Ha Long Bay

From Hue we took an overnight bus to Hanoi and got started right away on our only mission for this 1-night stay in Hanoi – booking a trip to Ha Long Bay (also spelled Halong Bay). You've heard of Ha Long Bay, right? I'm sure you've seen pictures of it, even if you might not know the name. I'm told parts of James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies were famously filmed there. It is truly spectacular and easily makes my list Adam’s 7 Natural Wonders of the World, if that means anything to anybody. Getting there wasn't so easy. I may have mentioned already that in Vietnam, like many poorer countries, it’s often nearly impossible to find a budget travel company I would describe as “reputable.” Most tourism-based companies, from hotels to bus companies, will take any booking they can get and if they end up over-sold, they’ll just move you to another company. Same same but different. Ha Long Bay is notorious from this, with hundreds of negative reviews online of people being “upgraded” to a different boat than they booked. First, we figured our hotel travel desk would be best suited to guarantee us a good trip, since their reputation is at stake as well. So, our hotel tried to sell us on a couple different boats that we thought looked nice, but when I looked online, prices were surprisingly cheaper. Being the good people that we are, we went back to the hotel to see if they can match the price and thus get the commission for themselves instead of some overseas website. I honestly think the guy thought he was helping us out, but when he called the cruise boat operator to see if they could lower the price, they told him the online price was a “mistake” and proceeded to go online and raise the price! Our guy seemed pleased with himself that the online price was now “fixed” and only about $50 more than we would have paid had we just booked it ourselves. Frustrated by that experience, we did hour after hour of exhausting research (there are hundreds of boats cruising around Ha Long Bay) and eventually booked a three day/two night trip on the Royal Palace Cruise boat. They had great reviews online, plus that just sounds fancy.

Not our boat, but similar

I guess you can call it paranoia, but we never were convinced that we were actually going to end up on Royal Palace. It didn’t help much that the bus we were put on the next morning was run by some operator we had never heard of, Opentours Vietnam. Our tour guide would never actually say the name of the boat we were going on, and just kept saying “our boat.” Then we see a bus roll past us with “Royal Palace Cruise” plastered on the side. This is not good. At this point I’m about 95% convinced that we were going to get the “upgrade” treatment. I asked our guide and she said we were going on Royal Palace, but she hesitated. Why did you hesitate? It wasn’t until we actually set foot on Royal Palace that we were finally put at ease. After five hours of stressful anticipation, we could finally relax.

Our room

Royal Palace was as described – a very nice boat with really good food, and lots of it. I guess this isn't the time or place for me to air my little grievances on our experience on the boat, plus I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. We had a good time. Ha Long Bay is stunningly beautiful. I guess my biggest problem was that the trip “itinerary” seemed to be more focused on the food and doing tourist stuff like kayaking around a bay and visiting a pearl farm than it was on the incredible scenery. It seemed like I was the only one on the boat to notice, however, so I guess they are just giving the people what they want.

"you have 40 minutes to kayak"

A floating "village" - in reality they moved most of these water-dwelling people to the mainland already

Steph relaxing while I did all the paddling

Visiting the pearl farm

It actually was kinda interesting - this guy impregnates the oysters with a small ball, then they stick it back in the water for a few years and hope a pearl has formed around the ball

99% of the boats on Ha Long Bay run the same basic itinerary. Sail out from the harbor, have lunch, do some kayaking around a floating “village,” swim for 15 minutes, happy hour on the boat, dinner, sleep, early morning tai chi, breakfast, go to a cave, do a cooking class and have lunch while sailing back to the harbor. That’s the two-day/one-night itinerary that most people seemed to be doing. Since we had opted for 3d/2n, after the cave visit we hopped on a smaller boat for our second day while the big boat took everyone else back to the harbor. This actually worked out well for us, since we were only 2 of 4 people on the smaller boat and we actually got to cruise deeper into the bay and closer to all the amazing limestone cliffs. Our guide for the day, “Peter Pan,” took us cycling to a small village on Cat Ba Island, the largest island in Ha Long and mostly covered by a national park. From the village we took a short hike through the jungle to look for langurs (a type of monkey). Didn’t see any, but could hear their booming calls across the valley, which was cool. Saw some big spiders. Another cave.

