Hanoi & Halong Bay Jan 29th to Feb 2nd
So what comes next then...
Well, we flew up from Hue to Hanoi, having decided in favour of a one hour flight, rather than a 12 hour overnight train journey. Yes it would have been cheaper 'to let the train take the strain', but of course the train wouldn't have performed that task. My slight trepidation at flying Vietnam Airlines (expecting something akin to Aeroflot), was soon eased as we stepped onto a brand spanking A320 airbus - which most of the éstablished' airlines haven't got in their fleet yet.
Arriving in Hanoi, the climate was much more pleasant than HCMC. Nothing like the humidity and 10 degrees lower at around 24C. The city traffic, however, proved to be equally chaotic.
So what comes next then...Rita does! Yup, we had a really smooth flight to Hanoi taking off at 14.40pm. We had to be at the airport one hour before as it was only a domestic flight but we confused our times and arrived two hours before instead. We were the only souls there - even the cafe was shut! Clearly a very quiet airport! Earlier we had had breakfast out on the hotel's patio with Mike and Lucy, extra coffees - the Vietnamese coffee is so good - and bananas all round. (Private note for P & J: For M & L read K & S!!!). Just as an aside whilst we are on the subject; most hotels serve banana, a white crusty bread roll, a knob of butter, eggs and strong home-grown Vietnamese coffee for breakfast. It is standard fare. The taxi drive to our hotel in Hanoi was even more scary than most. As we sped along, the sight of a motorbike laying in the middle of the road did nothing to alleviate my fears. Moments later we witnessed a mob of men grabbing hold of the culpable truck driver and dragging him down from his cab...
The hotel in Hanoi was joyless & crummy despite being called 'JOY HOTEL'but only cost us $10 dollars per night which includes breakfast. That evening we found a 'Western'restaurant and having no appetite for noodles left, we ventured in. What a disappointment! It was laughable really but alas not at the moment of presentation! The plates were stone cold and the vegetables were cold, raw infact. The mash potato (I love mash potato - not having had any since September, I was really looking forward to it), turned out to be chips, soggy, crinkle cut and absolutely stone cold.The lamb cutlet could have been anything! The mustard sauce and Leigh's lemon sauce (he'd ordered fish with lemon sauce)turned out to be the same yellow sauce both tasting of cornflour. Yummy!
You see chaps, it's not all beer and skittles here!
Tuesday 30.01.07 - a really good night's sleep at the Joyless and away at 8am for a 3 night, 2 day tour to Halong Bay. Bigsy had recommended Halong Bay, so we were quite confident about it. We are introduced to Nick our Tour Guide, who speaks really good English. Day 1 proves to be a really enjoyable day. The sun is beaming down, we have a good lunch on the boat, we go kayaking for 90 minutes on the Bay and see some really stunning scenery. We also go down an amazingly huge cave with the most enormous stalagmites and stalactites. Evidently the VC used to hide down here when the Americans got too close for comfort. History tells us that they bombed Hanoi to the ground, so I guess 'they got too close for comfort'was an understatement, slightly!
Leigh's voice now, below:
February 1st: Wake up on junk after a quiet peaceful night. The sun is shining and life seems easy {no travelling today!). The junk takes us across the bay and we're then loaded on to a bus. This takes us to a quay where we board a scruffy flat barge thing which takes us down a canal and to another cave. This cave is similar to the one that we visited yesterday. Huge and full of stalactites and stalagmites. If these caves existed in the UK it would cost about 15 pounds to enter. Entrance is free.
They are amazing caves.
In this cave that we are in this morning there is a buddhist shrine. 65% of the Vietnamese are Buddhist, but in reality, we are told, the only true practising buddhists are the monks. The remainder of the Buddhist faith practise 'Ancestor Worship'. This involves 'bringing down you ancestors' with prayers at the shrine. The belief is that you can ask your ancestors for advice and that the said ancestors are aware of their contribution.
In the afternoon we are taken to a hotel in Cat Ba, where we are booked in for the night.
Cat Ba is a seaside town with a wide boulevard along the front. The kids actually have some room here to kick their shuttlecocks around and play ball games. Altogether it looks a better life than that offered by the city.
In the evening we all go to the pub, 'The Blue Note'. Rita asks for her usual tipple, a diet coke!
Thursday 2nd February : We board a boat which is to take us back to Halong City, prior to taking the 4 hour bus ride back to Hanoi.
On this boat we get talking to a Vietnamese woman (49) and her daughter (21). The mother (Vivienne) was one of the boat people who ecaped Vietnam in the late 70's after the
reprisals had begun against the South Vietnamese who were connected to or supported the former government (anti-communist). Vivienne's family had to leave as her father was in the army, not VC. The legacy of the persecutions still exists today as former government workers, doctors, professional classes and intellectuals under the defeated South Vietnamese government are persona non-grata in Vietnam. Many of the impoverished Cyclo drivers, scraping a subsistence wage are indeed victims of this repression, as these educated people are denied the right to earn a living/proper job, so they live hand to mouth.
