Hue and Hanoi – the finale in Vietnam

Well from now on it’s English only in the diary’s (and as always sorry for all spelling- and grammar-errors).
I’d rather get you all used to it now, since in Au and NZ it’s too expensive sitting on Internet-cafes. 🙂

We said goodbye to Johan in the morning in Hoi An since he went on a cooking-course that day.
It has been really great traveling with him, since he knows a lot about the country and has very interesting things to talk about.

The bus to Hue only took 4 hours, and when we arrived we went to a hotel that Jeanette talked about. Bihn Mihn Sunrise Hotel 1 was the name. The only thing we got for $10 was a room on the ground floor with a funny smell in it…Maybe they sprayed it for bugs, and it didn’t smell nice at all.
Well it was only for one night so we said ok. At least we had free Internet in the lobby. 🙂

After we checked in we went out to get a trip to the Vinh Noc Tunnels. We found a half-day trip that cost $7. We didn’t have time for a full day, so we decided to book that one for Friday.
Then we went to Mandarin Cafe’ that Jeanette also told us about. It’s owned by a man called Mr Cu, and he takes the most beautiful pictures that he sells. One picture was 20 000 dong, so I bought 9.
I could have bought even more, because they where all so good, but there is a limit in my budget. :p
We also had dinner there.

Friday-morning at 6 am it was time for the tour to the tunnels. We got picked up by a bus, and went out in the country-side. We arrived to the DMZ and our guide told us about the history of when the Americans had their bases here. Our guide was a little boy when the war broke out and he still remembers a lot from that time. He wasn’t very informative in the bus tho…
There was a lot of things we passed that he didn’t even mention.

After quite some time we arrived at the tunnels, and had a look at the museum first. Then we got a new, better guide that took us down in the tunnels.
He told us that about 300 people lived here in the 60’s and during those 5 years 17 babies where born. It was amazing to walk around in these tunnels, knowing that.
After about 25 minutes we came out down at the beach and headed back to the bus.
On the way back we saw lots of craters, and the guide explained that those where from bombs.

It was 6 of us that only took a half-day so we went back with minibus to the city. From one of the English guys in the van, we learned that they kind of backpackers me and A-M are is Champagne-backpackers. That suits me fine. 🙂

Back in Hue we went to the train-station to get some tickets for that afternoon. That was harder said than done, I’ll tell you. We met 3 Australians that was first in line. They tried to get us tickets as well but failed. The Vietnamese people behind us pushed and pushed and tried to get in front of us. Me and A-M ranted at them and held each others arms so they couldn’t pass. It was hysterical, but at last we got to the front. We tried to be understood and to understand the woman in the ticket-booth. She said soft, and we said ”no soft sleeper, chair” because we didn’t want a bed we wanted a seat instead.
She looked at us and said ”air con?”. We said ”no air con, fan”. So we got the tickets finally and went back to the hotel where we left our bags.
We talked about the train, wondering what kind of train it would be for that price. :/

After some lunch and Internet-time at the hotel we looked for a taxi to get us to the train station.
We saw two guys at a taxi, so we asked where they were going. They said train station, so we asked if we could share the taxi. First we had to tell them what country we are from and then we got accepted. 🙂
Rich and Steve from Ireland, very funny guys.
Unfortunately we weren’t going with the same train, not even with the 3 Australians that we met earlier…We started to get worried.

We talked to a guy at the waiting hall. He was very good at English and he told us about hotels in Hanoi. He also asked us why we didn’t buy tickets for the express train, that the other guys where going with. We didn’t even know that there was two different trains, and when trying to change the tickets to express, they said it was full.

Well face the truth, we where going with the slow-train. After a 30 minute delay the train finally came.
And there it was…wooden seats! We where the only western people on that train and we had gotten wooden-seats tickets…
The Vietnamese people was looking at us when entering the wagon, giggling a bit and I don’t blame them. I couldn’t help giggling myself, but A-M was not very amused. She put on her mp3-player trying to meditate a bit, she said. 🙂
I talked to the girl that sat opposite. Her English was very basic, but we got a 10 minutes conversation at least.
After about 1,5 hours I told A-M to go and see if they had something else to offer on the train, so off she went. She came back after 10 minutes and told me that they had 2 soft-seats (that is what the ticket-lady tried to tell us I guess :p ) 4 or 5 wagons away and told me to also have a look.
I walked through all these other wagons with Vietnamese people that stared, said hello and touched my arms. They really like light-skin here so it’s nothing I got offended by.
The seats look comfortable (well anything would, compared to those wooden-seats :p), and we only had to pay 100 000 for both, so I went back to A-M and we took our bags.
I said goodbye to Tui (the girl opposite us) and we started to walk the long way to the seats. It was narrow and our backpacks are big, but we made it. Lots of people wanted us to sit down at their seats and I said hello to half the train I think. 🙂
We sat down and then A-M brought out her inflatable neck pillow. The female conductor that fixed our seats, was amazed and held up the neck pillow, showing the other passengers. ”Ohhhh” they said. :p
It was a very funny and great experience on that train. 🙂