I jumped in for about 2 minutes

Heading to the cave

It's called Surprising Cave or Amazing Cave. I suggest "Crowded Cave"

Enjoying our nearly private tender

After our cycling trip we were dropped off at a little beach resort for a couple hours to have free time. We mostly just sat under an umberella and relaxed, getting into the water briefly to cool off. I'm not really sure how dirty the water in Ha Long Bay is, but it just seems dirty to me. The bits of plastic and trash that you commonly see floating around actually don’t really turn me off so much. It’s more the fisherman who live on floating houses all around the bay. I know where there waste goes. Plus the water is kind of a murky greenish color that just doesn't scream “jump in me!”

We joined up with the big boat just before dinner our second night. The rest of the cruise went smoothly enough. Steph had requested only vegetarian food and they really took good care of her, bringing out plate after plate of “vegetarian food." They would serve us an incredible amount of food, then really kinda skimp out on dessert. The Vietnamese aren't as into sweets as they are in Thailand. It’s a real tragedy for us.

Some of the fancy food we were served

Even the french fries had a beautiful bird carved out of a vegetable

Overall we had a great cruise on Ha Long Bay. Weather was great, food was great. I really shouldn't complain at all, but a few issues we had just really seem to gnaw at me. I'm not going to go into it further. Actually it was Steph and my 8^th wedding anniversary while we were on the boat. We made it, baby! Happy Anniversary Steph!

Hue

Saigon has a lot of history around the War, Hoi An has it’s history with trading at it’s port, and Hue is where you come for true Vietnamese history. Hue was the capital of the Nguyen dynasty, which ruled most of southern Vietnam from the 17^th century until 1802 when they took control of the entire country. Hue remained Vietnam’s capital until 1945 when the country was split in two. It was bombed pretty heavily during the war, but it’s historical monuments have slowly been restored to their former glory, or close to it. The main attraction is the Citadel. Similar to the forbidden city in Beijing, the Citadel was the imperial seat of the government and is a huge complex of temples, pavilions, moats, and now shops, museums and galleries. There was even a “forbidden” Purple Palace where only the emperor and his servants were allowed, but there’s very little left of that today. Instead you can just wander around, admire some of the buildings, read a little of the history, and try not to pass out from the heat.

The other main attractions in Hue are the burial grounds of former emperors. There’s a bunch of them dotting the country side within a 10 mile radius of the city, but we decided to only visit a couple of them. Pretty nice to look at, but I'm glad we don’t build huge complexes like that for dead people anymore.

Just two days in Hue, so that’s all the sightseeing we did. Honestly, it wasn't all that interesting to us but at least we saw it. What was interesting, however, was some of the local Hue food specialities. There’s quite a few options, but they all seem to be just variations of ways to cook a rice cake (more like a slimy dense pudding) with some shrimp. They were pretty strange for us westerners, but I could see how people would like it (and the locals seem to LOVE it).

This is their favorite - kinda hard to tell what it is from a picture

These were my favorite, and not just because the menu was hilarious

This restaurant had the funniest menus

One other funny story to pass on from our time in Hue. So you know how earlier I talked about how they love to copy things here? Restaurants, shops, hotels, whatever. Well there is a restaurant in Hue that made it into Lonely Planet and all the popular guide books, partly due to it's deaf and mute owner who apparently is a bit of a character. We decided to check this place out because the food is actually supposed to be decent. Turns out there are two of these restaurants now - both with deaf and mute owners! Now, what are the odds of two deaf AND mute guys having restaurants right next to each other? One of these guys is faking. After a small investigation of our own, we've worked out that the restaurant we ate at must have the real deaf and mute guy, because I said the name of the dish I wanted and pointed to it at the same time. He brought the wrong thing out, so he couldn't have heard me order it and must have just thought I pointed at something different. I don't think my Vietnamese is that bad. Or... it could all be part of his ruse - intentionally get people's orders wrong to make them think he is really deaf. The long con indeed. There wasn't any time left to solve this great mystery - we needed to catch our bus to Hanoi!

