Riyad and Sarah's Travels

Halong City, Vietnam

From Hanoi we headed to the coast to take an overnight cruise on the “Phuong Dong 06″ through Halong Bay, an area home to over 1600 uninhabited limestone islands.  We set sail with a dozen other people and four crew members, leaving a pier full of wooden tourists ships and were alone at sea within a half hour.

The ride was very relaxing – Sarah and I read and enjoyed the scenery while others relaxed on the deck. 

Karst islands surrounded us in every direction.

We docked to visit the Dau Go Cave.  While not as big as Mammoth and lacking bats like Mulu, Dau Go was illuminated with colorful lights highlighting the stalactites and stalagmites.   The most impressive section was a beam of natural light angled down from an opening at the top of the cave.

After walking through we sailed for another few hours before anchoring  for the night.  A bunch of us jumped out to swim in the warm and salty water.  Sarah remained safely on deck while I swam around (although I didn’t get the courage to jump off the top of the ship). 

While we were swimming, one local entrepreneur rowed up besides us to hawk food, alcohol, and cigarettes. 

After drying off, we watched the sunset on the top of the boat.

Dinner was cooked fresh and served in the boat’s dining room.

Our plans (and everyone else’s) to wake up the following morning for sunrise didn’t materialize but we figured it wouldn’t have been much different than sunset.  Sarah and I and two other people – one French woman our age, and a 22 year old Japanese medical student – left the boat that morning to spend a day visiting Cat Ba Island.  We first visited Cat Ba National Park, unfortunately at the same time that several busses full of Chinese tourists pulled up.  The trail was way too crowded and we reached the top of the mountain only to have to wait in line to return. 

But after checking into our hotel in Catba, the four of us had a great time discussing our travels and vastly different cultures before returning to Hanoi the following day.

Hanoi, Vietnam

Hanoi was our favorite destination in Vietnam, as it combined the busyness of a big city with the charm and walkability of a smaller one.  Skyscrapers in the business district abutted French colonial buildings.

Amidst the hustle of town was a central lake surrounded by walking paths and cafes.

We stayed in the Old Quarter, the original section of Hanoi, where streets were narrower and buildings closer together. Locals sat outside of restaurants or bars on tiny plastic chairs more suited for preschoolers, and women wearing conical hats walked around selling food.

We were drained after our ten day bus journey, so we spent most of our time relaxing and enjoying Vietnamese coffee and food. We found a local chain restaurant to eat Pho, North Vietnam’s signature beef noodle soup (pronounced “fuh” not “fo” I learned after a waiter couldn’t figure out what the hell I was ordering) that was authentic enough for me but not too exotic for Sarah.

Although we skipped seeing the city’s myriad temples and museums there were a few places we had to visit. The mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh displayed the embalmed body of the former president and figurehead of North Vietnam, who died in 1969 prior to the end of the war.  Before entering the tomb we had to give up our cameras and pass through a metal detector. The line to get inside stretched around the block but moved quickly as people where ushered in one door of the cold room, around the glass coffin flanked by four soldiers, then out the door on the other side.  We weren’t allowed to speak and had less than a minute to see the body donned in a suit.  The body did not look real; his skin was paper white and would not have passed muster to be displayed at Madam Tussauds.

The Hoa Long prison (aka Hanoi Hilton) was constructed by the French in 1896 to house Vietnamese prisoners who rebelled against colonialism. After independence, the North Vietnamese used the complex for American pilots shot down during the war. The prison has not held inmates for a while and has been partially demolished, but a small section remains open as a museum, contrasting the inhumane treatment experienced by Vietnamese martyrs during French rule with how well captured Americans were treated.

A short video subtitled in English showed Americans enjoying their stay after losing their ability to drop bombs on Vietnamese civilians.

One room held recreational equipment and images of Americans playing volleyball and decorating a Christmas tree.

Pictures of Americans and cases of their uniforms and equipment were displayed, including those of the prison’s most famous resident, John McCain.

