Hanoi

Vietnam Trip ~ Day 10

July 22, 2012

We arrived at the train station in Dong Hoi around 7 p.m. and it was already quite dark by that time. Our train was supposed to leave just after 8 p.m., but it was around an hour late. We were fortunate enough to have soft seats on this train ride, so our car looked more like a normal train we were used to. The seats all faced one direction until the middle of the car and then they switched and faced the other way, so the very middle seats faced toward each other. We sat backwards, but sometimes it felt like we were sitting forwards since we couldn't see anything out the windows. We were sitting behind the other couple we had ridden with from the farmstay. We had talked a bit in the car and then more while waiting for the train and it was nice to get to know them better. They were from Antwerp, Belgium and spoke Dutch. They ended up having the seats right in front of us. Although we did have soft seats on this trip, it was still hard to sleep since the seats in front of ours seemed to be broken and leaned extra far back and didn't leave us much room for our legs. Even so, it was much better than the hard seats and having someone sleeping where your feet should go. We slept off and on all night and then just around 6 a.m. some pretty loud Vietnamese music came over the loud-speakers as a wake up and to let people know that we had arrived in Hanoi. We watched the city pass by until we got to the station.

Waking up in the train

Vietnam conveniences

Once off the train, we found a taxi and went to the hostel we had picked out in the guidebook. As it turned out, the Belgium couple we had traveled with had just gotten there, too, so we stayed in the same hostel. It was around 7 a.m. by then, and some businesses were just starting to open, so Jonathan and I left our things in the lobby with the manager and went out to find some breakfast. We found a lady selling small baguettes and some sort of spread, and got two of each, which we ate back at the hostel. We had to wait for about an hour and a half for someone to check out of a room so we could have one, but we just used the computers in the lobby until we could get our room. Then we relaxed in our room for a bit before showering and getting some clothes together to get laundered.

Back in the lobby later, we asked the lady at the desk about tours to Halong Bay and she showed us some books about the tours she knew about. We decided to go on a 3 day/2 night tour leaving the next morning (Monday) and getting back Wednesday. One night we would be sleeping on a boat and the other we would stay at a hotel on an island in the bay called Cat Ba Island. The lady happily booked the tour for us and we were excited and really looking forward to it. Then finally we were ready to head out to see Hanoi! We got a map at the front desk and wandered around the Old Quarter. We spotted a place to eat a real meal at a restaurant on the 2nd floor of a building and watching the people go by on the streets below. Back on the street, we peeked into a Vietnamese music store that was pretty interesting. Jonathan tried out one instrument that was very different sounding.

Surveying the scenery whilst awaiting our meal

Treats

Tasty feast

Sour oranges!

Houses are built quite vertically here

Fruit peddler

Music shop

In the instrument shop

One thing that we knew we really wanted to do while in Hanoi was go to a water puppet theatre. We found that the theatre wasn't far away, and took a quick taxi ride there, buying tickets for later that evening before , and then walked around by a nearby lake. While there, a man accosted Jonathan's shoes with a big sewing needle and some thick thread! Jonathan was quite surprised and tried to tell him no several times, but the man was very insistent that they needed to be fixed and was already on his way to making them better. It was quite frustrating and Jonathan wasn't really able to move around much until the man finally pulled the shoes off his feet to fix them and gave him some paper slippers to put on instead. About 15 minutes later, he was done and then we had to haggle with him about the price. We were not happy about that turn of events, since we had not asked the shoes to be mended. Ugh, how do you get out of something like that??

After that unfortunate event, we wandered up and down the streets going into stores and looking at souvenirs. There were many interesting items, but after a few stores we realized that most of them contained the same sorts of things as other tourist areas we've already been to. It was almost time for the water puppet theatre to start, so we headed back there. We'll talk about that in more detail in the next post. It was really great, though!

When we got out of the theater after the show it was raining slightly as we walked back to our hotel. On the way we encountered a night market on some blocked off streets. It was interesting to see what was for sale, but we didn't buy anything. There were lots of Vietnamese people there buying things, but not too many tourists. When we got back to our hostel the lady at the front desk helped us book flights back to Saigon (Ho Chi Mihn City) for early Thursday morning. Again we were so grateful for the very helpful and accommodating hotel workers who assisted us in booking so many tours and travel arrangements. We headed up to our room and fell asleep pretty quickly, looking forward to our tour of Halong Bay in the morning.

