Hoi An to Hanoi (our last ten days in Vietnam)
- By Denise
- September 23, 2015
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Ok we arrived in Hoi An early in the morning after our first long haul trip in a sleeper bus.
Our Sleeper Bus
The welcome at our hotel – “Long Life” was lovely and energetic. They had booked us into a room on the 4th floor in a hotel without a lift……I suppose this is good for my exercise!! Air conditioning works like it should – but the temperature outside is hovering around 35 degrees – this is the hottest we have experienced so far.
We got ourselves acquainted with the area – our usual thing for the first day at a new place – everyone is lovely but again business appears tight and well sought after – locals need and want your business and are on the street beckoning you to come in. We found the first market that night – nice feel about the city.
Our second day off to An Banh Beach – beautiful and clear and the water is luke warm!! Yes, its as warm as you would have for a baby’s bath!! Incredible and absolutely no gulps from me when entering the water. This is what we have been waiting for! In fact we saw a real life mermaid here. A woman had a mermaid suit that she wore while swimming so I guess a real life Darryl Hannah!!! Quite interesting me explaining this scene to Carter!
Looking out to An Banh Beach
Unfortunately the sunscreen purchased in Nha Trang didn’t work so well and both Carter and I are burnt….Carter though, not so bad and I think he will turn brown – I on the other hand don’t have that luxury. Dave, well he just keeps getting more and more brown – soon he’ll be mistaken for one of the locals….:-)
That night we ventured further on our bicycles and into the older part of Hoi An. Wow, was all that we could say – it is beautiful, vibrant and old. The streets are either paved or concrete, the locals are sitting either side of the roads and down every little alley way selling their wares, the river runs through and there are lanterns throughout. This reminded both Dave and I just a little bit of our time in Japan with the small narrow streets. There are little children running around and enjoying the night’s festivities and some learning their parents’ trade. They will come up to us and using their best english ask us to buy whatever they have to sell.
Although this area is still part of Vietnam it seems to have a very different feel about it. The architecture is a cross between French, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese and it all seems to work well. We noticed that there are no neon signs in this area at all – something it appears they are purposely doing to achieve the “old Hoi An” feel about the city.
View at night
Lanterns – something that Hoi An is famous for
Image at a night market
OMG – when you don’t think things can get any better – they do. We had the most magical day at An Banh beach yesterday. After a slower start to the day we ventured to the beach around mid afternoon and negotiated cheaper sun loungers and then spent a few hours in the sea. The sea is sooooooo warm its amazing. In fact when you are close in the temperature of the sea must be in the late 20’s. In the deeper parts lower 20’s – in any case its like nothing I have experienced before. We stayed ‘til late and marvelled in the various colours throughout the sky.
Wow!
Because food is a passion of ours we decided to take a cooking class and this was again an eye opener. None of this chef’s hat, no apron and all cooking was out the back in an area no more than 2m2 on two little cookers. After learning how to make the Vietnamese Fried Spring Rolls and Vietnamese Pancakes we were full. However there were two more dishes to go. This was wonderful and again we have some great memories of this – especially as the lady from the restaurant next door was a little gruff throughout – she didn’t seem to have the personality or positivity to attract new customers to her restaurant – unlike ours. It is interesting too that family plays a huge part in all business – the little 2 year old daughter of our lady was playing around the restaurant – everyone looking out for her and helping where necessary. She too, had a candle in paper and was trying to sell this to a passerby/tourist for them to “make a wish and place it in the nearby river”. Cute…
Carter and I learning how to cook Vietnamese food!
Our teacher – Ms Pink – Notice that she is on TripAdvisor which is good business planning!
We hired bicycles most days and on one day went biking around the villages outside of Hoi An. We were able to see huge blocks of ice being shredded into slivers and put into large polystyrene bins; people working in their rice paddy fields and many other daily activities. All of these happen on the sides of the roads.
Harvesting the rice
Family processing their rice from the fields
The second to last day we came across a Kebab place run by an English man who had married his Vietnamese sweetheart. They were laid back and very happy just cooking some good old english style food ie English Roast on Sundays and bangers and mash, beans on toast etc. This of course was appealing to us for a change so promptly sat down and had a good old chat about how he got started in the restaurant business and what red tape, if any, he faced. This was interesting – it all happens at ground level with the local community running their ‘patch’ and then moves upward from there. If you keep the local community happy then they will look after you so he employs local vietnamese – his elderly neighbour collects the used cans for her pocket money and all are happy. He also had Pocket Monopoly so this kept Carter and I happy for a game or two.