Hoi An to Hue

Typically when transferring from town to town it’s a non-event – we take a sleeper bus or train. It’s usually uncomfortable but manageable, but we deal with it and get to our next destination. Hoi An to Hue is just under 100 miles but 4 hours driving time, so we had quite a few more options. We could take a bus, private car, even the train is supposed to be very scenic. One other option that we discovered is by motorbike. This is where all our practice is going to be put to the test. Steph still wasn’t feeling quite up to it, so chose the “easy rider” option – sit on the back and let a local do the driving. This worked out really well for us since that way we’d have a guide that Susie and myself could follow behind. Though taking a bus would have been under $10 for the both of us, we still thought we got an excellent deal for $50 total including our guide, Giang, fuel and one-way motorbike rental. After a quick introduction to Giang, signing some paperwork, and literally no instructions beyond that, we were off.

Our trip wasn’t simply a transfer from A to B, there were some scenic stops along the way. First stop was the Marble Mountains just outside Da Nang, which at first appeared to be just a pagoda on top of a limestone mountain, but turned out to have all kinds of cool caves to see as well.

There were heaps of huge caves to check out

Quick stop at the beach in Da Nang

The highlight of the trip from Hoi An to Hue is the Hai Van Pass, with spectacular views of the bays and beaches below. This was also about the point Steph started feeling ill.

Heading up the pass

Views are starting to get good...

Made it!! Steph threw up in the bushes either right before or right after this picture

After the pass we stopped for lunch before moving on to our final stop at the Elephant Springs, where they've dammed up a river every 100 feet to make a series of pools for tourists to swim in. It was pretty cool but very crowded with what seemed like a mostly local crowd. Knowing how Asians often treat the environment, we tried to go as far upstream as possible and in the end didn't spend much time in the water. When I saw people literally lathering up and bathing in the water I was pretty much done.

Some nice views just over the pass

Lunch spot. We seem to eat in children's-size furniture a lot here.

One of the pools at Elephant Springs

The last hour or two going into Hue was either terrifying or exciting, depending on who you asked. It seemed the entire road was under construction at once, and there were a LOT of big buses and trucks to deal with. Susie and I were just following Giang, so many times had to pull off some pretty hairy moments, overtaking on the right being the most fun/terrifying.

You may notice my cool face mask. It's all the rage here, all the locals do it. 

Susie and I fighting through the traffic

Made it!

Cooking Class Hoi An

Copying is huge in SE Asia. If something is successful, you copy it. Our hotel in Nha Trang, for example, was called Hanoi Golden Hotel, but there is also Hanoi Golden Hotel 2 and Hanoi Golden Hotel 3. Completely different owners. Same same but different, as they say around here. Other than tailors, it seems cooking classes are the thing to copy in Hoi An. I wouldn't be surprised if there was over 100 cooking class options, as there are plenty of companies that only offer cooking classes, plus practically every restaurant, no matter how big or small, will offer cooking classes if you want them to. To make it easier, we simply chose the best ranked one on Tripadvisor. They picked us up one morning from our hotel and took us to the local market. I love these local markets, selling fruits, veggies, noodles, fish, seafood, meat. Who knows what else because I could probably identify only about 20% of the items for sale. So it's nice to have a local show you around. We walked around and picked out all the ingredients we would need for class, with our guide explaining what each of them were and what they were for.

Our guide Drang showing us the veggies. I think that's a pepper

Mmm the meat counter

Picking out some shrimps

After the market we took a leisurly boat trip out to their base on an island somewhere outside of Hoi An. We got to see some of the local fisherman going about their work, plus it was nice to cool off after sweating buckets at the market.

Once at the base we met our chef for the day, a sweet Vietnamese lady whose name I cannot remember. She would demonstrate what to do while our guide translated. All told we made 4 different dishes - fresh spring rolls (FILLED with veggies and herbs just like Steph likes), a beef noodle salad, a Vietnamese rice pancake, and beef pho (including the broth - anybody know where someone goes to get neck bones in the States?). I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Making rice milk

Drang on the right with our cute Vietnamese lady chef

Making the broth for our pho - beef bones, radish, lemongrass, cinammon, star anise, some other stuff

Fresh spring roll ready to be rolled up

All rolled up and ready to eat with peanut sauce

Making banh xeo, a crispy rice pancake/omelet thing. No egg involved

These things are seriously good

Beef noodle salad

Finally, the beef pho, with plenty of fresh herbs, bean sprouts, and pickled shallots

Mmmm. Everything was really good. All of them were easy too, so we think we'll be able to re-create once we leave Vietnam.