hanoi, hanoi... halong bay, hanoi

After three and a half weeks, Aman and I concluded our Vietnam adventure by spending some time in the bustling capital city of Hanoi and, after our motorcycle trek up north, taking a side trip to popular Halong Bay.  Time well spent, which incidentally reaffirmed something that Aman and I have always believed about traveling – a valuable part of the experience is about the people you meet along the way.  From locals to fellow travelers, we met a lot of great people while we were in Vietnam.

Our first pass through Hanoi – we spent a total of five non-consecutive nights there – was for three nights, immediately before we left for our motorcycle tour.  We didn’t have much time to explore, because we were preoccupied with preparations for our two-wheeler voyage, which were fairly time consuming.  But, in between checking out our bike, buying new boots for Aman, reshuffling the contents of all our bags, etc., etc. we managed to squeeze in some fun.

To begin with, Hanoi is very cool.  At least for us – we love busy cities.  The Old Quarter is a dizzying maze of narrow crooked streets that twist and turn in the area north of Hoan Kiem Lake.  The clever street names, which change every one or two blocks, describe what you can buy there (e.g. Hats Street, Chicken Street, Fish Street, Shoe Street).  The sidewalks are PACKED with street food vendors, people eating said street food and an overflow of goods from the crowded little shops.  Like Ho Chi Minh City, it’s impossible to walk on the sidewalks, so people tend to meander in the streets along with the motor traffic.  Two-wheelers (more than we saw in HCMC, or so it seemed) and bicycles everywhere – typically overloaded with interesting cargo such as potted plants and conical hats (of course).

Shops on "Shoe Street":

Pedestrian & Motor Traffic in Old Quarter:

Aman and I spent a lot of time just walking around, observing the locals, sampling the intriguing looking street food, and getting lost while trying not to get run over.  We also met up one night with our old buddies Alex and Caleb who we first met in Nha Trang.  (When we ran into them again in Hoi An, we had a blast.  So when it turned out that our trips were going to overlap again in Hanoi, both sides naturally said we would be in touch.)  It was late afternoon/early evening and Aman and I had been prepping for our bike trip all day (read: exhausted, and in need of a refreshing beer).  We found a place on Ta Hien at a busy little intersection in the Old Quarter where we had walked by a few times earlier in the day.  This intersection was crammed with tiny shops selling cheap bia hoi, or draft beer, to thirsty patrons who sat on plastic chairs and little stools on the sidewalk. 

The place we chose to meet Alex and Caleb (and two of their buddies from home, Kyle and Keith, who were joining them for a couple of weeks) had luxurious (i.e., non-plastic) regular-sized tables and chairs, which were haphazardly arranged on top of each other on the sidewalk outside the bar-café.  We squeezed in, ordered a round, and took in the sight of the street traffic, which was thoroughly entertaining.  Every couple minutes, a street hawker would approach our table and ask one or more of us to buy a wallet, a shirt, a lighter or some other type of trinket. 

After a round or two, we bought a bottle of cheap local vodka and went to check out the scene at the Hanoi Backpackers Hotel, where Alex and Caleb were staying, which was an absolute riot.  Lots of interesting people traveling through, including a friendly young woman, Margaret, who randomly grew up a block away from the apartment where Aman and I lived before entering our current nomadic forms.  I spent most of my night talking to her about travels and so on.  Not before long, however, the bartender was sounding a gong to let everyone know that it was 11:30 p.m. (i.e., closing time – everything shuts down early in Hanoi).  I returned to find the guys, some of who evidently had been sharmed in my absence.  Aman and I said our last good-byes to Alex and Caleb (since our travels would go different ways after Hanoi), and rickshawed it home.  

The next evening, we were invited to the home of an awesome couple, Marvin and Lauren, who were introduced to Aman by one of his former colleagues.  A great night of conversation about living abroad in Hanoi, among other things, and a delicious home cooked Vietnamese meal to boot.  For two people who hadn’t shared a home cooked meal with anyone in way too long, Aman and I were beyond thankful for their company and generosity.  More great people. 

Our second pass through Hanoi was a quick one.  We returned to Hanoi in the early evening of a pleasant day, in a state of complete exhaustion/soreness after successfully finishing our seven-day motorcycle journey.  Upon checking into our hotel in the Old Quarter, we inquired whether the receptionist could help us book an overnight trip to Halong Bay for the next night.  It was a bit of short notice – nothing like waiting to the last minute to get organized – but, by some stroke of good luck, there was one cabin available on a pretty, dark brown junk boat with bright orange sails that the über friendly/helpful receptionist recommended.  (Spending the night on a “junk” is an incredibly popular way to tour Halong Bay.  It typically includes a private cabin to sleep in for the night, meals, kayaking and pit stops at various sights of interest.)  The pictures, brochures and online reviews of this particular junk looked great.  And so, after some quick research, we took it.