While in town, we attended a water puppet show, a form of entertainment distinctively North Vietnamese, having originated in the villages of Red River Delta almost a thousand years ago to pass the time during floods. Today a professional troop has shows several times a day at a permanent theatre featuring a pool of water and a stage for live music. The band played instruments and sang while puppeteers behind a curtain moved the puppets around with a long wooden stick. While we didn’t understand the Vietnamese (a translation wasn’t provided) the show was very entertaining and we sort of got the gist of the dancing villagers and horses and dogs and fiery dragons.

Dong Ha, Vietnam

Our Vietnam itinerary was bookended by Ho Chi Minh in the South and Hanoi in the North.  We decided to spend two weeks busing the thousand miles between the two instead of flying, taking the train, or bicycling (we actually met a pair of Aussies who did that), breaking our journey at various cities along the way.

From Ho Chi Minh we headed to Dalat, a mountain town seven hours northeast, where domestic tourists flock to escape the heat and commotion of the city and international tourists launch trips to the nearby hiking trails and natural attractions.  We weren’t in the mood to do any physical activities, so our stay lasted less than a day.  We did enjoy a cup of Dalat coffee, served Vietnamese style with an individual drip filter and condensed milk.

Continuing on to Nha Trang, the country’s premier beach destination, we found a hotel room on a high floor overlooking the beach.  Unfortunately it was too hot to swim during the day and the murky water wasn’t that appealing even as it cooled off.  We again ran into a couple we had met on the Laos Mekong River cruise, and spent our time with them, visiting a local spa and walking through the night market. 

We boarded an overnight “sleeper bus” with beds instead of seats and woke up the following morning in Hoi An.  As far as I can tell, the main reason anyone stops here is to buy custom made clothes.  Its streets are lined with tailor shop after tailor shop, all displaying similar clothing and mannequins, with employees calling out to passersby. 

Sarah decided to add to her wardrobe, but not having specific ideas in mind we visited several shops to view off the rack clothing for ideas.  After she found what she wanted and negotiations over price were settled, she was measured for dresses, shirts, and a suit.  We were told to return the following day for further alterations as the tailors would work through the night.

While waiting, we visited the nearby Hindu temples of My Son that were built by the ancient Cham empire between the 4th and 13th century.  The site was nowhere near as well preserved as the temples of Angkor Wat due to a combination of neglect and US bombs, but remain the largest extant collection of Cham ruins. 

After stopping at the post office to send Sarah’s new clothes home, we moved on to Hue, Vietnam’s capital during the Nguyen Dynasty from 1802 until its last emperor abdicated in 1945.  The Imperial City, the walled home of the emperor and his wives and eunuchs, is currently being rebuilt after being damaged by the French and American wars.  The impressive main entrance is the best preserved area of the site – but we weren’t aware of this until paying the admission fee to go inside.

Each of the Nguyen emperors had mausoleums constructed for him around Hue.  Tours left early in the morning to visit several of them, but Sarah and I correctly surmised that seeing one would be adequate.  We biked a few miles to the tomb of Tu Doc, the longest reigning emperor.  The mausoleum featured a pond where the emperor wrote poetry…

…two temples, his autobiography carved into stone tablets, and the tombs of Tu Doc, his wife, and his adopted son.

A few hours north of Hue is the former demilitarized zone (DMZ) established in 1954 to separate North and South Vietnam.  It was eventually overrun by the North Vietnamese in 1972 and today tourists can take a day long tour to the area visiting several historic sites and monuments.  One memorial commemorates the soldiers who successfully cut the electronic McNamara line, named after the US Secretary of Defense, allowing North Vietnamese to infiltrate south.

The American base at Khe Sanh abandoned in 1968 now features a museum, bunkers, several tanks and helicopters.

Pictures of American soldiers are displayed with captions such as “The American soldiers’ panic shows on their faces” and “Being encircled and attacked interminably, the American soldiers have to live miserably at bases” and “Looking up the way to escape”.

