Wrapping up Vietnam

It’s been a while since our last blog; we’ve been on the move a lot, internet hasn’t always been available and we’ve been having too much fun to sit down and write this damn thing!

Anyways, when we last left off we were about to begin our Easy Rider tour with our guide Hau. Three days of motor biking covering over 600 KM of beautiful Vietnamese countryside and mountains, it was amazing! Anne-Julie road on the back of Hau’s bike, while John followed behind on his own bike. It turns out that despite John not being a great car driver, he’s pretty damn good on two-wheels.

Hau would constantly stop on the side of the road to chat with locals working in the fields so he could explain what the day-to-day life of most Vietnamese people was like. We saw so many things it’s hard to name them all. Some of our highlights include picking peanuts on the side of the road with some really nice farmers,

watching weasels make Weasel Coffee and then having Anne-Julie try it (the Weasels eat the coffee beans, their digestive system is supposed to do something good to the beans, the weasel waste is then collected, the beans are pulled out and cleaned and voila… Weasel Coffee @ $300/Kg)

       

Seeing silkworms at a silkworm farm (aka some guys house), then going to a silk factory and watching them turn the cocoons into silk thread and then the thread into scarves

    

    

Driving up to the sand dunes near Mui Né and being in awe at the giant desert that appears out of nowhere, and then John’s failed attempt at sliding down the sand dune

    

And then, the simple majesty of scenery that we got to take in as we made our way into the mountain town of Dalat on our second day. It was incredible to go from some really warm weather in the lowlands to conifer forests and giant lakes as we climbed in altitude.

    

Our tour ended in Mui Né, a nice beach town five hours north of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC aka Saigon). The beach was really nice; it was filled with kite surfers, which was pretty cool to watch. We ran into our German friends yet again in this place, which made for yet another fun night!

From Mui Né we made our way to HCMC. We both really enjoyed our brief time in HCMC. We were only there for three days, but they were pretty packed and lots of fun. We spent our first day taking in some of the sites, including the local market and War Museum. The War Museum was a really intense place to visit. We didn’t take any photos, it just didn’t feel right. The pictures are very graphic, and while the museum is quite one sided, it never the less gets the message across that the whole Vietnam War was just awful. Why it happened everyone has their opinion, but no one will argue that the things that happened there, and are so clearly depicted in this museum, should have never happened anywhere.

We spent our evening have drinks with our German friends yet again, but this time we were lucky enough to also be joined by an Irish couple and a Spanish couple we had also met on our tour of Halong Bay. Turns out that tour was great for us as we met the nicest people and we kept meeting each other all the way throughout our time in Vietnam.

    

Drinking in Saigon is really fun, easy and cheap (the trinity of drinking). You basically head to the corner store (dépaneur) and there are tons of small plastic chairs lined up outside with small tables. And people just sit in front of the store and drink $0.60 beers, all night long. This is where we met our friends every night we were in HCMC. What is so fun is that there are tons of stores doing this on both sides of the street, so there are hundreds of people just hanging out and meeting each other. What an amazing time we had!

While in HCMC we also took in a tour of the Cu Chi Tunnels. These tunnels were made so the North Vietnamese could get supplies in and out of the south and so they could fight/flee the American attacks. There were hundreds of KMs of tunnels underground during the war. Today, tourists can visit this area and see tunnels and old booby traps that were made during the war.

There is one original tunnel that tourists can go into, and a second larger tunnel that has been made a little bigger and has lights for tourists to go through. John tried both, while AJ abstained from both.

The first tunnel John went into was the original sized tunnel. It was only about 15M long, but it was tiny and dark, pitch black. John started by walking in a squatted position, but the tunnel got smaller and then there was a traffic jam about 5M into the tunnel as a girl a couple of people in front of him in the tunnel stopped moving as she got too scared.

At this point it is completely black, you can’t see your own hand in front of your face, and it’s starting to get hot and a little claustrophobic. He had to wait for five minutes until someone could pass a light from the back of the tunnel to the front. There is really only one way out of the tunnel, they have closed off all the other tunnels branching off from this original tunnel; however, when you are in there, with no light, you can only lead with your hands. So when you feel where an old tunnel used to turn off, you still think you can go left or right, only when you go a little further do you realize its blocked off. This fear of going the wrong way while 15M under ground was enough to have the girl stop dead in her tracks and wait for a light. Once things got moving again, it had been a good five minutes we were stuck underground and it was getting really hot. We started crawling again, John on his hands and knees as he was too big to squat. Then came the last 3 M where he had to crawl through on his stomach so he could make it out. When he did make it out he was completely covered in dirt and sweat. It was quite an experience to be down there, it really made you feel for the people who were living and hiding down there during a war, it must have been really difficult.

We also saw some amazing booby traps that the Vietnamese made to kill American soldiers. They were really ingenious, and for the most part, all made of bamboo. We were also explained that the Vietnamese would were their sandals one way when attacking the Americans, and would then turn their sandals around the other way when leaving so that all their footprints would be pointing as if they never left. Crazy stuff!

    

From HCMC we took a two-day tour of the Mekong Delta and visited the floating markets. Floating markets are usually for wholesalers to sell to people who will then sell the fruit and vegetables in town. It was quite a sight to see as boats filled to the brim were floating around selling to other boats.

   

We also so a crocodile farm, John paid $0.50 so he could feed the crocs some old liver.

   

From here we knew we only had a couple of days left in Vietnam, so we decided to make the best of it and we headed to Phu Quoc Island in the very south of Vietnam right beside Cambodia. We spend three days here on this gorgeous island. We saw what we believed to be the most amazing beach ever while touring the island on motorbike.

