Back in the 'Nam

It's strange how traveling for a year does not actually leave enough time to visit everywhere you want. Having emerged from the birthday celebrations in Halong Bay we spent half a day traveling back to Hanoi only to stop long enough to grab a baguette, book our ongoing bus tickets to Hue and then jump on an overnight sleeper train to Sapa in north-west Vietnam, the mountainous centre of trekking. Again because of time constraints our initial plan to sort the trek ourselves was abandoned in favour of booking a three day package as recommended by a brilliant couple from Brighton we met on our way back from Halong Bay who told us of a really good company that offered cheap deals. Given that the package included trains and pick ups there and back as well as two different treks all our accomodation and food for the three days it seemed a no-brainer not to take it as to organise all those things individually would have taken an additional day not to mention the added cost. The sleeper train was like stepping into an Agatha Christie carriage with its old-fashioned lamps and provided a remarkably comfortable night's sleep despite having to share it with a rude Vietnamese couple who turned off the shared lights at 9.30pm in spite of the fact that I was still visibly reading. The arrival at 5.30am was slightly less comfortable but reassured us that we had made the right decision as trying to find a taxi and then negotiate a hotel at that time of the morning with our huge packs would not have been fun. We were booked into the Sapa Summit Hotel which true to its name sat in the hilltop overlooking the valley dreamily fogged with low clouds and more importantly served five-course meals for lunch AND dinner. We had a morning to settle in and then began our day-trek to the village tribe of Cat Cat situated at the foot of the valley's waterfall. It was a long winding road that led us from the hotel down into the bowels of the valley and through the heart of the village where locals in traditional dress were carrying out their daily routines: men and women (with babies strapped to their backs) in the innummerable paddy fields while the mischievous youngsters ran in and out of our group with their many puppies. We stopped off at a local shop for our Thai companions to buy a tiger's claw. I have never seen three people so excited by such an awful object. They had been looking for somewhere that would allow them to take one back into their country for ages and it was as much as I could do to bite my tongue and hold back from telling them that they should not be supporting the illegal trade that was running tigers into extinction. The outing wasn't so much a trek as a light amble that lasted only as long as it did because we had to keep stopping to take pictures of the villagers who were dressed in traditional attire. We had wanted something a bit more demanding and so on the return uphill to the hotel Liz and I marched on at a pace that rather worryingly our wisp of a guide was unable to keep up with and so were forced to wait for her to catch us up. After a long couple of days of travelling it was in retrospect nice to have a more gentle introduction as it gave us a chance to wander around the Sunday market when we got back and then grab a five course meal before finally having time to start uploading the vast number of photos we had accrued. The following day we left at 9.30am and fortunately had managed to switch groups (leaving behind our Thai photography fanatics and ailing tour guide) so that we teamed up with a group of snowboard instructors, two Americans called Lacey and Laura and one Aussie girl, Mirjiana, to commence the two-day overnight trek to Lao Chai, another, more remote, tribal village. We were led by the indomitable Khu, an irrepressibly cheeky girl from Lao Chai who thoroughly enjoyed the fact she was leading a group of all girls and one guy...She was dressed in the traditional garments which included velvet leg warmers (even in the heat of the day) and a long shirt with stitched patterns that buttoned up over her day clothes. She also brought along many of the women from her tribe, ranging from old ladies with hands stained purple from the hemp of the indigo that grows in abundance in the hills, to the younger, more timid girls who looked up with shy smiles and weaved us wreathes of bracken as they accompanied us on our trek. The walk wound its way through the paddy fields that dominate the landscape and into the heart of the village where we stopped off for lunch by the river. We then followed the river along through Lao Chai to another village, Ta Van, where we were staying overnight. There are many homestays in these villages to accomodate the trekkers and the five of us along with two other Aussies shared the upstairs loft of what looked to be a converted barn. We had made good time and so were allowed to spend the rest of the afternoon wandering around the village and speaking to the locals who were all keen to chat to us (and attempt to sell us embroidered knitwear!) before regrouping for dinner at our homestay. It was a lovely traditional homemade meal of rice and stirfrys and steamed vegetables but the main course was saved for after eating... Having sated more than our fill we were prepared to see the night out genially chatting and playing cards when our host brought out a bottle of rice wine. Earlier in the day at lunchtime I had again been accosted by a group of Vietnamese guys who wanted to speak to me about soccer and insisted upon rewarding my knowledge with a shot of rice wine so I was well aware of the potency of the drink. Given we were nicely exhausted from our trek and still had another day to go we accepted the round of shots thinking it would be rude to decline little knowing that our host had three bottles of the stuff that she would demand we finish before the night went out. This was easily instilled by a strict penalty of drinking if you did not perform certain dares, the first being to sing a song to the group. For some reason I opted for God Save The Queen (!) and Liz opted for Postman Pat! Suffice to say we flouted virtually every village rule from having to be asleep before 10pm to not exposing certain body parts...Given the layout of the beds which were all in one long line in the loft with me, the sole guy, being at the end, the night, almost inevitably, culminated in me, as the only guy, being what the girls hilariously describe as "steamrolled" ie, being ambushed and rolled up and down over in the pitch black. A few hours later and with rice-wine fugged heads we were faced with the prospect of another day's walk with the sun deciding to unleash its full potency. We were saved only by the arrival of a mountain of stacked pancakes complete with bananas, local honey and sugar for breakfast that provided enough temporary energy to navigate our way back up to the hotel through the bamboo forests with a fantastic break for sunbathing at the top of the waterfall where I, being the only one in trunks, was able to paddle around in the pool overlooking the sudden drop:) We had just enough time at the hotel to have our first shower for forty-eight hours and pop down to the local French patisserie and pick up a box of cakes to share on the journey back to Hanoi before catching the overnight train.

