Hanoi'd

At first I really liked Hanoi. I was staying in the middle of the Old District, a frenetic maze of small winding streets lined with markets, vendors with their wares spread out on bamboo mats, and constantly clogged by tourists and motorbikes. The French District near the lake is also very pretty, and worth a good wander round. When I was sitting by the lake a Vietnamese guy came and sat next to me and talked to me for about half an hour, I assume to practise his English. Although he did ask if I wanted a free motorbike tour of the city, or to visit his cousin's restaurant. Unsurprisingly I declined. 

I enjoyed Hanoi for the day I was there, but by the evening it was wearing me down. It's nowhere near as full on as Saigon, but there's the same motorbike madness and constant heckling from people selling things on the street that you get all over Vietnam, just in a more confined space. The atmosphere is electric, but more like an electric chair than a pleasant buzz. 

I was glad to be out of the city for my trip to Halong Bay. 

But while I'm on the subject of complaining, let me explain why I'm just not feeling Vietnam. 

It may well be because I was travelling with two of my best friends for a month, and they went home just before I entered Vietnam; and my friends who have been here before built it up so much I was really excited about coming here. So I'm well aware there are factors influencing my opinion. 

But this is what I feel at the moment: Vietnamese people are pushy, unfriendly and the most dishonest people I've ever come across, I feel constantly ripped off (much more so than elsewhere in Asia), the language is irritating, the sights are underwhelming and not as special as elsewhere I've visited, the food is mediocre, the traffic is horrendous and makes walking anywhere a marathon, and the cities feel unsafe and pickpocketing and mugging are more common than in its neighbours. And it's expensive to boot. 

Now I've vented those feelings, it's not all bad. 

It's a relatively easy country to get around, and has a good infrastructure of buses and trains (although the quality of roads is often poor), and the fact that it uses the Roman alphabet like English makes getting around and asking for directions much easier. There are also good metered taxis. Mai Linh and Vinasun are normally quoted as the most reputable, although I've heard of people being asked for tips - I was asked for a tip when I'd prepaid my hostel for the taxi ride (I did not give a tip) - and tourists being told that when the meter reads 50.0, that means 500,000 when you actually multiply it by 1,000, so it's 50,000. I've also had Mai Linh drivers refuse to use the meter and made me agree to a price double what it should've been. 

It's a tiring country to be in, when vendors won't take no for an answer and see you as walking ATMs. I was once told by a motorbike driver that the hostel I was looking for (and was about a 30-second walk down the road) was far away and he'd take me there. Thankfully I'd been in Vietnam long enough to know that most of what you hear from people selling things is lies. 

At the end of my year-long trip, I would rather just chill and make the most of my freedom, rather than constantly having to firmly reject people as I walk down the street. Hopefully Luang Prabang will offer me the respite I'm after for my last few days of travelling. 

Maybe it's to do with Vietnam's long history of bad encounters with foreigners - with France's colonisation and then the American War - but it's not only white tourists who get similar treatment. 

It's a pity I feel this way. I'd much rather love every country I visit, and to be honest this is the first country I've actively disliked. But having said all that, my Vietnam highlights have been Hoi An, Halong Bay and Sapa. I'll look back at them with fond memories. 

Hue and the DMZ

Hue and the DMZ

After Hoi An I spent two nights in Hue, a four or five-hour bus journey north from Hoi An. I'm having to do my stops quite quickly as I'm squeezing Vietnam into two weeks in order to fit a few days in Luang Prabang in at the end of my trip. Considering my feelings towards this country I'm quite glad I only budgeted two weeks here. If I hadn't booked my flight to Laos already to make sure the price didn't go up, I probably would've shot out and spent more time in Laos. I did decide not to visit Da Lat, the Mekong Delta, and the beach resorts of Nha Trang and Mui Ne, however, so I can't comment on them. 

Hue is... okay. It's a relatively happening city, but in terms of sights it's limited to the Citadel in the city centre (like a toy version of Beijing's Forbidden City) and the mausoleums on the outskirts. Many travellers skip Hue altogether, but I was keen to see the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that is easily reachable by day tour from Hue. 

The DMZ was a stretch of land that divided north and south Vietnam during the American War. It was the scene of a lot of bloodshed and bombing, and is also home to the Vinh Moc tunnels, an underground system of passageways that villagers lived in for six years, complete with family rooms, maternity rooms, toilets and a meeting room. It's spread across three levels between 12 and 23m below ground. It's more spacious and less claustrophobic than the Cu Chi tunnels in the south. 

