Phu Quoc Island

We were reaching the end of our Vietnam stay and were desperately hanging out for some good beaches. Apart from the tiny strip of sand in Ha Long Bay, it had been nearly two months since we were on a beach.  So we flew south to Phu Quoc Island, and swapped the busy city for sleepy island life. Spanning 50km from top to bottom, we based ourselves on the west coast on Long Beach.  Every night brought a spectacular new sunset.  

Sunset on Phu Quoc Island

The beach was long (no pun intended) and waveless.  If the floating jellyfish didn't scare people out of the water, the swimming monkey might have. She was a tame three year old female who spent hours splashing around in the shallow water with various tourists. She was a surprisingly strong swimmer.

Water Loving Monkey

We wandered north to the little town of Duong Dong, a sad site with lots of litter lying around. Without much to see or do we happily returned to our sun loungers.

Duong Dong, Phu Quoc Island

The end of the day bought cooler weather (although the water remained warm enough to swim all night), and we sat outside with our toes in the sand eating dinner at the water's edge.  There was plenty of locally caught seafood on offer displayed in a colorful wooden boat.

BBQ Boat

Our Phu Quoc stay was a great way to spend the last of our visa limited days in Vietnam.  When it was time to leave, we caught the ferry to Ha Tien, and a bus on towards the Cambodia border.  It was time to watch the sun set in a new country.

Another Sunset on Phu Quoc Island

Ho Chi Minh City

We arrrived into Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) exhausted after 16 hours crammed into triple bunk beds aboard the train from Danang. We were incredibly grateful to our wonderful kiwi hosts Ingrid and Graeme. We picked their brains on local culture and discovered that living in Vietnam as foreigners can be very rewarding.

An Phu District, Where We Stayed

Relaxing away from the manic city centre gave us the energy we needed to tackle the city site seeing. HCMC has a hectic urban centre divided into 19 different districts. We spent most of our time exploring District 1, still known as Saigon (the city's former name).

Our wai-wai express tour took us past the impressive Notre Dame Cathedral and next door, the ornate
Central Post Office. We experienced first hand the drawn out process of sending a parcel from Vietnam. Felt a bit like signing a serious contract.

Notre Dame Cathedral, HCMC

The Ben Thanh Market proved a repeat attraction both by day and by night. Whilst the day food market was a bit dubious, the evening stalls provided an absolute Vietnamese banquet for us. It was rather novel cooking our own meat on a heated roof tile.

Roof Tile BBQ

Potato String Prawns

Further along Le Loi Street, we rested in the gardens around the statue of Ho Chi Minh in front of the impressive People's Committee Building. 

Ho Chi Minh Square

The Saigon Centre was a clothing market mania with little room to move or breathe and serious bartering skills were required for successful purchases.

The fantastic public bus system moved us between the suburbs and the city centre with ease and for ridiculously cheap fares.

If it wasn't for the oppressive heat, we probably could have wandered along the wide sidewalks and skyscrapers for days. Needless to say we spent every afternoon trying to return our body temperatures to normal levels in the apartment pool. Icy cafe sua da (sweetened iced coffee) from the street vendors helped too. Delicious and highly addictive, you have been warned.

Going out in the evenings once the sun had gone down lowered the heat stroke risk. We sat in miniature chairs peeling hard boiled quail eggs and rolling them in salt. Followed up by hot chips served with butter and sugar and beers for under 50c.  We tried some very local cuisine including crumbed eel with mint and chilli prawns hot enough to make your eyes water.

The broad Saigon river was never far away, and was teeming with well lit dinner cruise boats at night (for a hefty price).

We were sad to say goodbye to this very lovable city!  

Hoi An

Visiting Hoi An was like stepping back in time.  The Old Town has more than 800 historical buildings, most carefully preserved except for the odd ruin.  There was a distinct blue and yellow color scheme.



Once a major silk trading port, skilled tailors and quality fabrics still abound and lure many travelers to this quaint town. Dresses, suits and leather shoes are made to fit in less than 24hours, endless options with literally hundreds of shops to choose from.  

One of Many Tailor Shops in Hoi An

Shoe Shop, Hoi An

When we visited the Thu Bon River was precariously full and frequently spilled over into nearby streets. We crossed over the river on the ornamental Japanese Covered Bridge.

Thu Bon River, Hoi An

The inner roads were closed to scooters and cars for periods of the day.  Those who preferred not to walk could be peddled around in one of the many cyclos for a small fee. Classical music was broadcast over the street loudspeakers creating a truly romantic ambience.

Cyclo

In the evenings the town was lit up by brightly lit handmade lanterns.

Lanterns in Hoi An

The food in Hoi An was unique to the area with a Chinese and Japanese influence.  We had to try the banh boa (white rose) and cao lau. The locals made sure we added all the extra condiments to optimise the flavors.

After a few days in Hoi An, we heard news of the approaching monster Typhoon Haiyan.  We were right in the middle of it's projected path, so decided along with many other tourists and locals to flee south as quickly and safely as we could.  We ended up on a 16hour sleeper train in a space the size of a coffin.  As we were leaving Danang we saw many people filling sandbags to hold down roofs and pruning trees right back.  Everyone was bracing for the coming storm.

Hue

Life seemed to move a little slower in this ancient UNESCO heritage city.  Scooters lined the many bridges crossing the Perfume River.  In the centre of the city we explored the history-rich citadel, surrounded by crumbling walls and over grown moats.  