Arriving 15 hours later in Hanoi, we took a taxi to one of the hotels that the guy in Hue talked about.
We found Camelia 3 and 5, and 3 was $2,5 more expensive but felt more fresh, so we checked in.
For $12 we got AC, hot water, a bathtub!, Satellite-TV, soft bed and soft pillows (often you get one or the other), free Internet down in the lobby. Luxurious? Yes, but we are champagne-backpackers. 🙂
We felt ”at home” right away.

The whole weekend we talked about what to do about China. We searched the Internet for trains, different options that suits our budget and time-schedule and I sent a mail to our Swedish co-worker in Guangzhou to see what he could help us with.
Finally we realized that we can’t go to China at this time. We don’t want to stress through it and we can’t afford to fly to all the places. We wanted to go to Chengdu to see the pandas, Xi’an to see the terracotta-warriors and the great wall outside of Beijing. 2 weeks is to little time going by train and to be honest we will need the money in AU and NZ instead.
We got a lot of help from Johan and Lisa in Guangzhou and we really appreciate it. Thanks!

In the hotel we met two Malmo-people, Lina och Lars, and they gave us a lot of tips about Au and NZ.
That’s the best way to learn about things, getting the info directly from someone that has experienced it. Perfect. 🙂

We walked around in Hanoi and it’s quite a nice city. I don’t feel unsafe in it like in Phnom Phen, and we even walked around in the evenings.
On Monday we booked a one day-tour to Halong Bay and we went early on Tuesday morning.
http://halong.org.vn/index.asp?lan=en
It started with a 3-hour bus ride and some lunch (and a guide that gave us no information what so ever).
After lunch I bought some Long Nhan http://www.discover-vietnam.com/html/cuisine/fruits1.htm which is my new favorite fruit. I actually went wild and bought about 1 kg, but most of it is seeds and sticks, so it’s probably just 0,5 kg fruit. :p
Anyways, we went on the boat and after a 45 minute ride we came to the caves. It was two big caves and they had made paths that the visitors could walk on. Quite impressive.

After that we went around the big cliffs, to a place where people have floating houses. It’s the fishermen and they even have their dogs out on those. 🙂
For 20 000 dong we could go with a smaller boat through some wholes in the cliffs so we decided to do that.
There will be pictures uploaded later (can’t do it from here because the computer doesn’t support it).
All together it was a 4 hour boat-ride and we where quite satisfied. In the van on the way back there was a whole bunch of Australians, and one of them was 8-year old Mason from Byron Bay. He entertained us the whole way back to Hanoi. 🙂

We decided to have some dinner before walking back to the hotel, and when sitting there A-M yelled out ”there is Johan!”. Well there was Johan walking just passed the restaurant, so A-M went out to get him. It was very nice to meet him again. 🙂
We sat and talked some and then we went back to our hotels. After watching the first episode of ”Desperate housewife’s” we fell asleep and today it’s time to check out.

Tonight we will fly to Bangkok and hopefully we will be able to go to Chang Mai or some other place in a few days.

First a few thoughts about Vietnam:
They really wear that typical Vietnamese hat here, which is great!
One word can mean different things, depending on how you say them.
They are building a lot, both private and industrial houses.
There is lots of water everywhere. Rivers, rice-fields.
Open landscape, same as in Cambodia.
They have big ponds with lotus flowers growing in them. Beautiful.
The cows and Buffalo’s walks in the rice-fields and also in beside the roads, eating.
People here are hard-working.

Vietnam is an interesting country. Sometimes you get really tired of all the people that try to rip you off all the time, or the ones that wants to sell you things so badly that they really are in your face, but I think Vietnam is a country I want to go to again.
I would like to see more of it and in a slower pace.

Hugs to you all!