Cat Ba Island and Halong Bay

               Finally managed to get enough escape velocity despite all the extremely late nights of going out and traveled to Cat Ba island near Halong Bay with a cool Dutch fella and Quebecois guy. Pretty laid back little island with some good scenery and we spent a day exploring it on rented motorbikes followed by a steep climb to a lookout in the national forest. Very nice. The next day we went on a little cruise around Halong Bay which is studded with limestone cliffs and full of little aquaculture fish farms. Pretty crazy how many people, not to mention dogs, seem to live on these little rafts on an at least semi-permanent basis. Did a bit of kayaking through some limestone caverns which was quite fun and scenic. The last stop was ‘Monkey Island’ which consisted of a beach and a handful of extremely aggressive and angry little monkeys who were far too acclimated to and unafraid of humans to feel safe around. I got to see first hand the scene where a couple other travelers I’d previously met had suffered the fate of getting monkey bitten and having to get a series of rabies shots. The alpha monkey stared at me with a ‘fuck you’ look in his beady little eyes and then proceeded to charge full pelt right at me. Exciting stuff. Luckily I called his bluff (sort of, I was backed up against the sea so didn’t really have anywhere to retreat to) and he veered off at the last second. So basically a half hour of watching them chase tourists around the beach. Amusing when it was other people they were going after. They seem to also have mastered the art of pull tabs as they could open a beer and drink it with ease. Crazy goddamned monkeys.

                The other boys went off on their own ways while I stuck around for a couple of extremely uneventful days reading at the beach. Pretty quiet in the nightlife department on Cat Ba though I did meet this one creepy Aussie guy who within about 3 minutes of chatting invited me to go get a hooker with him. Yeah, no thanks buddy and by the way that’s not weird at all.

                Finally made my way back to Hanoi and re-met up with some Canadian guys on of whom was keen on doing a motorcycle ride between cities that I’d heard good things about. So we booked a bus to Hue for the next day and were off.

Hanoi

Good Morning Vietnam!!!!! I was somehow the only Westerner on the bus to Hanoi, but luckily it wasn’t at all full so I got a double sleeper seat (extra room, near full recline) all to myself rather than having to snuggle up next to a local. Was surprisingly comfortable but for once I was glad not to be any taller than I am; suck it Dutch people! Of course the bus was actually early for once which meant arriving in the dark at 4:30 in the morning alone. Things you don’t see on the morning commute in America: guy on a motorbike driving along with two gutted pig carcasses across his lap. So after fending off the motorbike “taxi” guys, “No take taxi! Taxi mafia!” I managed to find a taxi whose driver of course absolutely refused to turn on the meter and haggle him down to a reasonable for alone at 4:30 in the morning price to get to the hostel and grab some shut-eye. Phew, it’s hot again. Time to explore the city and do a little shopping for random stuff like shaving cream and a new belt.

Some fun nightlife in Hanoi, though I think the sampling of 6 different types of random late night street food might not have been the best idea. Met a bunch of friendly local middle-class seeming Vietnamese with decent English who wanted to hang and go out with us. Was quite entertaining. Laughing as they made everyone try the ridiculously strong local tobacco which you smoke out of a giant bamboo bong which seems to cause the sweats and uncontrollable coughing in those not accustomed to it. Weather turned a bit shit today, so good day to take it easy and hopefully it’ll clear up tomorrow for me to walk around the city and see all the museum stuff before heading for Halong Bay in the near future.

                So, ended up spending quite some time in Hanoi partying and meeting new people. I ended up staying at this huge backpackers hostel that was chock full of keen-to-get-wild young Brits and Aussies (among other nationalities). Definitely can’t quite keep up with the 18-21 year olds these days but it’s fun trying. The hostel threw a crazy fun Halloween party as well. Lots of good nightlife and local street food to be had in Hanoi as well as street lining rows of tables and chairs where they serve local homebrews for about 25 cents a glass. Not the best tasting beer but the price is right anyway. Unfortunately Hanoi as the capital actually has a curfew, which means technically street side cafes are supposed to be done at 11 I think and bars by midnight. Additionally there’s apparently a new police chief in charge who’s trying to set a tone by more vigorously enforcing the rule. So there’s this very interesting phenomenon whereby police trucks start cruising around at night screaming at the locals from megaphones mounted on the vehicle. A local Vietnamese friend I met said that the translation is somewhere along the lines of, “Go the fuck home!” Anyway, so the funny thing is this weird pantomime type thing happens where the local proprietors will just turn of their lights as the police come by shouting and then will turn them right back on again as soon as they’re past. Also of course some clubs and bars seem to be exempt on some nights. So there will be like 20 people sitting outside and the owner sees the cops coming, shuts off all the lights and shushes everyone and then right back to business as usual. It’s obviously not fooling anyone but seems to work for at least an extra hour or so past the official curfew when the cops start getting serious and threatening to seize stuff from the café, kebab seller or club. Weird, right?