Sadly the promised pick-up from the bus station in Hanoi back to our hotel did not materialise which meant being ripped off by a taxi that then proceeded to drop us off in the middle of nowhere at 5.30am, exhausted from our trek and travels and carrying our huge sweaty bags. The upshot of this was that we did get to see the bizarre sight of sunrise inducing aged Vietnamese out of their houses and onto the street pavements to perform their daily exercises on the spot; they were still all clad in their pyjamas and remained completely oblivious to us as we wound our way in and out of them not daring to break their concentration to try and ask where we might be.

Fortuitously we bumped into a rep from the Central Stars Hotel who escorted us back to the hotel where we managed to wangle a free room for the morning in order to shower and clean up and then we embarked on our one-day mission around Hanoi.

This started off with a trip to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and surrounding complex of museums dedicated towards his memory which is probably, to date, the strangest thing I have been to on these travels. For a start the mausoleum is only open from 8-11 am which suited our early rise but then you have to queue up along the perimeter of this stark communist building rising out of the barren concrete grounds surrounding the whole complex and wait to be escorted along a red carpet into the mausoleum by a fully armed, white uniformed military soldier. Every five metres along the red carpet is another armoured soldier but you continue to be escorted by the initial soldier as you are hushed into the gloomy heart of the mausoleum never given even a second's respite to pause as you are marched around in complete silence. The room in which HCM resides is as you would expect stark and devoid of everything except a single glass prison in which HCM lies with his head eerily propped up on a pillow as if looking up at you. Apparently the body goes on a little three month holiday every year for maintenance, this fact only serving to compound to the whole grotesque atmosphere surrounding the mausoleum with its persistent air conditioning seeming to drain any warmth from inside its folds. Sadly, escaping into the museums which maintain his former house, garage and workplace did little to ameliorate this disquiet. Again, we were marched around the buildings in almost military style with whistle-blowing and gun-clad soldiers ready to chase us back into line lest we linger to take any photographs. There isn't much to see as all the interiors remain as stark as the Communist values they propound and even the peaceful, well-manicured gardens lose some of their value due to the sterile aridity of their empty environment, the red flag with its yellow star being the only drop of colour. The complex is a huge attraction for schoolgroups on propagandist trips to pay homage to the country's saviour and we were glad to finally escape the whole area and return to the bustling, vibrancy of the heart of the city where life is celebrated in all its noisy, dirty, haphazard glory.

After a quick walk past Lenin Park (another horrible empty concrete ground with a solitary statue of the Russian in its midst) we stopped at a refreshingly Capitalist coffee house to revive our flagging spirits and then hailed a cyclo to take us to the Temple of Literature. (There is a marked difference to Vietnamese cyclos though: the carriage is strapped onto the front of the bike and looks like a big digger in which you are scooped up into the paddle of its arm and sit precariously balanced until you are ungainly spooned out at the end of your trip. A novel way to travel though no hope of retaining any grace or dignity!)

The Temple of Literature couldn't have been any more contrasting from our early morning activity if we had chosen it. A thousand year old university, the crumbling ruins are in debt to the Chinese influence of Confuscius, and I felt I had landed in my spiritual home:) From the moment you walk through the entrance gates, which kindly ask you to step down from your horse, before continuing to the exam hall where the King would have been the invigilator orally quizzing the best students in the royal exam for acceptance to the court, it is gloriously quirky, homely and meditative and obligingly we grabbed a crumbled seat and sat down to write our postcards and read our books as we soaked up a millennium of cultivated learning:)

A quick detour to pick up our bus tickets and we were back in the Old Quarter to have lunch at our favourite lakeside patisserie before catching the afternoon's first Water Puppet show at the grand colonial theatre. The show is unique to Vietnam, and Hanoi the host of the queen of performances, and we were treated to (or horrified by in Liz's case) twenty-one scenes enacting important legends and stories of Vietnam's history.