Bridge to an island in a lake

Afternoon walk

Island shrine

Random guy decides he needs to fix my shoes...

Very soleful

Backpack display

Masks

Bustle

Splash of green

Checking out the scarves - notice Ali's stature...

Balloon sellers

Ali tries her hand (shoulder?) at selling fruit

Light traffic

Bread for sale

Stuffed animal center

Next Up: Water Puppet Theater

Sabbath in Son Trach village

Vietnam Trip ~ Day 9

July 21, 2012

After our busy day touring the Phong Nha National Park on Friday, we spent a quiet Sabbath in Son Trach village. During part of the morning we stayed in our hotel room to do some Bible reading and then read parts of some of E.G. White's smaller books on Jonathan's phone. When our second-floor hotel room with no A/C got a little too warm and stuffy for us, we went outside to explore the village. We walked up the road in one direction, toward the highway and found a park with monuments and a small museum of war items, and spent some time looking around.

One of the many bomb craters that pockmarked the landscape - this one shows up the best due to the water in it.

Some sort of monument near the entrance to the town

Rugged landscape

The day was sunny and very hot, so when the heat got too intense we walked back to our hotel and relaxed in the lobby out of the sun. Once sufficiently cooled again, we wandered back out, this time down the road toward the river. There we found many Vietnamese tourists heading up the river on long wooden boats into the national park. We found an empty wooden bench under a shady tree and watched the happy hubub while enjoying the sounds of the river and tourists. After a while, we continued our walk and followed the river in the direction the boats were going until we got too warm and headed back to the village for another rest in the shade of our hotel lobby.

Souvenir shops on the shore

New sidewalk

Later in the afternoon, we packed up our belongings, checked out of the hotel, and called the farmstay to ask for a ride over. After the short motorbike ride there, we spent the last part of the afternoon relaxing at the farmstay with the other tourists staying there. It was such a nice place overlooking brillant green rice paddies and beautiful mountains. The farmstay had a pool and a nice open lobby that looked out to the back of the property and also out front to the fields. It was such a relaxing place to close out the Sabbath.

As dusk fell, we got in a hired car with another couple and headed back to Dong Hoi to catch our night train to Hanoi. All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our two days in Son Trach village near the Phong Nha National Park, and would return there again in a flash! We both decided, during our time there, that we just kept liking the places we traveled to better and better as we continued on our Vietnam trip.

Next up: Hanoi

Phong Nha National Park Tour

Vietnam Trip ~ Day 8

July 20, 2012

When we left off in our last blog post from Thursday, July 19 we had gotten a minibus in Danang to take us to a village near the Phong Nha National Park. Since we hadn't been able to find the correct bus that would take us right to the village, we took another one whose driver said he was going in that direction and would get us there. We'll pick up the story there...

As it turned out, that bus went through Dong Hoi, a city about five hours drive up the coast and about 50 km or so from the inland national park. In Dong Hoi, the driver stopped a few times to let passengers off. At one stop, a man opened the door and popped his head inside asking, "Phong Nha?" The driver urged us out, and we obeyed, a little bewildered, while the driver told us that his bus was continuing on up the coast and this man and his friend would take us on motorbikes the rest of the way to Son Trach village, near the park. We had no choice but to hop on the backs of the motorbikes behind the drivers and hope for the best. My driver handed me a helmet, which I promptly stuck on my head. I only realized once we were already driving that the strap was way too big for me, though, so I spent the whole trip with one hand fiercely gripping the handle on the back of the bike to hang on, and the other firmly clasped on top of my helmet to keep it on my head.

Other than the helmet problem, the trip was amazing! It was the most beautiful ride I've ever taken on a motorbike, or for that matter, probably on any other type of vehicle either. We started out just as the sun was sinking into the clouds hovering over the mountains. The rays were shooting golden light across the valleys and the mountains were dark green in the distance. It was so beautiful that I was kicking myself for having my small camera in my backpack instead of in my hands (although I didn't really have any extra hands to wield it anyway...). That, along with the gorgeous drive in the minibus through the coastal mountains, will be a scene I'll just have to try to remember without any pictures to remind me. As we drove, the light faded behind the mountains and they became purple. The temperature was a perfect warmth, but not too hot since there was no sun. Eventually it got dark and then it was harder to see ahead and know when the bumps were coming, but the drivers were experts at missing them, so we managed alright. Finally, after about 40 minutes (we're just guessing) on the bikes, we drove into a village that we assumed was Son Trach village. After a few minutes of trying to figure out the right place to go and haggling with the drivers about the price, we finally ended up at the correct hotel that was booked for us.