I met a hilarious German guy who had been working in Hanoi and some of his students from the university came out with us one night. Really interesting getting their perspective on things.The girls were kind of bemoaning how conservative Vietnam is in regards to relations between the sexes and how there’s a huge double standard in regards to this attitude with men versus women. Any funny business pre-marriage for the ladies apparently means you’re spoiled goods but the reverse isn’t true. Go figure. They were also asking me what they teach and we learn about the Vietnam War in America. Met and interacted with quite a few locals in Hanoi actually. These guys stopped me and an Korean-American girl I was walking with in the street once and I was expecting some kind of sale pitch scam right away but they were students doing some project and wanted to ask us some questions and take our pictures. Was really good actually, I like meeting other backpackers from all over the world but it’s great to get to know locals and much harder generally. Though a pretty failsafe rule in SE Asia for going out at night and finding the popular local spots is to just find the nearest karaoke bar.

                Did quite a bit of wandering around, honing my street crossing skills in the madness of motorbike traffic and visited a colonial era French prison where they had tried to suppress Vietnamese nationalism with charming methods such as indefinite solitary in small cages and an honest-to-god guillotine. Wonder why the Vietnamese kicked them out? It also featured in a glass display what was alleged to be John McCain’s flight suit along with a picture of him being captured after his plane went down. So that was interesting. Unfortunately Ho Chi Minh’s preserved body was out touring the world or having a play date with Lenin or something so there was no point going to the Mausoleum. Too bad too, as I would have liked to see it. 

Sapa, Vietnam

 

             There were enough of us that we were able to charter a private boat for not significantly more money than the local one but instead of being crammed in and sitting on hard wooden benches for four hours we got a boat with awesomely reclining car seats that had been mounted there and so spent the time comfortably, watching the scenery and water buffalo pass by. Spent the night in a seedy town near the border and then proceeded to spend the next 24 or so hours traveling in variously uncomfortable buses. The last leg was the longest and most uncomfortable, driving at night on a shitty, curvy road where as you tried to sleep were constantly being awakened by the turns threatening to pull you out of your seat and into the bus aisle which was being occupied by a bunch of locals. Yeah, not great and for some reason the bus left at a time where it arrived in Sapa at about 4:30 in the morning so we wandered around in the dark, exhausted, freezing and looking for a place to sleep. Awoke to a much changed from the night Sapa and discovered I was in a beautiful mountain town perched on the slopes overlooking a valley of terraced bamboo fields. Very interesting vibe, with pine trees side by side with giant bamboo and jungle and a feeling at times of being in some small town in the French Alps or somewhere. Took a bit to get used to actually being a bit cold in the mornings and evenings but quite a pleasant change. It even snows here in the winter amazingly enough. Vietnam’s highest mountain, Fansipan, is nearby and the town is full of “North Face” shops selling winter clothes, hiking gear and trekking poles to the older couples that seem at least as numerous as the backpacker crowd. Lots of local villages and ethnic minority tribes such as the H’Mong abound and all of them seem to want to sell you something. The being mobbed by locals took some getting used to after laid-back Laos, but I suppose that just comes with the territory. “Hello? Where you from? What your name? Shopping? You buy from me?” was a pretty much endless litany walking around, not to mention the “Motorbike? You come to my bar? Buy weed?” Split a room with a cool Belgian guy an equally nice, though young, Dutch mate that I’d traveled with from Laos