We made our way to Halong Bay very early the next morning on a mini-bus packed full with other travelers who would be staying on the same junk as us that night.  Driving out of Hanoi, Aman and I quietly laughed in amazement about how different it felt to be traveling in a bus as opposed to on a motorcycle.  Make no mistake, driving a motorcycle was way more exhilarating.  But, at the same time, after seven days on the back of a dirt bike, we were absolutely ready for, and more than happy to be in, a couple of comfortable bus seats cruising down a paved road.

Halong Bay is about 170 kilometers east of Hanoi.  When we arrived, it was chaos!  Hundreds of tour buses dropping off and/or picking up thousands and thousands of tourists (There are hundreds of junks in Halong Bay, and they all share the same time for starting and ending their one or two night tours, so it gets insanely busy at certain times.)  Big tour groups wearing red baseball caps, orange caps, purple visors, etc. – they marched about everywhere, led by tour guides who carried flags in corresponding colors.  It was madness.  Much of this chaos we expected, as everyone will tell you that a trip to Halong Bay can be relatively touristy compared to other parts of Vietnam.  We knew this before signing up, so it was okay.  And, thankfully, we were pretty chilled out from the previous week’s experience of riding a motorcycle through the deserted mountains of Vietnam (what a contrast). 

Our guide ushered us through a turnstile and past the ticket-taker to a set of concrete steps that descended straight into the waters of the bay alongside a long covered pier.  There, Aman and I waited patiently among our group for a smaller boat that would take us to our junk (hundreds of them were cruising around the bay – air horns blaring – ferrying passengers from the pier area to the large junks sitting offshore).  While waiting, we couldn’t help but discuss the weather, which was fairly terrible.  A light, but steady rain was falling and the bay was engulfed in a thick great whiteness.  It was a bit of a downer, and we did our best to ignore it.  This was Halong Bay, after all, and we had been waiting in anticipation for three weeks to see those giant limestone karsts jutting out of the water. 

When we pulled up to our junk, the first thing that we noticed was that, contrary to the pictures in the brochure, the exterior of our boat was painted white.  Like the weather, this was a bit of a disappointment.  From afar, it seemed as though the paint job was hastily done.  That is, it didn’t look very good.   Like many other junks sitting in the bay, the white paint was uneven, with bare spots and drip marks here and there.  Things got more confusing when we got on the boat and saw that the interior cabins and hallways were the beautiful dark wood that we were promised.  Maybe this was the boat in the brochure, we thought in puzzlement.  Long story short, we heard later that night that the owner of the junk (who owns more than half the other junks in Halong Bay) recently returned from an extensive overseas trip.  Through his observations while abroad, he concluded that Americans and Europeans preferred white boats.  So he came home and directed that all of the boats in Halong Bay should be painted white.  The employees weren’t too happy about the directive.  They used cheap paint, and painted without care.  I can’t say that we verified all of these details, but we did talk to one employee who confirmed that the boat had been painted approximately two weeks before we arrived.  He shrugged when we asked him why…

At any rate, when Aman and I got on board, we dropped our bags in our luxurious cabin, and went to explore, starting with the bar where we each grabbed a beer.  We took them upstairs to the upper deck to check out the view.  Very cloudy, but it was still spectacular.  The heavy fog, the limestone karsts, and the dark gray waters – we were far from the noisy pier by now, and the quiet bay felt eerily beautiful without any sunlight.

We particularly liked the colorful little fishing boats and floating fishing villages, which have been around Halong Bay for generations:

Overall, the Halong Bay tour was a good one.  The first day, we stopped at a very popular cave (Hang Sung Sot), which was absolutely ginormous – the biggest one that either of us had ever seen.  Our informative tour guide pointed out the more important formations – the Vietnamese have a practice of giving these oddly shaped rocks clever little names (e.g., Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, etc.).

Back aboard the junk, we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening in the company of some truly awesome people – Andreas, Claudia, Elijah, Steven, Steven, Melissa – who were also staying aboard for the night.  One great conversation after another.  We talked until it was late in the night - some of us, long after the crew of the boat had laid out their roll up mattresses and went to sleep on the dining room floor.

Aman and I awoke the next day and went kayaking, which was fun (despite the lingering fog and rain).

We had a quick lunch and, after a shuttle on the smaller ferry boat, were back on shore around noon.  Aman and I said our good-byes, wished safe travels to the group, and boarded a mini-bus that would take us back to Hanoi.  As we drove, we soaked in the passing landscapes one last time.

That night, our final night in Vietnam, we ventured out to Stonegate, a trendy yet laid-back restaurant recommended by Marvin and Lauren, which is frequented often by ex-pats. There, we had a delicious meal and lovely wine (not easy to find in Vietnam), chilled out to funky music and met some more great people.  It was an awesome close to our travels in Vietnam.

In the end, Vietnam is perhaps our favorite country travelled thus far.  We loved almost everything about it - the incredibly nice people that we met everywhere we turned, the consistently amazing food (very important for us!), the beyond reasonably priced food and hotel accommodations.  Perhaps the greatest thing about Vietnam, however, is the diversity of culture and topography you find within.  Our travels brought us through modern cities, tiny fishing villages, pristine beaches, lush mountains - each inhabited by different types of people with unique traditions and customs.  It was an experience that we will never forget.