Time to move on although we enjoyed Hoi An immensely.
It was another overnight sleeper bus to Hanoi. We first had to travel through Hue (pronounced ‘whey’) – a place we were going to stay for a couple of days but again we were loving Hoi An and wanted to go out to the islands in Halong Bay up north so some place had to give. This meant a very long bus trip which was to start at 1.30pm on Thursday and finish at 7.30am on Friday. With only a quick change of bus and a couple of stops in between. The sleeper bus this time was a new model with good air con, slightly bigger sleep seats and a most welcome toilet on the bus. Especially since my gurgly tummy had been going all day!! I was getting most anxious that I would be having to ask the drivers to stop every so often – which they definitely don’t like. So, it was wonderful to have that toilet.
There was just ONE thing which ruined this trip for us – one of the driver’s was smoking. This was blinky awful I can tell you. Dave ingeniously thought of writing a note on his i-pad then google translating it into Vietnamese to tell them it was awful and that if they continued we would write a report on Trip Advisor regarding it. They acknowledged his note and nodded. But that’s where it ended. The smoking continued. Yuck…
HANOI
Coming into Hanoi – there were rice paddy fields on both sides of the road and as far as the eye could see. Then as we were getting closer into the city limits I could see the standard narrow but 2-4 storey buildings on my left and yet still more paddy fields on the right.
Closer in still and it appears more industrial with subdivisions underway, larger trucks, diggers and construction worksites. Many apartment buildings currently under construction which are both wide and high. I guess that’s the difference between old and new. What amuses me though, is that there can be a narrow gap (where a house/apartment once stood) with construction underway with a digger working in the rubble starting to build the new – and right next door – I mean right next door there can be a restaurant trying to attract punters in for food or a small shop selling their wares or a Spa where you can get various beauty treatments. Nothing stands still – they just keep working.
One of our ventures was to the Old Hanoi Prison – also known as the Hanoi Hylton Hotel. This was another example of the terrors of life in a prison in the early 1800-1900’s. There were some prison breaks and we were able to see the sewer pipes the prisoners used to escape. The space they had to manoeuvre their bodies through was no bigger than Carter – man they must have been malnourished. This visit was another good opportunity for Carter to read the information boards to us which helps just a little toward his education!
Halong Bay
A junk took us out to get a taste of Halong Bay. Due to us having a family of three we were able to secure the ‘penthouse’ room for the night. The beds were fine – the boat in a dire need of maintenance and the shower nothing to rave over but hey – we had an ensuite so we couldn’t complain! Actually, the whole trip was a wonderful change to the hustle and bustle of Vietnam life although the waterways are starting to get crowded. Goodness knows just what this area will be like in a few years time.
Our Junk
Carter and Dave took the opportunity to have a swim in the water while we all went kayaking across to the oyster farms and around the area for a while.
Carter jumping into the water! Dave is already swimming…
Halong Bay
Back to Hanoi and our last night was spent on a Cyclo. This is a bicycle taxi trip around the hub of Hanoi taking in the sights. And these are some of the things I noted:
• Buses, cars glide past within inches of you – yet miraculously do not touch.
• Concrete mixer in middle of street – working
• House – three storey high with no frontage yet people appeared to be living there with washing hanging on the second floor
• Lights in the trees are stunning
• The market is made up of: hardware street, spice street, toy street, stationery street, shoe street, North Face Street, Headstone corner,
• Vendors light small fires on the street at the end of the night presumably to burn the rubbish of the day. On the food streets the leftovers are bagged up and left on the street edge.
• Scooters everywhere – on a small street which wasn’t busy I counted 386 parked up.
• Saw family dog on scooter together with family of four – dog, child, dad, child, mum
• Heard my first ambulance in 23 days
• 9pm and the amusement park for toddlers was still open and very busy…
Overall I have found that the Vietnamese are very careful drivers – they appear to be very aware of their surroundings and just know how to miss the next scooter or person on the street. I saw just the one small accident in my whole time in Vietnam and we were on busy streets all the time. Yet I also noted that most of them are on their cell phones talking too! How do they do this?
Dave & Carter in one Cyclo
Denise’s personal Cyclo!
After a wonderful time in Vietnam we are now off to Hong Kong for a few days and a completely different scene.
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