saigon to Hanoi!

Vietnam Cycle Tour - Hue to Vinh

Days 30 to 32 - Hue

Before 1945 Hue was the imperial capital of Vietnam's last dynasty - that of the difficult-to-pronounce Nguyễn family - who sat on the throne until French colonisation and world wars whittled down their empire.

Not to be beaten down, the city has since expanded enthusiastically into a lively place with tourists and Vietnamese alike lining roadside cafes on tiny plastic stools drinking a coffee and a beer or five. There are more local delicacies than one should really sample in a couple of days without having packed some elastic maternity trousers. A personal favourite is not a dish but chewy cane sugar sweets full of peanuts and coated in sesame seeds called "Kẹo mè xửng Huế".

The original Nguyễn citadel still remains here with all the hallmarks of a good empire - large walls and a fearsome moat, but nowadays these only protect a few noodle soup shops. Somewhat akin to a Russian doll, the old citadel contains another city called the "Imperial City", although the term "city" makes it sound considerably larger than it really is. It has its own walls and a moat and even some lizards in the shrubberies, but there is no noodle soup inside - instead there stands a palace, temples and examination halls (where cheating was probably much harder than in the local sports hall). And inside this city there is yet another city - the brilliantly named "Forbidden City" where we were allowed to freely wander. This really isn't a city, and doesn't even have a moat, but was once full of the emperor's favourite eunuchs, courtesans and jesters.

We had a great few days of culture and cuisine, even though the weather is quite English in that a scorching day will be followed by a drizzly miserable one without much warning.

Cyclo Siestas, Hue Sweets, Fearsome Moats

Imperial Architecture and the Dragon Horse

Day 33 - Hue to Dong Ha (70km pretty much flat)

The ride today took us to Dong Ha which is on the border of the demilitarised zone where the country was divided between north and south for both the Indochina and Vietnam war. The area has a number of key bridges and bases from the war, and to the west of our route were the Vinh Moc Tunnels where an entire village lived for two and a half years 30 meters underground to avoid American bombers. Unfortunately we were unable to visit the tunnels because the weather turned unsavoury, but we were encouraged to meet another bicycle tourer (the first we'd seen in Vietnam!) braving the wet too.

As usual, on the road, we had a smattering of amusing run-ins with locals probably unused to seeing strange foreign people. While stopping for water, a flower arranger without even looking at us walked over, put an elastic band on my handlebars and walked off into a nearby building. Hopefully this wasn't some sort of modern curse, but I took it as an incredibly meaningful gesture and the took the band all the way to Hanoi (this blog is written in retrospect)! She meekly looked out the doorway as we rode off so we gave a cheery wave. Hope she didn't need the band for anything...

Personal space is something of an alien concept in Vietnam, and we are a little more used to being prodded and having our belongings closely inspected - but when paying for dinner, the chef grabbed Kath's purse, counted the money and then gave it back with a nod of something like approval. Definitely a weird moment.


Day 34 - Dong Ha to Dong Hoi (112km of hilliness)

We went the indirect route today so we could use the Ho Chi Minh highway; used by the North Vietnamese for troop movement during the war - but now just a smooth hilly forest road dotted with little temples. It was pretty in a very Welsh way, in that it was wet, and although the hills were not too steep the weather got decidedly stormier as the day grew on until downhill stretches were even a slog because of the strong headwind. The morning noodles were the hottest and tastiest ever, but back on the road we got soaked to the bone and really cold when we stopped for a late morning coffee and so skipped lunch to try and push on.

A bunch of kids donned in oversized ponchos raced us for a fair few miles - until we won because they weren't going as far as us. Hah.

We were real hungry by late afternoon so when we were heralded to a steamed corn on the cob shack we were in no state to decline. They kindly informed us we would get there faster on a motorbike and asked usual things about our route and maritial status, and also asked something with weird gestures potentially regarding height to which I showed them that I am as high as I am high. Not sure if that was conveyed. They refused money for the corn, shook hands and bid us farewell. Heartwarming.