(Rita again). Vivienne was expounding on her experience of being a 'Boat Person'. She said that they had gradually sold off all their possessions and at midnight in October 1979 (four years after the Viet Cong's victory and therefore her father's South Vietnamese army's defeat - inevitable after the Americans had pulled out,leaving them to fight the V.C). In 1979 she was 21 and the 3rd eldest daughter within a family of Mum, Dad and 10 brothers and sisiters. The youngest child was two.They took bags of rice & other dried food stuffs and some pots and a map and some gold, the only currency to bribe with. Within less than 24 hours the VC's patrols search lights came on scanning the waters and everyone ducked down covering themselves with taupaulin. She recalls her fear. She did not know until that point that one's heart could possibly sound so loud! On a later escaper her 1st cousin was caught by these search lights and was sent to 12 years hard labour. I asked how he was. She replied that when he was released he was just skin and bone. 'He suffered alot'. She knows that had they been caught the whole family would most certainly have been jailed. They were four months living on this boat. They arrived first at Singapore and were not granted entry. At Sydney, Australia they were eventually granted entry. She recalls the elation upon hearing that news as clearly as she remembers the beating of her heart at seeing the patrol's searchlights as her family cowered. They were sent to a 'detention' camp in Australia for 'rehab'. Her Mum and Dad were very keen that all their children should be educated and all 10 of them gained a university degree at Melbourne uni. Their graduation picture hangs on the living room wall. Her parents are very proud. Their risk paid off. They know that if they had stayed, they would have been discovered and all the children would be denied an education and the parents left to beg. Every day in those fateful years, men (like her father) were dragged out of their houses and all possessions confiscated and left homeless and/or father's jailed. Vivienne's 21 year old daughter is now a 4th year Law Student at Melbourne University and was stunning, confident and engaging. Vivienne is really proud that her daughter has this chance of success. She said much more but I have probably gone on too much already, especially as our taxi is due soon and we have yet to check out of this hotel. We are off to see 'the Killing fields'...I have mixed feelings about this as I am not the resilient type, but important to visit/not forgotten.
Well, we flew up from Hue to Hanoi, having decided in favour of a one hour flight, rather than a 12 hour overnight train journey. Yes it would have been cheaper 'to let the train take the strain', but of course the train wouldn't have performed that task. My slight trepidation at flying Vietnam Airlines (expecting something akin to Aeroflot), was soon eased as we stepped onto a brand spanking A320 airbus - which most of the éstablished' airlines haven't got in their fleet yet.
Arriving in Hanoi, the climate was much more pleasant than HCMC. Nothing like the humidity and 10 degrees lower at around 24C. The city traffic, however, proved to be equally chaotic.
So what comes next then...Rita does! Yup, we had a really smooth flight to Hanoi taking off at 14.40pm. We had to be at the airport one hour before as it was only a domestic flight but we confused our times and arrived two hours before instead. We were the only souls there - even the cafe was shut! Clearly a very quiet airport! Earlier we had had breakfast out on the hotel's patio with Mike and Lucy, extra coffees - the Vietnamese coffee is so good - and bananas all round. (Private note for P & J: For M & L read K & S!!!). Just as an aside whilst we are on the subject; most hotels serve banana, a white crusty bread roll, a knob of butter, eggs and strong home-grown Vietnamese coffee for breakfast. It is standard fare. The taxi drive to our hotel in Hanoi was even more scary than most. As we sped along, the sight of a motorbike laying in the middle of the road did nothing to alleviate my fears. Moments later we witnessed a mob of men grabbing hold of the culpable truck driver and dragging him down from his cab...
The hotel in Hanoi was joyless & crummy despite being called 'JOY HOTEL'but only cost us $10 dollars per night which includes breakfast. That evening we found a 'Western'restaurant and having no appetite for noodles left, we ventured in. What a disappointment! It was laughable really but alas not at the moment of presentation! The plates were stone cold and the vegetables were cold, raw infact. The mash potato (I love mash potato - not having had any since September, I was really looking forward to it), turned out to be chips, soggy, crinkle cut and absolutely stone cold.The lamb cutlet could have been anything! The mustard sauce and Leigh's lemon sauce (he'd ordered fish with lemon sauce)turned out to be the same yellow sauce both tasting of cornflour. Yummy!
You see chaps, it's not all beer and skittles here!
