It’s Raining in Vietnam

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”   

— Anthony Bourdain

Hanoi: Part 1

My early impression of the Old Quarter in Hanoi was that it is just like many other Asian cities. Truthfully, the city didn’t peak my interest much on arrival. The one oddly fascinating quality of Hanoi is the systematically themed avenues of shopping.  Our hotel was clearly on Christmas street.  It’s an eye sore outburst of tinsel and holiday cheer. 

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Walk a few streets over and vendors sell only sunglasses here.  Pots and pans are the next avenue after that.  Take a left and you will find a multitude of shops selling identical inventories of backpacks and rain jackets.  It seems strangely inefficient.  It must take a person all day to buy the same items found in a dozen aisles at Walmart. Ankit and I spent more time than necessary figuring out where to buy a bar of soap in this odd map of specialty retailers. I still don’t understand how all these stores compete with each other when they sell the exact same thing. How does this make sense???

This is Hanoi.

Touring Prisons

Ankit and my time in Hanoi is very piecemeal. We stayed in Hanoi for a day, followed by a trip to Halong Bay. Then we come back to Hanoi, followed by two days in Sapa, and we circle back to Hanoi again for a few nights before he goes home and I head south. Our itinerary is a whirlwind of Northern Vietnam.

We hit the tourist ground running. A prison museum. Fancy coffees on Train Street. And a water puppet show. No one can say we aren’t taking in the full breadth of contrasting experiences the city has to offer.

First off, the Hoa Lo prison museum. When it comes to touristing, my view is that you shouldn’t just come to see the pretty things. They don’t give the country’s whole story, and you won’t leave with a true appreciation for everything the country or its people have been through. A prison museum in the heart of Hanoi qualifies as one of these places. During the French occupation it housed Vietnamese revolutionaries. During the Vietnam war, it housed shot down American fighter pilots including John McCain.

It’s fair to say that Hoa Loa is an educational experience, though it is far from being unbiased or entirely factually accurate. According to the museum, when the French ran it, the prison was a site of human abuse, political repression, and a testament to the strength and perseverance of the Vietnamese spirit. During the Vietnam war it was an all inclusive resort. American fighter pilots played volleyball on Sundays, got Christmas presents delivered from home, and had weekly chess tournaments. This must be true, after all it’s nickname was the ‘Hanoi Hilton’.

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Somehow I doubt this is the complete story, and a little research into the statements of fighter pilots imprisoned here puts quite a few holes in this account. But history is written by the victors, and this museum certainly shows one version of that history. There’s still something to learn in how a story is chosen to be told, and for that reason, it’s still a noteworthy stop in Hanoi.

No Trains and Dancing Puppets

Train street is just what it sounds like. It’s a narrow alleyway of a road with a train that drives through it several times a day, passing cringingly close to local apartments and cafes. Tourists have a cup of coffee here and wait for the train to drive by. So Ankit and I did just that. We got a cup of coffee and we waited. And waited. We waited something like two hours. That train never came and we got bored. But the coffee was good and we took some pictures.

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Water puppet shows. Obviously, this was a Cassie add-on. I wasn’t about to come to Vietnam without seeing firsthand what kind of weird theater Hanoi had to offer. Worldwide, I still prefer the black light theaters of Prague for top notch unusual entertainment. But for less than $10, I left amused and with zero complaints.

Halong Bay and the Singaporeans

Our trip to Halong Bay didn’t turn out exactly as planned.  We are traveling through Vietnam in December and it’s the rainy season. The country’s weather patterns could care less about our plans to spend two days on a boat. It’s the time for RAIN, and RAIN will be falling.

Those postcard worthy photos of covered mountains of rocks pushing up through calm blue waters, like the epic backdrop to a prehistoric movie about dinosaurs. That was not our experience.  The sky was gray and clouded over during our entire cruise. The air was full of a constant misty smog that made the scene more closely match the beginnings of a suspenseful mystery novel than Jurassic Park.  I was just waiting for the tour operator to say he found a guest dead in their cabin and no one could leave the boat until we found the murderer.  That’s how it felt walking on the boat. Ankit and I even shared the boat with gaggle of interesting characters who were almost too exaggeratedly cartoonish to be real. 

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First, there’s Doan.  Our 80 lb, 23 year old Vietnamese tour guide who prefers to be called by the name of British soccer player David Beckum than by his actual name.  Doan is earnestly innocent, and is enthusiastically committed to every group activity on board. This ranges from morning Tai Chi exercises to spring roll demonstrations.  He is here to make sure, by God, everyone is going to have a good time(!!).

Sharing our dinner table is a boistrious Canadian couple in their early 20’s.  The guy, Nathan, could be a California surfer straight out of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. The only clue that he lives in the north comes from the slight dip in his vowels. We’re also joined by a lone traveling American, Carson. He is full of tattoos and is too cool to participate in just about everything, but never misses an opportunity to order another beer.  