But not actually warming, so when we got lost on the backroads trying to get into Dong Hoi - getting the tablet out for a GPS fix for the sixth time - we were really very tired and ready for a hot shower. Finally arriving, our hotel owner was notably dismayed at how much of the muddy road we had collected on ourselves but reluctantly let us stay the night. The hot shower was very good.

Racing Kids, Getting Wet, Eating Corn

Days 35 to 36 - Dong Hoi

Dong Hoi is a small town by the sea with a bombed cathedral ruin, a bridge over the esturary that shines at night like a Jean Michel Jarre concert and some great seafood.

The main draw, though, is up the road in the limestone hills of the Phong Nha Ke Bang national park - where we were rowed on a creaky boat through some of the 8km long Phong Nha river cave, a long tall tunnel through a mountain with some lights fitted for a freaky stalagmite shadow puppet show.

Not content with one cave, we also visited the official Longest-Dry-Cave-In-Asia "Paradise Cave" (31km long) which was recently discovered and quickly exploited for tourists like us. The road to the cave is stunning with a brilliant turquoise brook running through the valley; then there is a 20 minute hike up a hill to a deceptively small opening. The cave is huge! You can only walk in the first kilometer (so the selling point of the cave is a little irrelevant), but this is enough. It is again illuminated in a pleasantly subtle fashion which is perfect as for the most part no headtorch would even reach the ceiling.

Phong Nha river cave

Paradise Cave

Unexpected celebrity treatment from some Vietnamese tourists!

Day 37 - Dong Hoi to Ky Anh (94km with baby hills)

The ride was a pleasant mix of nice scenery and friendly small towns. Craving an apple, I stopped at a little market where almost instantly all the women gathered round to ask questions and have a laugh with us (with a few fairly rude looking gestures). Hilariously a lady offered some raw pig leg for Kath as a refreshing snack - we instead opted for doughnuts where she sneakily tried to give us 20 instead of 2. I also got to try a new fruit called a custard apple, which looks like an artichoke, but you peel it to reveal some soft pear-tasting flesh full of inedible black seeds.

A mixture of light rain and construction work meant we once again arrived coked in mud at the hotel - but they didn't even blink.

Kath and the Custard Apple (a lesser known Roald Dahl novel)

Day 38 - Ky Anh to Vinh (102km with baby hills)

One of the nicest things about riding through Vietnam is the relaxed atmosphere. Houses and shops are generally open front - so you can see families playing cards or watching TV together. People play chinese chequers in the street, or just sit watching the world go by for hours. Some people match our cycling speed on their mopeds for a quick chat while they mooch about their business. It's all very pleasant.

Anyway, the sun came out today so all the mud became dust, and with an abundance of construction works, the side of the roads became giant trenches to make way for the much needed road widening. Along the way makeshift bridges had been made to marooned businesses on the far side of the trenches out of old wood or bamboo. The dust actually became so intense we had black slime coming out of our tear ducts.

And talking of slime... we saw the Vietnamese for "snail claypot" at the side of the road and pulled in tentatively for an experience. Well, the snails were in a lemongrass broth and tasted lovely - surprisingly akin to beef. We used cocktail sticks to deshell and dunk in a garlic chilli dip and had a sesame popadom thing too.

We also got to try a bit of the finished highway in the afternoon, and as roads go it was very nice. Being wider it feels less crowded and the central reservation stops full speed buses pummeling down the wrong side of the road. Thumbs up from us.

Snails! Nom Nom Nom!

Day 39 - Vinh

There's not much to see in Vinh, but we needed a rest, a bike wash and a coconut full of fruit and ice cream.

We also visited the "Big C" which has a familiar supermarket setting, but is full of all the strange fruits, fish, dried meat and baked goodies that we'd seen and a load we hadn't. There are more choices for loose grains of rice than of breakfast cereals. Also, while western vanity products often aim to tan or at least fake it - it is actually difficult to find creams that don't contain skin whitening here! The world be crazy.

- Jon

Decadance!

Elevation for the 375km from Hue to Vinh