Tuesday 30.01.07 - a really good night's sleep at the Joyless and away at 8am for a 3 night, 2 day tour to Halong Bay. Bigsy had recommended Halong Bay, so we were quite confident about it. We are introduced to Nick our Tour Guide, who speaks really good English. Day 1 proves to be a really enjoyable day. The sun is beaming down, we have a good lunch on the boat, we go kayaking for 90 minutes on the Bay and see some really stunning scenery. We also go down an amazingly huge cave with the most enormous stalagmites and stalactites. Evidently the VC used to hide down here when the Americans got too close for comfort. History tells us that they bombed Hanoi to the ground, so I guess 'they got too close for comfort'was an understatement, slightly!
Leigh's voice now, below:
February 1st: Wake up on junk after a quiet peaceful night. The sun is shining and life seems easy {no travelling today!). The junk takes us across the bay and we're then loaded on to a bus. This takes us to a quay where we board a scruffy flat barge thing which takes us down a canal and to another cave. This cave is similar to the one that we visited yesterday. Huge and full of stalactites and stalagmites. If these caves existed in the UK it would cost about 15 pounds to enter. Entrance is free.
They are amazing caves.
In this cave that we are in this morning there is a buddhist shrine. 65% of the Vietnamese are Buddhist, but in reality, we are told, the only true practising buddhists are the monks. The remainder of the Buddhist faith practise 'Ancestor Worship'. This involves 'bringing down you ancestors' with prayers at the shrine. The belief is that you can ask your ancestors for advice and that the said ancestors are aware of their contribution.
In the afternoon we are taken to a hotel in Cat Ba, where we are booked in for the night.
Cat Ba is a seaside town with a wide boulevard along the front. The kids actually have some room here to kick their shuttlecocks around and play ball games. Altogether it looks a better life than that offered by the city.
In the evening we all go to the pub, 'The Blue Note'. Rita asks for her usual tipple, a diet coke!
Thursday 2nd February : We board a boat which is to take us back to Halong City, prior to taking the 4 hour bus ride back to Hanoi.
On this boat we get talking to a Vietnamese woman (49) and her daughter (21). The mother (Vivienne) was one of the boat people who ecaped Vietnam in the late 70's after the
reprisals had begun against the South Vietnamese who were connected to or supported the former government (anti-communist). Vivienne's family had to leave as her father was in the army, not VC. The legacy of the persecutions still exists today as former government workers, doctors, professional classes and intellectuals under the defeated South Vietnamese government are persona non-grata in Vietnam. Many of the impoverished Cyclo drivers, scraping a subsistence wage are indeed victims of this repression, as these educated people are denied the right to earn a living/proper job, so they live hand to mouth.
(Rita again). Vivienne was expounding on her experience of being a 'Boat Person'. She said that they had gradually sold off all their possessions and at midnight in October 1979 (four years after the Viet Cong's victory and therefore her father's South Vietnamese army's defeat - inevitable after the Americans had pulled out,leaving them to fight the V.C). In 1979 she was 21 and the 3rd eldest daughter within a family of Mum, Dad and 10 brothers and sisiters. The youngest child was two.They took bags of rice & other dried food stuffs and some pots and a map and some gold, the only currency to bribe with. Within less than 24 hours the VC's patrols search lights came on scanning the waters and everyone ducked down covering themselves with taupaulin. She recalls her fear. She did not know until that point that one's heart could possibly sound so loud! On a later escaper her 1st cousin was caught by these search lights and was sent to 12 years hard labour. I asked how he was. She replied that when he was released he was just skin and bone. 'He suffered alot'. She knows that had they been caught the whole family would most certainly have been jailed. They were four months living on this boat. They arrived first at Singapore and were not granted entry. At Sydney, Australia they were eventually granted entry. She recalls the elation upon hearing that news as clearly as she remembers the beating of her heart at seeing the patrol's searchlights as her family cowered. They were sent to a 'detention' camp in Australia for 'rehab'. Her Mum and Dad were very keen that all their children should be educated and all 10 of them gained a university degree at Melbourne uni. Their graduation picture hangs on the living room wall. Her parents are very proud. Their risk paid off. They know that if they had stayed, they would have been discovered and all the children would be denied an education and the parents left to beg. Every day in those fateful years, men (like her father) were dragged out of their houses and all possessions confiscated and left homeless and/or father's jailed. Vivienne's 21 year old daughter is now a 4th year Law Student at Melbourne University and was stunning, confident and engaging. Vivienne is really proud that her daughter has this chance of success. She said much more but I have probably gone on too much already, especially as our taxi is due soon and we have yet to check out of this hotel. We are off to see 'the Killing fields'...I have mixed feelings about this as I am not the resilient type, but important to visit/not forgotten.
posted by Leon Trotsky | 2:04 pm
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