The most important guests are the Singaporeans, who make up half the boat. Three older couples and their various children in their teenage years or early 20’s.  All are overly friendly, overly enthusiastic, and given the opportunity, all will mess up every last group activity to such dramatic avail it’s hard to believe they aren’t doing it on purpose. 

The rest of the boat consists of three quiet, but surprisingly sarcastic and quick witted young Cambodian guys. And some Aussies who are basically nameless background characters. Any movie plot involving world travel requires Aussies or it’s not authentic. Australians are everywhere in the world but Australia.

And then there’s Ankit and me. Two American bank regulator friends traveling through Vietnam. 

Kayaking….In the Rain

We went kayaking the first day of the cruise which was either a tragedy or comedy depending on how you want to look at it.  The wind and the rain blew in our face the entire time.  Doan gave the group a quiet caution of ‘despacito’ so we knew not to slip when climbing in the shuttle boat to get to the kayak dock. Carson, of course, stayed behind to drink a six pack instead of kayak.

In the wind and the blowing rain we maneuvered our kayaks through rocky inlets, eventually finding our way to a sandy beach for a ‘swim’. Doan sang American pop songs, rapped Nikki Minaj, and serenaded us with the Vietnamese national anthem on the way.   He got so into his karaoke performances that he completely lost track of the Singaporeans who started following another group. Soon they were no where to be found.

The water was surprisingly warm. But I was not about to strip off my poncho for a quick dip. No thanks. Ankit and I hung out on the beach for a polite amount of time before getting back in our kayaks to return to the dock.

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Here at the dock we found the lost Singaporeans in a frenzied panic.  It was getting dark. They weren’t sure if they got back to the correct dock (they did), and if the tour guide forgot about them (he did). They worried they would be be stranded on a dock in Halong Bay, in the rain overnight (obviously not). “I thought we were ABANDONED!!! We could DIE out here!” one of the older women, Kim told me in dramatic exasperation.

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Murder Mystery of Cards

The thing about spending two days on a boat in Halong Bay is that there isn’t normally much to do, even if the weather’s nice. That’s why it’s only two days. You do some kayaking, eat some food, sit out on the top deck reading a book, take some pictures and go home. But when it’s raining there’s even less to do. It’s not a big boat. There are 12 guest cabins, a dining room, and a top deck of outdoor space. When you can’t go outside, you just cut out half your activities. Ankit and I did our best to stay entertained. We tried our hand at squid fishing in the rain, but we ultimately gave up.

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We needed something to do that didn’t involve the outdoors. This is how we ended up in an epic card game with the Singaporeans.

The Singaporeans had an idea for a good game where a lot of people can play. There were about 10 of us – Ankit, myself, the Cambodians, an half a dozen Singaporeans. The game is simple enough. Everyone gets one random card which assigns you a role. Certain people are murderers, and others are the police or maybe a doctor. Each round we all close our eyes to avoid finding out each others’ roles, and the moderator asks the murderer to open their eyes only and ‘kill’ someone. Without knowing who the killer is, the policeman then opens their eyes and ‘arrests’ someone, and without knowing who was killed, the doctor ‘saves’ someone. Finally, everyone opens their eyes and discovers what happened. If the murderers have not been arrested, the rest of the group has to vote on who we think the murderer is.

I told you this was that kind of boat ride.

Dramatic Kim’s husband Kenneth (“we’re KK!” she excitedly told me) was the moderator. K and K quickly became my two favorite people. Kenneth, as moderator, makes sure we all play by the rules and is the only person who knows everyone’s roles. He’s not supposed to give anyone’s secret role away, even if they’re killed.

But he just can’t help himself.

“It’s been a BLOOOODY NIGHT.” He would start. “The murders have been very successful. VERY SUCCESSFUL. It’s going to be MUCH HARDER to catch him now. VERY DIFFICULT to arrest anyone now.”

Obviously the policeman died. He’s not supposed to tell us that. We’re just supposed to know that the guy Mark, sitting next to me, died. We’re not supposed to know he was the policeman.

Kim also can’t help herself. She took this game seriously, like real people were being killed. “Oh NOOOOOO. Not Mark!!! I KNEW he was a good guy. You can tell, he looks so innocent. Oh no Mark, don’t go!! I’m so sorry you had to die!! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?????”

With each round you can tell exactly what role Kim has. She will either declare “I’m innocent, I swear I’M INNOCENT, please don’t kill me murderer! PLEAAASE!!”. Or she will say nothing. This is how you know when Kim is the murderer.

Kim’s my favorite.

