Hanoi, Vietnam

We arrived in Hanoi early the next morning and got to our hostel. Hanoi was very different than HCM. The architecture was very French with large roads and so many coffee shops! It was so striking, every corner had another coffee place! Our hotel was on a little backroad which made it incredibly difficult to find. We ended up getting lost almost every time we wanted to go back to the hostel, it was frustrating because all the streets looked similar! The first day we arrived, we toured the city. The traffic was worse than in HCM! Really at about 4 PM, insanity struck and people started to drive like crazy people. I have never seen worse traffic.. we were lucky we didnt get run over, seriously.. sidewalks were NOT sidewalks they were just another part of the road.. We saw another Cathedral that looked very similar to the one in HCM. The weather was quite different that HCM as well. it was actually cold! for the first time in Asia, I was cold!! Probably should have checked the weather before I left Hong Kong and packed a few extra sweatshirts! We had to hunt to find fleece for the Halong Bay Boat trip the next day that we had already signed up for! It was nice to just have relaxing day to explore Hanoi!





The next morning we left early for our Halong Bay tour which was located 3 hours away from Hanoi. We booked the tour with our hostel so it was all young people which made it a lot of fun. We got there and it was tourist central. Junk boats everywhere and so many tourists! I had no idea it was going to be like that. But it was a lot nicer when we finally got on our boat and got into the lake. It was beautiful with the limestone everywhere, we went kayacking for a couple of hours but it was too cold to swim! I never thought I would be on a boat in 2 layers of fleece and a scarf!! Still it was fun because we got to meet people from all around the world that were traveling like us! That is one of the best parts about hostels i think, just there are so many interesting people you meet! We stayed overnight on the boat, surprisingly it wasn't that cold because they gave you lots of blankets. The food was actually really good and so overall it was a fun time! We arrived back in Hanoi about 4 PM the next day and made the crazy decision to jump back on an overnight train at 9PM the same night and head up to Sapa for the next day!






We had heard from some of the other backpackers that it was totally worth the trip and we were kind of over Hanoi with its crazy traffic..so we headed up on the train! The overnight train was not bad, similar to the one we took in Mainland China from Beijing to Shanghai. We arrived early in the morning and had to get on a bus to drive the extra hour and a half to Sapa. Sapa was a valley area that was covered with rice fields, it is one of the touristy places like Halong Bay but is beautiful and you get to meet and eat with local people. We booked a motor bike tour of the area for something different and unusual. But when we arrived, the weather was just crappy.. It was cold and rainy plus the flog was crazyyy.. It was kind of a letdown but we were determined not let it get the best of us and we bought gloves and hats at the market and got on our bikes!! Our guide was really nice and brought us to restaurant to get breakfast before we left with a fire! The drive down into the valley was really crazy. It was dirt roads on motorbikes in the rain and was sooo coolldd! It took us 2 hours to get down to the village we were stopping at for lunch. By the time we arrived, we were soaked, freezing and kind of miserable..but they made us an amazing lunch of noodles and we started to feel better. It wasn't raining in the valley so we met us with some local women and brought us to a waterfall. It was very pretty and they were very nice. Even though they were just trying to get us to buy stuff from them, they were nice and kept complimenting us! We had to say goodbye to them and hope back on our bike to go back to the rain and crappy weather... It just kept getting worse and worse as we went us to the town. We arrived back and had enough time to get dinner and hop back on the bus to the overnight train to Hanoi. We arrived back in Hanoi then next morning and had to wait at the hostel for a bed which sucked.. but we left for an extra couple of hours and woke up for our last day in Hanoi!

Vietnam Continued..

The next day we work up early and headed to see the Cu Chi Tunnels. There were about an hour outside HCM so we took a bus there. The Tunnels were set up by the Vietcong in the south trying to defeat the Americans. They were very elaborate and even could house soldiers underground for months at a time. We saw many of the tunnel openings and different gorilla warfare techniques used. I also got to shoot an AK47! This was the first time I had ever shot a gun, and will probably be my last. I didn’t really like the loud sound that was emitted or the crazy push back. The guy in charge had to hold me from not flying off the end of the gun after I shot it. Still made for a great picture.. We also got to climb through the tunnels, now the size was made bigger so that larger tourist could get through, but still they were so small.. We made it the full way but were covered in dirt and sweat when we emerged. It was small, dark and I had really bad claustrophobia while we were inside. Glad I never had to do that again..
This sadly was our last day in HCM, I wish we had more time here but we did get to see most of the touristy things. It would have been nice to have more day, but guess I just have to go back!!

Never Play In Traffic, Except for in Vietnam?

We arrived in Ho Chi Min City a day later than we had expected. Our cheap airline out of Macau pushed back the flight to the next day, we all were pretty disappointed but there was nothing we could do. The flight was none other I had ever been on. To start the people were so pushy! They pushed in the ticket line and then ran on to the plane, you would think that it wasn’t assigned seats! Even after we landed and started to taxi, the people on the plane started to rush to the front of the plane with it still moving! It was so weird; I have never seen people in a hurry to go somewhere so fast. I am still unsure if that was just a Vietnamese cultural thing or if it was just that flight. We arrived in Saigon at about 7 AM; we were all so tired because we had stayed up the night before because we had to take the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. My first impressions of Saigon were that the traffic was INSANE. Really there were no rules and people drove everywhere. It looked like most people owned a motorbike instead of a car, so the streets were filled with them. Even sidewalks were considered part of the road ways and you had to be careful that you didn’t get run over. We arrived at our hotel and we were staying in what seemed to be the center of the tourist part. There were like 40 hotels right next to each other as you walked down the street. We stayed at a place called “The Beautiful Saigon” and it was just lovely especially being only 15 USDs a night including free interest and breakfast! We took a quick nap and then headed off to tour around Saigon. We walked to the major landmarks in HCM including the Reunification Palace, Notre Dame Cathedral and the Vietnam War museum. It was interesting to see the Reunification Palace because it was the place where the tanks from the North pushed town the walls and declared victory. It was very beautiful inside and was decorated very much like the 80s. After touring this landmark, we headed to the Vietnam War Museum. We were warned that it wasn’t going to be easy to stomach being an American and they were right. It was shocking to learn everything we were never told in our history classes. There were really bloody pictures and even artillery artifacts. On the second floor, there were multiple different journalist and photographer’s journals during the war when they were on the front lines. All these people were from different countries and had very different perspectives. As I walked through these pictures, I could help but wish I knew more about this war. Fortunately, one of the guys on our trip wants to be a history teacher so he was able to give some insight on the events that we were looking at. I can’t really explain the feeling after seeing that museum; it’s just something you have to see. I never felt more disillusioned on my American heritage.

We walked back from the museum and got ready for dinner. We ate at this great Vietnamese place and it was so cheap! I had no idea how cheap it was going to be! For a nice restaurant with a full course meal, it was about 2 USDs. In the US, that same meal would have cost about 40 USD! For desert, there was a crepes (yes, crepes!!) stand right outside our hotel! There were freshly made and amazing. Love the French influence!!

Notre Dame Cathedral

Inside the Reunification Palace

Tank outside the Reunification Palace

The outside of the Reunification Palace