One of the Ten Fortified Gates Surrounding the Citadel

The Forbidden Purple City in the centre of the citadel can be reached by passing through three great walls.

The Second Great Wall

An elderly man floated in one of the moats, harvesting the river weed, while villagers tried their hand at fishing.

The imposing Flag Tower (Cot Co) at 37m high can be seen from miles away and marks the entrance to the citadel.

The food in Hue (pronounced 'Hway') was exceptional, and we seemed to fill our days grazing on different delicacies. We enjoyed rice cakes and pancakes topped with shrimp and pork crackling, tomatoes carefully stuffed with pork and local mushrooms, and banana flower salad (normally reserved for local wedding celebrations).   

Rice Cakes

Hanoi

Hanoi was a hectic whirlwind of cultural experiences. We based ourselves in the historical heart of the thousand year old city. The Old Quarter was originally occupied by 36 different guilds, each to their own street. Despite expansion and development the streets are still roughly distinguished by specific trades or merchandise, and named appropriately. Possibly the most well known is Hang Gai (silk street).

Crossing the roads required skill and nerves of steel. The best recommendation is to walk s-l-o-w-l-y so scooters can judge your position and weave their way around you. Smaller intersections are void of traffic lights and an everyone-has-right-of-way policy applies, as long as you use your horn liberally as you blindly enter the busy intersections. If the streets weren't already crowded enough, sections were converted into markets on the weekends.

In a city with a population of 6.5 million and over two million scooters, noise pollution is rife. This was added to by twice daily loudspeaker public service broadcasts, sure to wake even the deepest sleeper.
To the south of the Old Quarter, Hoan Kiem Lake provided a peaceful retreat. That is if you could avoid the many hawkers that incessantly pressed foreigners with souvenirs and shoe polishing services.

Matching tops and pants (that looked suspiciously like pajamas) seemed the popular fashion choice for females. Men donned green army pith helmets. Handbag-sized dogs also seemed like a popular accessory.

Much of Vietnamese life is lived on the street edge. People of all ages sit at street side tables drinking ca phe (coffee) and bia hoi (beer). Infants are nursed and entertained on the footpaths. Dishes are cleaned in the gutters. Food can be found in abundance, often stacked high on bicycles or in baskets balanced over shoulders on a bamboo pole.

For tasty meals, street food was most rewarding but risky when you couldn't interpret what you were ordering. A favourite of ours was Bun Cha (barbecued pork served in steaming bowl of broth with a bunch of fresh herbs and a mound of vermicelli rice noodles). All served at kindergarten sized tables and chairs as is customary in Vietnam.

Bun Dau

We walked around the Ho Chi Minh Complex observing the impressive Presidential Palace and the surrounding gardens, but were disappointed to find the Mausoleum closed.  It was however, still an impressive site from the exterior especially with the uniformed men on guard.  

Hanoi had served us well as a travel hub to Halong Bay and Sa Pa.  By our third visit we could navigate the busy winding roads efficiently without a map, taking record time to reach our favorite restaurants and bakeries.

Sa Pa, Lao Cai Province

Breaking tourist tradition (as we like to do), we avoided the expensive night sleeper trains to Lao Cai and chose the public day train instead. We had to be patient and barter very hard to obtain a reasonable rate for the final stretch to Sa Pa by minibus as the tourist masses were travelling in the opposite direction. This worked out well in the end with just a few friendly local tour guides on the bus playing awesome Vietnamese techno on the stereo and a convenient stop at the local bakery.

We arrived to a mist shrouded Sa Pa, 1500m above sea level in the Hoang Lien Mountains (Tonkinese Alps). Thinking we would find peace and quiet in this picturesque mountain village, we discovered the 110th Sa Pa Tourism Anniversary celebrations underway and were surrounded by booming music from dawn to dusk. We managed to escape the noise on our day trip to Cat Cat Village on foot where we experienced sweeping views of the rice terraces (recently harvested) and surrounding mountains.

Sa Pa Village on the left

Cat Cat Village

Here we saw the local village people at work in the fields and with their crafts. There are scores of water buffalo around, who in between wallowing, pull their weight by ploughing the rice fields.

Water buffalo

The Sa Pa region boasts 24 different ethnic groups, each with their own distinctive dress and culture, all living peacefully within a small area. The village ladies walk to the Sa Pa village to sell their handicrafts to tourists. Once completely self sufficient, they are now hungry for the tourist dollar and are very persistent. We had a lady follow us for 15minutes despite our repetitive refusal to buy from her. She would have followed for longer had we not stopped and convinced her that her time was better spent elsewhere.

Dao Headdress 

Girls marry and have babies very young and carry them around on their backs, the infants also dressed in traditional clothing ornately decorated with beads and colored thread.

H'mong Ladies, Sa Pa 

Beautiful hand stitched blankets originally created as wedding dowries, are made locally right from growing the cotton, to weaving, dying and decorating it.

Handmade Blankets, Cat Cat Village

Sa Pa is the coldest place in Vietnam. In winter it is not uncommon for snow to dust the rice terraces. For the unprepared travellers there is plenty of dirt cheap knock-off North Face gear on sale.

Although the towering peak of Fansipan (at 3145m, officially Vietnam's highest) was beckoning, the weather remained fickle and the plummeting night temperatures were enough to discourage us. So after three days we headed back to Lao Cai and spent a night exactly 1 mile from the China Border before catching the train back to Hanoi.