We stayed up playing this game until almost midnight. This game kept the boat staff awake long past their (and our) bedtimes, but neither Ankit or I really wanted it to end. We were having too much fun with this ridiculous game with this ridiculous group of people.

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Hanoi: Part 2. LOTS of Coffee

The next day we took an uneventful tour through a cave, and drove back to Hanoi.

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I was happy to get off the boat, but kind of sad to leave our new friends.

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We had one day back in Hanoi before heading on a trekking tour of Sapa. This day was my favorite in Hanoi.

If you’ve ever had a cup of real Vietnamese coffee, you know it’s a unique experience of café. Vietnamese coffee is incredibly strong, and the real stuff comes served slowly dripping out of a metal filter directly into your glass. At the bottom of that cup is likely a light layer of sweetened condensed milk, needed to cut the potent caffeine in your cup. The Vietnamese take their coffee seriously. So we thought a great way to see Hanoi would be to take a coffee tour.

This was the day where I felt like I got to know the true Hanoi. Our tour guide brought us to several well established but hard to find coffee shops. The locals know these spots all too well, but they’re almost impossible to find as a tourist. Our first stop was in an old apartment building that used to house French dignitaries. It’s now the home to a half dozen Vietnamese families, this adorable unmarked coffee shop, and a ceramics and pottery stores in the back.

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We tried all different kinds of coffee – the traditional kind with the condensed milk, as well as cinnamon coffee, egg custard coffee, and coconut iced coffee which is just as much as dessert as a beverage.

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We also went to all kinds of coffee shops – from french houses, to normal store fronts, to coffee shops accessible by walking through a clothing store and up the back stairs. Hanoi has a strong coffee culture and I was happy to experience it with all of my senses.

Muddy Treks in Sa Pa

After a day of rest and getting amped up on caffeine, we thought, hey lets do even MORE activities outside in the rain. That sounds like fun, right?

So we went trekking for two days in Sa Pa. This area is in northwestern Vietnam and is known for it’s photogenic terraced rice fields. As you can see below.

We trekked in Sa Pa for two days.  Two days of no- stop rain and muddy slippery slopes. To top it off, this trek was one of the most disorganized tours I’ve ever been on. The guides handed us off from one guide to another without so much as a word of explanation.

When on the trek, a string of local old women followed us on the trail to help us walk and stay upright. The mud was so thick and the trail so steep in places that almost everyone in the group fell down at least once, if not several times. At the end of the trek, each local woman specifically sought out the foreign tourist they helped the most, and guilted/ordered each of us to buy some handicrafts in as payment for keeping us from sliding to our muddy deaths. No, they weren’t just helping out of the kindness of their hearts. You best buy something.

And of course, we did. I bought a little purse, and Ankit bought a long piece of fabric which we think might be a table runner. Or a scarf. Doesn’t really matter.

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Our one night in Sa Pa we stayed in a homestay which was not so much a homestay as a large dining room with a loft of beds overhead.  On a positive note, I will say the food was great. 

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But the activities were lacking.  With the rain pouring down all night in Sa Pa there wasn’t much to do but read a good book and go to bed at 8:30pm. This is what we did and honestly, it wasn’t all that bad. 

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Saying Goodbye

We took a luxury sleeper, full lay down sleeper bus back to Hanoi.  It was a disorganized mess to get to, but the bus was nice.

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All was good except for my stomach.  I ate something, or touched something, or drank from something I shouldn’t have.  I spent the next day taking naps next to the toilet. My dutiful friend got me juice and medicine, and hung out with me in the hotel room watching episodes of the Great British Bake off, and reading while I slept every few hours.

I recovered enough to catch a plane the next day to my next solo adventure in central Vietnam. Ankit stayed one more night in Hanoi and then headed home to the real world. We covered a lot of ground in two weeks of traveling together. From Cambodia, to Laos, to all over rainy Vietnam. It was busy and tiring, and I won’t soon forget the memories. 🙂

Shameless Plug

Ankit is quite the witty and talented writer himself, showing off his talent on several blogs long before I ever quit my career and found the time to start mine.  Starting when I met him in Cambodia, we have chatted about how he wants to expand his hobby into writing a fiction novel. He only had to show a faint interest for me to take this as an invitation to aggressively insist each and every day that he find the time to WRITE SOMETHING TODAY.  Turns out that Ankit responds well to encouraging harassment, because he wrote something like 4 or 5 chapters to his book while we were traveling together. 

I’m extremely proud of him, and maddeningly jealous at his speed of production. I’m in a constant state of blog backlog and I don’t even have a job anymore.  

Anyway, he really is a good writer. If I didn’t think so, I would still offer my friendly encouragement but would never publicly acknowledge my involvement.  You all should check out his blog here: www.moneyforpancakes.com.  READ IT. READ IT NOW.  You won’t regret it. 

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