Week 20,21,22: Vietnam!
It’s hard to know where to start with Vietnam. I heard whispers in Thailand that continued all the way through Laos that Vietnam was THE southeast Asian destination. I had no idea it’d become the cornerstone of the final third of my trip. Ignorant American that I am, most of my knowledge about Vietnam came from history books that painted the nation as an underdeveloped cluster of jungle villages with a few major cities. That idiotic picture couldn’t be further from the truth. Vietnam goes HARD.
I spent my first few days in Hanoi with Gaia, the woman I’d met on my flight over, exploring its beautifully erratic streets. The architecture is a hodgepodge of different European and Asian influences that were pushed on Vietnam during its multiple eras of colonial oppression. Hanoi has somehow absorbed all of these different styles, added some humidity, and turned out unlike any city I’ve encountered before.
Gaia and I hopped on an overnight bus towards the northern town of Sa Pa the next day. Each bus is fitted with neon lights along the windows and three double-decked rows of seats that recline all the way back into a sleeping position, allowing you to get a decent night’s rest en route towards your next destination. We were greeted by women wearing patterned jackets and leg warmers with colorful tassels when we arrived.
These were the Mamas, who’ve made a business walking and hosting travelers in their local villages four hours from the city. We hiked through beautiful landscapes and drank with their families. In the evening, I play-fought with the local village boys and girls. Many of the children have access to a smartphone, usually their parents’, and I’m curious to see how their connectivity with the outside world is going to shape their interactions with their villages as they grow up. Most of the men and women here get married and have their first child around 17. Our Mama was 18.
After Sa Pa, we made our way to Ba Cha to catch the town’s famous Sunday market. Our “bus” doubled as a shipping van that was supposed to hold 10 people maximum and yet somehow ended up shuttling 22 (including packages under our seats, on the roof, and stacked all the way to the ceiling in the back). Every guest homes was fully booked when we arrived, but a local tour guide called a friend running an informal home-stay a mile down the road and found us a place for the night. The home-stay owner used to be a farmer, but now leads treks in addition to hosting travelers. His brother was WASTED on rice wine and jokingly tried to pour us glass after glass before we decided to get an early night’s rest to reach the market before other tourists would swarm it in the late morning. The market itself was interesting with Mama’s from all over selling fresh produce, and every kind of good from rubber boots to water buffalo being sold to interested buyers.
Gaia and I found a bus towards Ha Giang after the markets, where we’d begin a three day motorcycle circuit that approached the border of China. The roads were surprisingly well paved and we flew through some of the most scenic countryside I’ve ever laid eyes on. Large limestone mountains surrounded us, reminiscent of something you’d find in a King Kong or Jurassic Park film. Every turn or cresting of a hill gave way to yet another breath-taking view. Small villages, nearly immune to tourism until recently, clustered around the stone deities as their inhabitants went about their day.
Along the way, Gaia’s bike suffered a dead starter while going uphill .We were rescued by Vietnamese border guards dressed in business casual with Gucci belts and freshly-ironed slacks and dress shirts. They offered us guavas and cigarettes while the town mechanic assessed the damages. We suffered some flats too, but every time our tires gave in, we were fortunate enough to find ourselves in close proximity to a mechanic who didn’t need to know English to see that one of our wheels was lower than the other. We stayed in the larger towns along the way, crossing paths with three American guys who were biking the entire length of the country before starting new lives in New Zealand. We’d drink each night and play an Israeli card game called Kaboo until we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer.
Gaia and I needed to drive half the length of the entire circuit on our last day due to the time we’d lost from repairs. We managed to make it back to Ha Giang a mere hour before our night bus departed for Hanoi. The last hour involved our faces being splattered with bugs as we weaved through a stressful last stretch of mountain road at night with only our headlights leading the way.
Gaia and I spent our last day together in Hanoi, where I accompanied her to a hospital and she had her wounds (from a small moped-accident on the circuit) tended to. The hospital was modern, well-staffed, able to see her within 15 minutes, and had all of the necessary medication she required in her hands in the same amount of time (socialized medicine, imagine that). I was reunited with Jack (from Luang Prabang in Laos) in the evening, and we spent the night and next day relaxing, exploring, and catching up.
I booked a breakneck, 1-day tour of Vietnam’s Taj Mahal: Ha Long Bay, where nearly 2000 Limestone rocks rise from the water, housing secret beaches and expansive caves. Some people spend a few days out here, but after the nature I’d just seen in the north, I was pretty content with my limestone intake and decided to catch a train south to Da Nang later that night.
I was in Da Nang, a central hub for shipping and airline transfers, after a 15-hour train ride that carved through countryside and came out on the coast. I spent a day their recouping after the long trip and got some drinks with other travelers. I ended up in a conversation with a doctor from England that’s questioning his life ambitions as he looks for fulfillment on his own terms instead of depending on external validation. We traded stories, shared our fears, and really got to know one another by the time we went to bed at 5 a.m. The next day, we raced to catch a local bus towards Hoi An.