(As a side note, we had previously read in our guidebook about a farmstay which operated tours of the national park. We had really wanted to stay there, but by the time we'd learned about it, it was all booked. Instead, we stayed in the nearby Son Trach village and booked a park tour for the next day.)

View of Son Trach village from our hotel lobby

The next morning (Friday, July 20), we were out in the lobby of the hotel by 9 a.m. and a few minutes later the two tour minivans pulled up, and we jumped in. The man who ran the farmstay was Ben, an Australian who had moved to Vietnam about five years earlier and married a Vietnamese lady named Bich (pronounced Bick). Ben and another man working at the farmstay, Pavol from Poland, switched between the two minivans throughout the day. Pavol had only been in Vietnam for 3 months (3 weeks at the farmstay helping with tours and other things there). Ben knew SO much history about the "American war" and so much about that area we were touring in. It was such an interesting tour and I'm really glad we were able to go on it!

After entering Phong Nha National Park, we stopped a few times along the road and all got out of the vans while Ben told us about that area, especially history pertaining to the war. It was apparently a very important place during the war (this national park is in central Vietnam, in the south part of what used to be Northern Vietnam during the war - it's the skinniest part of Vietnam) and was very heavily bombed. There were still unexploded bombs all over the area, but all the pathways had been cleared of bombs, so if you stuck to the pathways you were safe. After stopping a few times along the road and learning interesting stories, we went to a small temple with a sad history; 13 people had died there during one bombing.

Our main tour guide, Ben, tells us stories about the area

Incense burning at the temple

Temple shrine

Guard at the temple

After that we went to a large cave called Paradise Cave, which happened to be about 10 km away from the recently-discovered largest and longest cave in the world. We took golf carts to get closer to the entrance of the cave, but then had to walk up switchback ramps to get to the opening a ways up the mountain. From there we explored just a portion of the 31 km cave on wooden boardwalks. It was nice and cool inside which was refreshing since the day was very warm. After seeing the cave, we went back to the entrance area for lunch at the open-air restaurant. It was the BEST food we'd eaten in Vietnam so far! It was some kind of Vietnamese noodles with egg pieces and fried vegetables, and it was just delicious. When we were finished eating, we changed into swimsuits and drove down to a river to swim.

Entrance to Paradise Cave

Us in front of the much-photographed "Bell" formation

Cave cauliflower

At the river, we hiked in and enjoyed the nice cool water. We had fun taking pictures of the jungle scenery and jumping from a large rock into the water.

Hiking to the river

As we got out of the river, this butterfly landed on a towel

After swimming, we walked back up the trail to the vans and drove down the river a little farther. There, we were all told not to bring anything along that we didn't want to get wet. We were given headlamps and lifejackets, got into groups of two or three, and carried paddles and inflatable kayaks down to the river. We got in the kayaks and rowed down the river a little ways, admiring the beautiful scenery. At a curve in the river, Ben told us to turn and a cave opened up in front of us! We left our kayaks on the sand, and walked along a boardwalk into the cave and down to some small pools of water. Then Ben led us into deeper water and we swam into the dark! Eventually we felt the bottom again and began clambering over some sharp basalt rocks. We stopped for a time while Ben told us about Dark Cave. It is 10 km long and only one person has traveled the whole length. It's a very difficult trek underground to get to the other end because of how sharp the rocks are -- apparently they quickly shred one's shoes. After learning more about the cave, we swam back to the kayaks and headed up the river to the minivans.

(Ali had a hard time focusing the camera in the dark cave...)

Sharp basalt rocks in the cave

Everybody posed for a picture :)

On our way back to the farmstay, we made one more stop on a bridge near a village to take some scenic pictures. Back at the farmstay, Jonathan and I had supper and then had the owners book us some train tickets to Hanoi. Afterward, we watched as the sun dropped behind the rice paddies and mountains in the distance. It was a beautiful way to start the Sabbath! After sunset we were taken back to our hotel on a couple motorbikes.

Rainbow on our drive to the farmstay

The farmstay

Sunset over the rice paddies

One of the resident puppies at the farmstay

Next up: Sabbath in Son Trach village