Our final bus was to leave from Hue to Hanoi, but rather going south from the DMZ just to turn around, we waited in a rest stop in the city of Dong Ha to be picked up along the way. Time went by quickly thanks to two local boys, ages 10 and 11, who sat with us to practice their English, asking our names, ages, favorite sports and animals.  Of course when our bus arrived we were left with the worst seats on board – Sarah later likened our overnight journey to sleeping in a coffin – but it mercifully it was the last marathon bus for us before reaching Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

We faced major cultural shock in traveling from Laos to Vietnam.  Laos was the most laid back country in Southeast Asia. Its streets were calm and traffic was orderly. Merchants were harmless and could be dismissed with a simple “no thanks”.  Cab drivers would rather sleep in their hammocks than negotiate – one guy refused to budge on price and called my bluff when I threatened to would walk the 2 miles from the bus station into town. “Fine, you walk,” he said. (That technique previously had a 100% success rate.)

Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s largest city, was the complete opposite.  Someone told us there were 5 million motorbikes in the city and I can’t say that’s an exaggeration. They were everywhere, relentlessly swarming past in wave after wave, honking their horns, with some going the wrong way or driving up on the sidewalk.  We realized that we’d be waiting all day for a break in traffic to cross the street, so we reluctantly imitated the locals by walking onto the road very slowly.  Sure enough bikers would adjust their speed to swerve around us.

Touts were incredibly aggressive and didn’t respect our personal space.  We were grabbed by cyclo drivers trying to get us to ride.  A shoe shiner unstrapped my sandal to repair and buff it.  We were having dinner and a woman selling counterfeit photocopied paperbacks dumped her stack on our table.  While Sarah was looking through the titles, one weirdo snuck up behind me and started rubbing my shoulders shouting “Massage! Massage! You want a massage?”.  “No no no massage” I said while squirming away.

After getting our bearings we took a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels complex, where Viet Cong guerrilla soldiers hid and sprang surprise attacks during the American war.  Our guide, surprisingly fought for the South but had no qualms about leading the group.  We were first shown black and white footage of the war, with a narrator describing the valiant efforts of women and children attacking the American aggressors with guns and rocket propelled grenades, even commending one girl for her high number of kills.  Afterward we saw areas where the Viet Cong could make a quick escape in case of invasion.  Sarah lowered herself into one, pulled the cover over her head, and was completely hidden. 

Further protection from invaders came from booby trapped doors that dropped incoming foot soldiers onto spiked bamboo sticks. 

The complex featured a firing range where tourists could shoot their choice of machine gun provided they paid about $2 per bullet.  We passed. 

The main draw to the area were the tunnel structures themselves.  Parts of the vast complex had been reinforced and expanded for visitors.  It was very claustrophobic and after crawling for what we thought was a hundred yards we emerged not too far from where we started.

The major attraction in Ho Chi Minh City is the impressive War Remenents museum. Its courtyard featured American artillery, tanks, helicopters, and airplanes.

The museum had various pictures and weapons from the war plus a full section devoted to the anti-war protests from around the world.  The most powerful images in the museum were of those affected by Agent Orange, the defoliant used by American troops that still causes birth defects 40 years later.  One wing featured pictures of children with missing limbs and deformed spines and two stillborn babies in formaldehyde.   

Despite the prior animosity between our two countries and our preconceived notions of how we would be treated, Sarah and I didn’t receive any insults or personal hostility from anyone.  Most of the population was born well after the war ended and now were focused on the present.

Before we left Ho Chi Minh City to head north, I wanted to take a picture of the American embassy (now consulate) that was evacuated by helicopter when the South fell to the North Vietnamese in 1975. Normally I wouldn’t do this because taking pictures of embassies and borders is a bad idea.  (I learned that the hard way when I took a picture of the US embassy in Benin in February and was forced to explain myself to several African guards with large guns.)  So this time I went across the street and had Sarah stand as a decoy to snap this one.