     

We checked out the local pearl farm, it was still pretty cool to see how they made the pearls. 

We also had a chance to visit the fish sauce factory, which really was not worth it, but we were lucky enough to get lost along the way and we ended up asking a local family who was celebrating a funeral anniversary which way to go. Instead of telling us, they insisted we sit with them and have some beers and food. After a couple of beers, photos and some weird dancing, we were off to the fish sauce factory with some proper directions. Good times in Phu Quoc!

   

Next destination… Cambodia! 

Lots more photos here: 

We Found the Sun (and some new clothes)!

Hoi An is known as the clothes tailoring capital of Vietnam; it certainly didn’t disappoint us! We made our way to Hoi An from Hué via a short three hour bus ride. To our surprise we were booked into a sleeper bus for this middle of the afternoon ride. With no other options but a bed, we made ourselves as comfortable as possible and laid back until we made it to Hoi An.

We were lucky to get a really nice hotel room in Hoi An. Rooms are really cheap all across Vietnam (about 20-25$) and you can get some really amazing places. This place came with free bicycles to tour the town; it was a very nice touch!

Conscious that this was the place to get some clothes made, and since we both got a little money at Christmas from AJ’s Grandparents, we splurged and shopped like crazy in Hoi An. John had a suit, a coat and some size 15 shoes tailored for him, while AJ got pants, shorts, a coat and some shoes for herself. The prices were great and the quality was amazing. We had it all shipped back to Canada via slow-boat, it should hopefully arrive in 3-4 months (kinda like us)!   

Hoi An is a beautiful city. There are lanterns everywhere in the town and once a month they turn off all the lights and only leave the lanterns on to illuminate the town (we wouldn’t be around to see this).

We toured the town and took in the sites, including the Japanese Covered Bridge.

It was built in 1593, the construction started in the year of the dog and ended in the year of the monkey, so on one end of the bridge they have dog statues while the other side has monkey statues.

         

We went to a bar for a couple of drinks on our first night in town and yet again, we randomly ran into our German friends as we seem to be following each other down the Vietnamese tourist trail. This made for yet another late and fun night!

The next day we rented a motorbike and checked out the ancient Cham city of My Son. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site, but unfortunately it’s in pretty poor shape as the American’s bombed the hell out of it during the Vietnam War. Never the less it was pretty cool to check out and the hour and a half motorbike ride there was lots of fun. We didn’t have a map, just a general direction in which we should head, so at every intersection we would stop and ask a local, “My Son?” and they would point us in the right direction. It took a little longer than it should have, but we made it! 

We wrapped up our time in Hoi An with a cooking class at a nice little Café. We learnt how to make a Green Papaya Salad, Spring Rolls, Braised Pork in a Clay Pot and Sweet and Sour Shrimp. The food was great and now we can feed all our friends back home some amazing Vietnamese dishes!

From Hoi An we made our way to Nha Trang via a sleeper train. Unfortunately, this train wasn’t nearly as nice as the last one we took. We arrived in our train cabin only to find two locals sleeping in our bed. We showed them our tickets and they slowly crawled out of bed and disappeared into the hallway. We were both thrilled at the idea of sleeping in someone else’s used sheets, but at least the bed was warm. Either way, we wouldn’t be getting much sleep; AJ was sick with a cold and the train intercom would continually blast random messages in Viet every two hours for the entire night.

Nha Trang is a big town that is right beside a gorgeous beach. 

It’s really popular with expats, many of them having settled down here, hoping to find the best of both Vietnamese worlds, beach and city all in one. There is a pretty good nightlife area with a strip of bars and one late night club.

Our Hotel was ok, it was only $15 a night, but the house bar/restaurant was more of a tavern for expats. At first we thought this was pretty cool as there were lots of people to talk to and everyone was up for a drink, but after a couple of days of seeing people wake up, head to the bar and start drinking at 10AM, we had seen enough. Most of them hadn’t even been around town to see the sites. We didn’t make this mistake.

There are some amazing Cham ruins right in the middle of town, as well as a beautiful cathedral and some amazing boulder formations by the water. 

But the nicest of all were the two giant Buddha statues. There is a giant sitting Buddha as well as a giant lying Buddha; the size of the statues is so amazing. 

One of the statues is surrounded by busts of six monks who burnt themselves alive to protest their lack of freedom of religion. Quite a site to be seen.

When visiting the giant Buddha a monk invited both of us to take a turn sitting inside the giant bell while he rang it and chanted a prayer. It was pretty amazing feeling all the vibrations through your body; very relaxing to say the least.

We also made sure to hit up one of the day cruises that head out to the surrounding islands. We joined the Funky Monkey Booze Cruise for the day, complete with the Funky Monkey Boy Band. Yep, it was as good as it sounds! They got people from each country up on stage and made them sing a song from their country that the band knew. We were with another guy from Montreal that day, so when we went up and said we were from Quebec, Canada they played a French song that John had never heard of, “Savez-vous planter des choux” followed by “Frère Jacques”. Good to know the Quebec music scene is well represented in Vietnam.

We also enjoyed a great local meal which was kind of like Korean BBQ where you cook your own food, except we were brought a clay pot with a fire in it.

While in Nha Trang we met Hau on the corner of the street. He stopped us and asked if we wanted to take an Easy Rider tour with him. We had never heard of Easy Rider tours, but he was pretty convincing, he showed us some photos, an itinerary and old customer reviews. So, after thinking about it for a couple of days, we called him back and agreed to ride motorbikes with him through the Vietnamese country side. We opted for a 3-day 600km tour that would bring us off the tourist path for a couple of days. More on this in our next blog!