The tour cost $17, although you might be able to find it cheaper if you shop around. It was interesting, but only just worth the amount of driving. It was a 12 hour day, and around six hours of that was sitting on the bus. 

The next day I took the bus back to Da Nang to catch my flight up to Hanoi. It's so much cheaper to fly from Da Nang than from Hue, so the $4 bus journey and $5 taxi from the city to the airport is definitely worth it if you have the time and want to save around $80 on the flight ticket. 

Incidentally, Vietnam's sleeping buses are relatively comfortable. You can get open-tour bus tickets between popular destinations and effectively hop-on and hop-off as you traverse the length of the country. You get an individual seat/bed that reclines and has space for a small bag or your shoes under the headrest. The back is less comfortable though, with two layers of five beds side by side with no barrier between them. There's also less room to move around. So if you can, ask for a seat towards the front of the bus to avoid being crammed in with strangers at the back. 

Thank God for Hoi An

I'm going to try not to be too negative about Vietnam, because so many people I've spoken to rave about it and have been back multiple times. But it's my least favourite place out of my year-long trip where I've visited 14 countries. 

I'm sure I'll vent some of my issues with it throughout the next few blog posts. However, Hoi An is lovely. 

I was there for three nights last week and it's so chilled I could have stayed there for a week. It's an architectural treasure trove, with buildings of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese and European styles, and sits along the banks of a river. It's famous for its silks and tailoring, the wonderful Japanese Covered Bridge, and its nighttime views of the lights over the water. I made sure I was there for the full moon, because you can buy paper lanterns and float them down the river for good luck. It's a beautiful sight. The hostel I stayed at was really cool (Saclo Homestay), and the owner Lena took everyone into town and recommended a place for dinner. I met some really cool people who I later met up with in northern Vietnam. If you can find it, the restaurant she recommended was Bale Well, an all you can eat affair for 110,000VND, where they literally hand-fed us for the first few spring rolls they were showing us how to make. The atmosphere was great, and we were all stuffed. 

The weather wasn't ideal when I was there, but there are beaches about 4km from the town centre, and offshore islands you can easily get to by bicycle (most places rent them out for $1/day). 

Hoi An is quite expensive for Vietnam, and Vietnam is an expensive country compared to the rest of SE Asia. But I found it absolutely worth it. One guy I met was there for a week, and it's a tiny place. Just with a really calm atmosphere that the bigger cities here are sorely lacking. 

Saigon

Saigon is manic. Not to Bangkok standards, but the steer amount of motorbikes makes getting anywhere a challenge. 

To cross the roads you have to walk into the oncoming wave of traffic (the motorbike drivers are well-trains in swerving around you, the car drivers are not), stop in the middle, do the same again, and then when you think you've reached safety motorbikes will drive up onto the pavement and honk at you to avoid them. Pedestrians are definitely the underclass when it comes to Vietnamese roads. 

I spent two nights there and that was enough. I had a few things I wanted to do, and an evening, full day, and a morning before my flight to Da Nang, was plenty. 

As soon as I arrived I booked a day trip to the Cu Chi war tunnels through my hostel. It cost US$6 plus $5 entrance fee. They're a good two and a half hour drive from District 1 of Saigon, but it's quite eye-opening. I'd never studied the Vietnam War (or the American War as it's known here) before so I was keen to see the history. 

The tunnels were used by Viet Cong soldiers to escape the American troops, and they stayed in tiny spaces underground (made so larger Caucasians couldn't fit) all day and only came out at night. You can go into an original tunnel if you can fit, or a widened version for tourists. I took one look at the entrance to the original one and knew I wasn't going to squeeze into it. The people who did were harassed by bats inside, so I feel I made the right decision. 

They also show you some of the ingenious jungle traps that the Vietnamese engineered, and it's no wonder that so many films have been made about the Vietnam War. It's straight out of a fantasy novel, or a nightmare. 

After crawling through the tourist tunnel (it's 100m long, but with a way out after 20m), they show you a short documentary on the war. Take it with a punch of salt. It's extremely biased. It described the American Army as a "crazy band of devils". I thought this was laughable until I went to the War Memorial Museum that afternoon (they dropped those of us who wanted to go there after the tour), and saw how utterly pointless the American involvement in Vietnam was. However, the film was so blatantly anti-American and pro-Communist it was difficult to take its message entirely seriously. 

