I am writing this post from the departures hall of Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand and it is safe to say that our trip is now well
and truly over as we are on a stopover on our way home. We spent the last few
days in Hanoi, were we couldn’t eke out enough time to do it justice and cruising
among the limestone cliffs of Ha-Long Bay, which was great but the weather was
awful.
We arrived in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi on a flight from Da Nang on Sunday (25th) afternoon. My perception of Hanoi is of
roads filled with scooters and motorbikes, the stories we were hearing from
other tourists fed into that picture and our drive from the airport definitely succeeded
in fulfilling my perception. The scooters were everywhere, weaving in and out
of traffic and crossing junctions in an endless stream seemingly ignorant to
any rules. Although it was quickly apparent that the most important rule of the
road is that size matters in Vietnam and they made plenty of room for our taxi. Pedestrians
don’t enjoy the same privilege to cars as we were to find out on our walk
around the centre of the city. Crossing a busy road involves walking out into
the oncoming torrent of scooters and allowing them to weave around as you inch
across the road. You definitely need your wits about you, but our introduction
to road crossing on this trip was Connaught Place in Delhi which was much
worse. Hanoi’s scooters seem to have a general flow and obey the same logic,
where as Indian roads involve many vehicles travelling at many different speeds
in a chaotic weaving jumble that is much more unpredictable, scary and
dangerous.
Hanoi was overcast and a little chilly as we fought
our way through the Old Quarter where we saw our first signs of Christmas; a few
hotels had decorated trees donning their foyers. It is something that has been
completely absent on our travels to date and these few sparse signs of
Christmas feel inadequate as I can imagine the streets at home already full of
lights and the Christmas music on the radio We reached our destination of the
evening, St Jospeh’s Cathedral close to the Hoan Kiem Lake. Built in 1886 its
looks like a mini version of Notre Dame in Paris, but you couldn’t mistake it
for the Parisian version as it is painted a rather mundane white on the inside,
but the real giveaway was the Vietnamese mass going on inside. Vietnam has
5.5 million Catholics thanks to the French missionaries who brought it here in the
19th century. With only 7% of the population Catholic, the French missionaries weren’t
as successful in converting them from Buddhism as they were converting the Vietnamese language to a Roman alphabet. This was extremely useful in a country where
English is not widely spoken as it it gives you a chance at pronouncing the words
unlike in most other Asian countries, which use their own alphabet, only recognisable
to us as bizarre scribbles.
It was back to the hotel early as we had another early start
for our overnight excursion to Ha-Long Bay the following day. After a 4 hour
bus ride on Monday (26th Nov) morning we made it to the Ha-Long Bay
from Hanoi and we were soon on our junk boat. No, it wasn’t as bad as it sounds! The junk boats ferry the tourists around the sights of the bay and it was
actually pretty nice and roomy for a boat and the food and service of the staff
on board was excellent. The weather wasn’t as accommodating though, it was cold,
windy and raining. We spent a wet weekend in Donegal back in July and the
weather wasn’t dissimilar.
Ha-Long Bay is a series of 3000 islands close to the Chinese
border which protrude directly out of the sea in great limestone cliffs. The
karst scenery is similar to what we have been seeing throughout SE Asia, but
nowhere is as dramatic or as beautiful as Ha-Long Bay. The legend to their
formation goes that a family of dragons protecting Vietnam spat out jewels into
the sea, which turned into rocks and smashed the ships of the invaders. Science
tells us that they were formed over millions of years through complicated
movements of the sea floor, volcanic activity and weathering. After a tour of a
seriously overcrowded cave on one of the island my wife and I decided to reestablish
our rather fractious sea kayaking partnership.
We paddled and bickered our way around a floating village in the Bay,
some of whose inhabitants apparently have never been on land, and many actually
get sick from being on stable ground. We spent the night drinking the boats
overpriced canned beer with the other guests, most of who also seemed to have
conflicting ideas about the direction, speed and paddling pattern with their partners on their
kayaks. Sea kayaking might be great fun, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it
as a great activity for team building.
Tuesday (29th Nov) morning had better weather and
we climbed to the top of one of the islands for a better view. It was a short,
but steep climb to the top and the bird’s eye view of the bay was well worth it.
We could see hundreds of the islands sticking up out of the sea and they seemed
to go on forever. Soon enough we were back on the boat for lunch and sailing
back to the shore.
I was impressed with the efficiency of the cruise. We
boarded the boat at 12:30pm and disembarked at 12:00, we had two meals on both
days and all the time the service was superb. But as soon as we got off there
was another boat load of tourists coming on board for the staff to repeat the
whole procedure, most likely 7 days a week. For me, it typified the hard working
“get on with it” attitude of the Vietnamese. They seem to work all hours and
always be in a hurry to do it, without complaining. This attitude has no doubt
played a huge role in Vietnam’s recent rapid development, hopefully an
improvement in the infrastructure is their next target.
It was soon back to Hanoi and despite being our third visit
to the city we had little time to explore it further, but we did get a chance
for a street stall barbeque, which was delicious. Overall Vietnamese food has
been better than most in the region narrowly shading Thai food but lagging
Malaysian, however we can get into that later when we present the awards for our
trip.
Our flight home involves a rather irritating 14 hour layover
in Bangkok, but at least it presents me with this opportunity to write the
penultimate post. The last post will be a joint effort with my wife making her
debut on the blog. That of course isn’t strictly true as her efforts in
proofing my posts have been magnificent. She has turned my error strewn
posts into something readable for my faithful readers who I would also like to
thank for spending the time to follow us on travels.
So Goodbye from the road at least, I hope to get
the final post up in the next few days.
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