The whirlwind day ended as it had begun with overnight transport, exchanging the luxuries of the train for the basics of the bus...
Vietnam has a brilliant open-ticket bus service which allows you to travel from tip to tip stopping off wherever you want for seventeen pounds (the same amount it costs me for one single from Hythe to London...) and so we thought that we had cracked a brilliant way of combining travel with overnight sleeping that would save us the cost of accomodation and time wasted in spending days traveling...Ha! As the last passengers to board we had no choice of beds and had to make do with the two top-tiered berths. I nobly took the centre bed which had no supporting side walls and stowed myself away in a bunker that does not leave enough room even for my miniscule pins to turn your legs in the night so that every time I tried I would crack my knees on the inside of the bunker and wake myself up which in addition to being slammed against the railings every time you turn a corner leaves you somewhat black and blue after thirteen hours...However, the climax of this journey occured just after I had managed to wiggle myself into a position that offered maximum security from being bumped out of or against certain parts of the bed, had snuggled up under my blanket and closed my eyes to listen to my ipod. At this point the bus driver decided to take an "off-road" short cut at exactly the same moment the woman behind me chose to open her 1.5 litre bottle of water resulting in the surreal combination of being awoken to what felt like an earthquake tremoring below us (and which had shaken some people out of their beds) and a torrent of water drowning me from on high. My startled face was apparently a picture, so much so that the woman behind me instead of being mortified by the combination of events collapsed into hysteria before offering to exchange bedding and Liz, who was clinging to the rails on her bed was offered a moment of light relief from a situation in which she later admitted she thought she was going to die in...

With such a full day (and night!) when we arrived at our next destination our plans to see the city in a day disappeared as we headed to the first cafe to feed our faces and dry off!

Hue is the former capital of Vietnam, its significance stretching back through the grandeur of the Emperors' rule and culminating in it having become the heartlands of the civil war in which by virtue of lying in the centre of the country caused it to mark the border between communist North and American sanctioned south during the last century's war: a place unflatteringly now known as the DMZ, Demilitarised Zone and famous for its warfare rather than grandiose history. We decided to eschew its more recent fame and headed to the ancient citadel on the north side of the river. Sadly there's not much left of its crumbling ruins (though the impressive gatehouse offers a formidable sight and it contains the alluring Forbidden Purple Palace in which only eunuchs were allowed to enter as they were designated the only non-threat to the Emperor and his wife!) but it once was a huge palace and the grounds still provide an enormous site to wander around though the Asian distaste for curating museums prevailed making it almost impossible to navigate as there is little signage or explanation of any of the paths or ruins that leave you to guess romantically at what these bombed shells of crumbling stacks or haunting black and white photographs once were.

There was much more we could have done in Hue but owing to the strictness of our schedule we had to depart that afternoon for another four hour bus journey to Hoi An. The bus company always drops you off at the hotel belonging to their franchise and we had become accustomed to fending off the advances of their employees upon arrival but most fortunately this time the hotel on offer was the best accomodation we have seen (it even has a swimming pool!) and at a snippet of the price of the one we were preparing to hike to we gladly accepted the welcome of the An Phu Hotel.

Since arriving in Vietnam we have been on the go constantly taking in a three day tour of Halong Bay, three days trekking in Sapa, sightseeing days in Hanoi and Hue and three overnight sleeper journeys so there was no qualms in settling into the big duvets of our spacious room after a refreshing swim in the pool and settling down to watch a film on HBO. When Liz's friend, Kristy, arrived the following day the theme continued as we strolled around the river, visiting the fresh markets and hundreds of tailors' shops which are the mainstay of the city's attrations, treating ourselves to the Hoi An delicacies of White Rose dumplings and crashing by the pool with our collective of books and ipods. In a trip that doesn't offer many moments to catch your breath it has been necessary, and welcome break, to rejuvenate our batteries before hitting the party islands of Nha Trang and the much-hyped mania of Saigon!

FAVOURITE PLACE: An Phu Hotel, Hoi An

FAVOURITE FOOD: Lemon Meringue tarts at Tam Tam in Hoi An; chocolate orange eclairs from Sapa patisserie; five-course "free" meals at Sapa Summit, just because they were five courses:)

WHAT I'M GOING TO MISS: Bathing in the waterfalls in the gorgeous mountains of Sapa; the bizarre combination of modern Vietnam's Chinese and French fusion exemplified best in architecture and food (what could be better than a crispy beef noodle main washed down by a creamy, chocolate pastry?!)

WORST PLACE: The bus from Hanoi to Hue...

WORST FOOD: Rice wine (or at least the quantities of it drunk in Ta Van...)

WHAT I'M NOT GOING TO MISS: Riding double in a one-man cyclo round the citadel, when the second seat is a plank of wood strapped across the top of the seat...Karaoke sessions in Ta Van - the only time I have ever opted to sing over drink thanks to the fear of the rice wine! Angry vendors in Sapa who tear open packets to show you their contents and then try and charge you for having made them open the packets! The Thai insistency of taking self-shot photos of themselves against every possible background...

MOST BIZARRE: The boys riding buffalos that chased Liz down the mountain in Sapa!; being steamrolled in the middle of the night by a Croat-Australian; the velvet leg-warmers worn by the Lao Chai residents in the heat of the day; the influence of communism in Vietnam's shops so that evey vendor sells the same items for the same price so there is no variation or healthy competition...

FAVOURITE QUOTES: "It's worse for tall people to get drunk as they have longer chicken legs that make them fall" (Khu our guide to Mirjiana the tall whilst drinking rice wine!) "Back in the 'Nam!" (Lacey, Laura and Mirjiana)