The War Memorial Museum was a barrel of laughs too. Having been to the Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh a couple of days earlier I left hating humanity. After stories, with graphic photos to boot, of the atrocities of the American soldiers - disembowelling women and children, and the effects of the tonnes of dioxin (Agent Orange) that were dropped on the country as a wartime experiment, I was very much on the side of the Vietnamese. 

It also had exhibits about the French occupation and the suffering of the Vietnamese people. 

All very intense. 

The following morning I went to the Reunification Palace, which only got interesting at the end when you see the bunker underneath, with its old communications equipment and original wall maps. 

I then flew from the mania of Saigon to Da Nang airport, where I headed straight for the oasis of Hoi An. 

I decided to fly around Vietnam as much as possible, because the roads are such poor quality it takes over 15 hours to get pretty much anywhere, and Saigon to Hoi An by bus is 26 hours. Domestic flights are very cheap. You can find tickets online for as little as US$20 if you're lucky. Flights are often delayed or cancelled though. This one was delayed by three hours, and my Da Nang-Hanoi flight had a schedule change and was made later. They did email me two days on advance though. Well done VietJet Air! 

Cambodia to Vietnam Overland

After spending an extra day in Phnom Penh to get over my dodgy stomach (granola and salad sorted me out), I ventured into Vietnam. 

There are several options for crossing the land borders, including minivans and an assortment of buses. I went for the Mekong Express, which I found to be very good. It cost US$14 through my hostel Phnom Penh to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), and took eight hours including border procedures. 

They did mess up my booking and had me down as going back to Siem Reap, but thankfully they had a spare seat at the back. 

I'd heard stories of a lot of corruption at Cambodian land borders, but going out I had no problem. I did see a guy sitting near me slip the officer who took our passports at the start of the journey a $1 note, and surprise surprise his name was the first to be called when we arrived at the border gate.  

My passport was also the very last to be called on the Vietnam side, and I was concerned they'd ask me to pay for them to "find it". But my faith in humanity stood up and it all went smoothly. 

A few hours later we pulled into Saigon (it's quicker for me to write the old name Saigon than Ho Chi Minh City, but don't call it Saigon in the north of Vietnam - apparently that can cause offence. People have long memories). 

And my first taste of Vietnam was to follow. 

Genocide and Goodbye

On my last day with the girls, in Phnom Penh, we made the fantastic decision to visit the Killing Fields and the Genocide Museum before our emotional farewell. It was the only time we had to do it, but it was still poorly timed. 

The Killing Fields were not how I'd foreseen them in my overactive, possibly Tolkien-inspired imagination. The barren wasteland swirling with mist, mud pools popping and splattering crosses sticking out of the bloody earth was replaced by a pleasant green stretch of land dotted with trees and shrubs. The only thing that tells you this will be a sombre experience is the towering shrine in the centre, consisting of 17 levels, each one filled with human skulls. 

The Khmer Rouge genocide was something I barely knew anything about, so I was really keen to learn the history. I'm so glad I did it, but it was beyond horrific. Three million people killed for nothing. 

The Genocide Museum, set in a former high school that became a prison known as S-21, was just as harrowing. But I can't recommend them enough. Just to get a feel for what the Cambodian people went through, just forty years ago. And it explains why there's such a big gap in the ages of people you see on the street. 

You can do both within three or four hours, and a tuk-tuk driver will take you to both and back to your hostel for around US$20. 

Then, with our hearts in our socks, I said goodbye to Laura and Nat after an amazing month. We saw so many unforgettable things, and I'm so glad they got to see a bit of my bizarre reality travelling the world. Travelling alone has its perks, and I still believe is the best way to see the world, but it was lovely to have two of my best friends with me. What a month. 

A Bad Day Travelling...

People say that a bad day travelling is always better than a good day at work. 

Those people have obviously never done the six-hour minivan journey on the world's worst road between Siem Reap and Phnom Penh with diarrhoea. 

I was wishing for a cosy desk job the whole way! That road is notoriously bad, and I could see why. My head hit the roof of the van on several occasions, and our driver (as with all over SE Asia) had no regard for safety, and almost drove us into oncoming traffic many times. 

But it was the price that swayed us. It was US$13 for the minivan or $38 for a speedboat. I wanted to do the boat to see the Tonle Sap and the scenery, but coming to the end of my trip I have to make sure I have enough money to do everything I want to do. 

You know what they say. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.