I stayed in a really quaint home-stay for two nights, where I met some travelers from Germany and England. There was a food festival happening in the ornate old quarters later that night, so we stuffed ourselves full of street food before bed. The next day was spent relaxing on the beach before yet another grueling 15 hour commute south, this time towards Dalat. I read some Allen Ginsberg poems, body-surfed some waves, and para-glided for the first time, which brought me 12 stories above the ocean for an overwhelming view before I descended into the water and was rescued from my baptism by a guy on a jet ski. Somewhere between those events, I got into a disagreement with one of the shop-owners over the price of a rented beach chair and he came after me with a 2x4 before tossing it to the ground sheepishly when I asked him what it was for. Anyway, I made it onto my bus in one piece and arrived in Dalat late into the morning the next day.
Dalat has its own unique mix of architecture, similar to Hanoi’s, but with more hills and brighter colors (yet another city that reminds me of San Francisco). A beautiful lake sits at its center, which I spent the majority of my first day walking around before checking out Dalat’s famously intricate Maze Bar later that night. Four floors of staircases and passageways make it easy to genuinely lose oneself if it weren’t for the music pumping near the front of the pub. I had a great conversation with a German political science graduate about the state of German and U.S. politics and how to encourage civic efficacy among our respective populations (and I ran into Gaia who I hadn’t seen in a week!).
I went canyoning through one of Dalat’s forests the next day. My group donned wetsuits, helmets, and life jackets before rappelling down cliff faces next to large waterfalls. Between each descent were natural water-slides, rivers we crossed by floating downstream, and a 7 meter jump. During our trek, the clouds gathered and began pouring rain making the group feel like we were on a real expedition through the forest. When we finished our last descent and the skies cleared, we sat down for a bahn mi picnic and 10 our group of 10 shivering tourists devoured the ingredients laid out before us.
I got into a long discussion with an ex-cop from California when I was dropped off back at the hostel. He was surprisingly progressive, anti-capitalist, and more than happy to call out white men’s role in our current political quagmire. It was interesting dancing around his ideas, trying to get a feel for where he stood politically, but he was incredibly well-informed and we learned a lot from talking to each other for an hour.
After some much needed grooming, I met a Dutch woman named Lisette who was coming to the end of her own six month journey. I feel a kinship with people closing their long trips, who are less wet behind the ears and avoid asking the same tired travel questions that begin most interactions on the road. I accompanied her and another hostel-mate to dinner before heading to the Maze Bar again. We got a drink and set our minds to exploring every nook and cranny the maze had to offer. We sat outside after achieving our goal and talked about travel relationships, lessons learned from them, and what we’re looking forward to back home. We called it a night early on since I was headed for Ho Chi Minh City in the morning.
Ho Chi Minh’s climate definitely dampened my mood. High humidity plus heat that broke into the 90’s. I arrived at my hostel in the evening whose ameneties betrayed their glowing reviews online. They didn’t even have water for purchase which required me to make regular treks into the heat to hydrate myself. Poor me :(
I spent the first day thoroughly vegging, intimidated by the sprawling mass of city that reminded me a lot of New Delhi, pollution included. I met a South-Korean woman in my room who had spent 10 months volunteering in Uganda and had a pretty disillusioning experience. She had her bag stolen off her body by a moped driver and is traumatized by the revving of scooters ever since. When we went with a large group from the hostel on a street food tour, she’d constantly hide on the inner side of the pack, away from the street, in order to avoid the masses of scooters that would pass us on each block. The food was good, but I had limited options now that I was vegetarian. Eating in South-East Asia has been quite the challenge, and I’ve experienced hunger more frequently, living on at least 50 egg bahn mi sandwiches during my time in the country.
As the street food tour concluded, I went with a Dutch woman named Daisy to the SkyBar, which seems to be a popular fixture in many Vietnamese cities. We drank expensive cocktails on the 52nd floor of a skyscraper reminiscent of Tony Stark’s headquarters in the avengers and talked about the experience of growing older and the increasing pressure to settle down. She and I were the same age and had both resolved to travel long term. We jokingly reassured ourselves that we were, in fact, still young and had time to figure things out.
I thought it’d be best to make my only full day in Ho Chi Minh city a cultural one. I woke up early the next morning for a tour of the Cu Chi tunnels that the Viet Cong built to outmaneuver invading American soldiers. Our tour guide showed us secret entrances, ammunition workshops, and a gallery of diabolical traps that were used to ensnare and kill foreign soldiers. At the end of the tour, we were led through a quarter mile of claustrophobic tunnels that snaked underground, requiring me to crouch walk and taller tourists to crawl in order to make it to the end. After a brief nap at the hostel, I was off with a group of English travelers to see a Vietnamese water puppet show. The hour long production was completely in Vietnamese and felt akin to going to an opera, only the actors were crude wooden puppets that played out each scene in a pool of water two feet high as musicians played traditional instruments to soundtrack the drama.
Our group had a few drinks at different bars afterwards, one of which was on the main walking street and packed with tourists. An hour of people-watching later (where we saw many lonely male travelers get seduced into a spa package), I was off to bed for an early bus into Cambodia the next morning with one last week of travel ahead of me.