  We went on a hike down the valley without a guide and were just mobbed by local H’Mong trying to sell us stuff. If it hadn’t been so annoying after a while I would have been impressed with their sheer optimism and persistence. These three women followed us for literally 5km before finally giving up even after being repeatedly told by an increasingly angry Dutchman to stop following us and leave us alone. The only effect this seemed to have was that they’d follow from a bit further distance for a couple minutes. The scenery was great though and we probably walked somethink like 20 km in total. Kind of amusing, we decided finally to cross the river and start heading back on the other side and made our way down to a small bamboo bridge we’d spotted. Arriving there we found it was guarded by a small and slightly evil looking Vietnamese girl blocking the way with arms crossed (we were at this point still being tailed by a different group of women) who apparently wanted money from us for the privilege of crossing. So in an attempt to avoid paying as well as lose our pursuers we walked some yards upriver took off our shoes and socks and just forded it. Ha. Spent some time checking out the very restrained and mostly quiet nightlife; kind of eerie walking through the town at night as it gets extremely misty and foggy and low visibility. Also rode motorbikes to a local cave where we were again mobbed by locals but enjoyed ourselves nevertheless. Thought the Dutch guy was going to blow his top at these kids who insisted on escorting us through the cave but it worked out okay in the end. The Laos group all headed to Hanoi/Halong Bay but I stuck around for a few more days and met some cool Brits and a Scottish girl and we again rented motorbikes and did another really great hike on the other side of the valley. One scary moment as I came within inches of running over a kitten that darted across the trail but luckily missed. Would have felt quite guilty I think. Had a nice massage and some good local pumpkin soup and have been enjoying the cool weather and lack of mosquitos. One of the Brits was obsessed one night with finding a meal of snake, cooked in traditional Vietnamese style of killed in front of you, eating the still beating heart and bile duct and drinking the blood. (Unf)ortunately the place was closed, but apparently it’s on offer in Hanoi along with a nice dinner of dog or horse. Yum. Off to madhouse and hectic Hanoi tonight for a few days of city life and then I think on to Halong bay and maybe a boat tour of some of the islands and then make my way down the coast headed in the general direction of Cambodia.

Luang Prabang; Nong Kiaw (Laos)

                Our Vang Viene group all went their separate ways and I headed off alone for the Luang Prabang on the bank of the Mekong River in Northern Laos. It’s a pretty, mid-sized town with some temples, great fruit shakes and the requisite waterfall. In our tuk tuk on the way back from the waterfall came across the immediate aftermath of a fairly bad motorbike accident. Looked like a helmetless local fella going too fast went flying off the road into a ditch. We stopped to see if the cops needed us to give him a lift back to civilization and I got a disturbing view as someone lifted his leg. Yuck, ouch and slightly nightmare inducing. At least temporarily dampened my enthusiasm for riding bikes. Did lots of hanging out, a bit of swimming and rope swinging, and played some volleyball with the locals at a chilled out local bar called Utopia. Quite funny, Laos has a midnight curfew so all the bars close at 11:30 but for some reason the local nightclub/disco stays open till like 1:30 so everyone seems to go there after the bars. Booming loud music and about 80 percent locals to 20 percent tourists. They seemed rather, understandably, amused by all the Falang (foreigners) wearing hippie clothes and dancing around crazily. Then after the disco closes everyone moves venues to the town’s bowling alley which stays open till 3AM or later and drinks local Lao Lao whisky and bowls. Random but really quite fun. So did that a few nights, at times followed by the even later night hangout on some steps down by the Mekong. Finally had enough though and onwards to Nong Kiaw a small village even further north towards the Chinese/Vietnamese border region.

                    Arrived from Luang Prabang and immediately realized this would indeed be a relaxing and quiet departure from the previous week’s partying. A really tiny village where the chickens seemed to outnumber the residents. A fact attested to by the constant, noisy crowing of the roosters. I ordered chicken constantly at the nearby restaurants in hopes the one that kept waking me up early every morning would be on the menu, but no luck. Had a great little bungalow right on the river though and met some nice people early on. Did a bit of trekking to nearby caves where the locals sheltered during the relentless bombing campaign of the US “secret war” in Laos. The Ho Chi Minh trail apparently ran nearby and lots of local places have repurposed the unexploded bombs (after being professionally disarmed presumably) into nice decorations and lamps. Rented mountain bikes with a Dutch guy and girl and rode through some of the nearby villages. They obviously don’t see especially many tourists as we attracted attention everywhere we went and I ended up saying Saibadee (hello/goodbye) to what seemed like hundreds of local children. Stopped at the river near by one village and had a swim in the river where there were about 30 naked local kids happily splashing about, doing flips and cartwheels and rolling around in the dirt. They seemed intensely curious about us and eager to impress and by the end they’d stopped playing and were just in a big circle around the three of us staring intently. Guess that’s what it feels like to be on the other side. Really liked remote Laos though, everyone is so friendly and it seems genuine and unrelated to them seeing you as a big wallet and none of the kids beg or ask for money. Not much of a nightlife but we’d go out for good food and drink the local home brewed whisky which came in glass bottles filled with local herbs and pieces of wood and other random stuff. It’s actually not terrible tasting for how strong it is. Lots of relaxing, chilling in the hammock on my balcony overlooking the river and reading was a nice change of pace. Met a bunch of people who were trying to get to Sapa in Northwest Vietnam same as me and we decided to charter a boat and travel together.