March 12: Da Nang to Hoi An

After only one day we left Da Nang and headed to Hoi An – one hour south. We took the bus (the open bus it is called) and we were in Hoi An in an hour. I had tried to book a room last night and I had logged on to the website of the hotel and reserved a deluxe room overlooking the rice patties. Shortly after leaving the website I wrote down the name of the hotel so I wouldn’t forget it. Way too late! I showed up at the hotel and informed them I had a reservation. They couldn’t find it - but they didn’t want me to leave and I didn’t want to confess I was at the wrong hotel – so we have a nice room in the Phouc An Hotel that overlooks the alleyway.
Hoi An is an old village that has preserved most of the building from the 17th and 18th century. It is a tourist town, but still has some charm. However it’s major claim to fame is a clothing centre. There are 500 tailors on town and all are quick and good. I’m might have a few Tilly shirts made here. Katherine will join us tomorrow for the weekend
in Hoi An.

March 10 and 11th

What a difference a day makes! On Tuesday, we booked a bus trip to the Perfume Pagoda, 2 hours from Hanoi. Upon leaving the bus, we (15 of us from the tour) got into a rowboat and were rowed for 45 minutes to the base of a mountain where there are many pagodas in caves and on the mountainside. However, much to our dismay, there were also rows and rows of vendors all the way up the mountainside, blaring music, litter all over the place and thousands of people. It was really not an enjoyable day.
Wednesday morning, we flew to Danang and took a cab into the city . I sat at a café with our luggage while Tim went to find a hotel. A Vietnamese gentleman joined me, asked how long we were staying ,suggested that he could drive us by motorbike to see the caves and pagodas in the nearby Marble mountains then phoned a friend to come by to meet us – he would be the second driver. By the time Tim returned, this fellow had planned our afternoon for us. We decided to take him up on his offer, negotiated a price and agreed to be picked up at our hotel at 2pm. We had a lovely afternoon. The mountain, caves and pagodas were peaceful, beautiful, clean and had only a few vendors selling refreshments, not tacky souvenirs. After our mountain visit, the drivers took us to
China Beach-an absolutely beautiful stretch of sandy beach that goes for kilometres.
What a difference a day makes!

March 9 Hanoi

This morning we decided to try the cyclocab to get around Hanoi. These contraptions have 2 front wheels and can hold 2 people. The driver gets behind and pedals. We tried two today and there isn’t any slower way to get around. The old women walked faster than we went. We had a one-hour tour and we might have covered 2 kilometres before time was up. We did see some interesting streets however and pedaled along two of Hanoi’s lakes .
We have just returned from supper. We worked up our courage and decided to eat on the streets tonight. We started with a beer at the first corner beer parlour. We sat on the street and drank draught beer and ate peanuts. It’s a bit disconcerting when your beer comes out of a plastic hose, but it’s still good beer. Hanoi is covered with these hole-in-the-wall street beer parlours. The beer is brewed in Hanoi according to a Czech recipe and it does not suffer in translation. Then across the street was the Berliner Doner Kebab. I still don’t know what type of meat we ate. It looked like wurst – but I liked it. Joan ate hers too. I liked it so much I followed it with an Istanbul Doner Kebab from a stall down the street (I think the meat was beef). The next stall sold prawn patties – so I ate one. It was a round patty of batter with two large prawns stuck onto it. I guess because I was a foreigner she cut the head off the prawns before I ate them, but they were still in the shell. I ate them shell and all. The next place looked like fish sticks so I asked for one. It was deep fried banana – delicious. It tasted like Tim Horton’s apple fritter. Then we finished it off with more beer and peanuts at the next corner beer parlour. All this and we were only 2 blocks from the hotel. Just wait until tomorrow night.

March 8 Halong bay to Hanoi

We returned to our boat and cruised slowly back to Halong city. A fitting end to a lovely boat trip.

March 7 Halong Bay

We awoke to the sound of waves lapping at the boat. I was up early to get the early morning light, but there was no sunrise, just another grey day. I still took a load of pictures. Shortly after breakfast we landed at Cat Ba Island – a national park. Katherine and I did a one hour hike straight uphill to a fire tower. The uphill was no problem. The climb was steep but there was a rock path and lots of jungle vines to hang onto while we were climbing. Coming down was a bit more challenging since we took the wrong path and did the “adventure trail”. It might have been okay in dry weather but the path was muddy and by the time we descended our shoes were covered in slippery red mud. Now my only pair of long pants are red too. After the big hike we were ferried to Monkey Island, where we overnighted. We slept in bungalows on the beach. They were small but nicely done. We were 5 people at the resort – which had a staff of 5 (or more). The others were 2 girls from England who were on the same tour as us. Joan, Kath and I hiked across the island to a big beach on the other side. It had a café and monkeys. While we were there the monkeys attacked 2 women who were taking pictures. We had our own monkey on our beach also and before we left it attacked the 2 girls. The monkeys don’t seem to like women. Maybe that’s why the guide book said don’t go to Monkey Island. However, we enjoyed our stay on the island-it was peaceful and relaxing.

March 6 Hanoi to Halong Bay

We boarded the bus in Hanoi and drove for 3 hours to Halong Bay. As usual we drove through beautiful scenery and didn’t stop. We saw thousands of rice patties right beside the road and surrounding little towns, but the only stop was a concrete gas station. We arrived at noon and boarded the boat – a large junk that had 12 cabins. Joan and I had cabin number 1 on the upper deck and we had a little balcony we shared with the only other cabin on the upper deck. The scenery in Halong Bay exceeded my expectations. Even in the semi fog the islands were awe-inspiring. Large limestone monoliths rise straight up out of the ocean. The view is 360 degrees. And as we travelled, more inspiring scenery kept appearing. We crammed a lot into day 1. We landed on an island and toured a cave. There are several large caves throughout the bay. After the cave, Katherine and I kayaked through the islands for an hour and then we boarded again for more spectacular scenery before supper. At dark we anchored in a bay and Joan and Katherine enjoyed Baileys coffee whilst I sipped beer and the universe was in order.

March 5 HCMC to Hanoi

At 6 am we were underway to Hanoi. This time we were three since Katherine took time off work to join us for a extended weekend. We arrived in Hanoi at 10 AM and for the first time since arriving in Vietnam it was cold ,just 18°C. Hanoi is smaller than HCMC – only 4 million people and the architecture is different. It also is overrun by scooters but it is less frantic and less aggressive than HCMC. Our hotel was in the old quarter, which seems to be the shopping district of Hanoi, so Joan and Katherine went shopping and I went to visit the Temple of Literature. It was the way I expected a temple to be – it took up the whole block and was surrounded by a nice courtyard and gardens.