Get ready for another long one! I've finished touring Vietnam and am just chilling out in Saigon for a few days before moving on to the next country. Vietnam has been a great place to visit--my favorite on this trip so far. (I'm not counting Thailand since I've only seen Bangkok.) It is very scenic, clean, decent tourism infrastructure, the people are decent, it's cheap, safe, and the food is great. I would heartily recommend a visit.
There is a lot of detail in this e-mail, partly because a few people have told me that they will be in Vietnam shortly and are interested in hearing about it. If anyone wants the names of hotels and such, let me know.
Friday, 6/20/03
After sending my last journal, Thien and I went back to the hotel to get our bags and wait for our ride to the train to Sapa. While waiting in the lobby, what should happen to be playing but "Apocalypse Now". It's an odd feeling to be watching that movie as the only American in a room full of Vietnamese. When it got to the scene where the helicopters storm the beach blaring Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" and the villagers were getting blasted, the picture suddenly disappeared and was replaced by a test pattern. The English language soundtrack was still playing, but no picture. I asked Thien if this was intentional censorship, he didn't really know.
In my last journal, I mentioned that Thien and I were reluctantly taking a package tour to Sapa. Boy, did we regret it. Sapa is great--my favorite place in Vietnam--but the package sucked, as you will see.
The guy from the tour company picked us up half an hour late and put us on a train that left half an hour later than our expected train. This would not have been a problem, but it would have been nice to know this ahead of time. Our train car (a 4-person soft sleeper) was not air-conditioned, which it was supposed to be. Fortunately, it was not very hot, but it was very humid.
Riding out of Hanoi, the train passed within a few feet of the flat concrete facades of people's homes. Looking out the window, I got a brief glimpse inside as we went by. People having dinner, watching TV, sleeping on the floor, a little statue of Buddha in the red glow of incense in his little nook.
Saturday, 6/21/03
We didn't get much sleep on the train--maybe 4 hours. We arrived at Lao Cai (the nearest station to Sapa) in the very early morning. We got a jeep with a French couple for the 2-hour ride to Sapa. (The tour operators wanted to stuff us into a van which was already packed, but fortunately, there was no way my backpack would fit.) The road to Sapa is great mountain scenery, with lots of terraced rice fields.
When we got to the hotel, we were really disappointed. The view was great, but the floor badly needed to be swept (cigarette butts, for God's sake), the bathroom floor clearly hadn't been cleaned, the trash can was full, the promised TV and phone did not exist, and other than the beds, there was not furniture other than a nightstand that when opened, released 4 roaches. No place to put our clothes, no place to sit. The place was also quite noisy, with people making noise very early and very late. The view was great though--although the kids around the hotel seemed to think the view into our room was better than the view out of it.
Clearly, the hotel knew we were package tourist who had already paid for the room and did not give a shit.
We had breakfast on the terrace of the hotel restaurant. The food at this hotel (meals were included in the package) was definitely package tour food--edible, but not what you would eat if you had a choice. The restaurant terrace had such a great view, that I didn't really care that much about the mediocre food.
We met out tour guide for our first hike. Our tour group consisted of just me and Tien. The hike was nice--a paved look passing a waterfall and going up and down the side of on of the mountains. A nice hike, but one that certainly does not need a guide. Lots of dragonflies and butterflies. Near the end of the hike, we ended up sitting over a flowing ditch, kicking back and talking, which was much more pleasant than it sounds.
Sunday, 6/22/03
We met our guide for another hike. It was drizzly and foggy, so we didn't see much for the first hour. The conversation was all in Vietnamese, so I didn't participate much. After stopping in a cafe with a great view of the valley, we proceded down the muddy path to the river in the valley floor. It was very slippery, but I found it easier to walk quickly and let momentum do the work rather than get a firm foothold for each step. As a result, I got way ahead of the others, which was good, because I much more in the mood to hike by myself that day.
After crossing the footbridge over the river, we went through rice paddies and through a couple of villages populated by some of the hill tribes in the area. (There are 5 minority people around Sapa.) It was really very cool, with fantastic scenery. For this hike, the guide came in handy, because it was not a normal, marked track. But I suspect any path we took would have been fantastic.
We took a jeep back to town after the hike.
Monday, 6/23/03
It was a foggy, rainy day, and Thien slept very late. Our guide stopped by, and I asked him what time the train left. When he said I could just look at the tickets, I told him I couldn't because we were never given them. He checked a bit and told us that they would be waiting for us in Lao Cai. Foreshadowing.
The guide invited us for coffee in the afternoon, which we did. We had coffee on a deck overlooking the valley, which was alternately filled with fog, rain, and clear sky, changing every 10 minutes. Most of our conversation was in Vietnamese again, but in the English part, I found out that our guide wanted to spend a few years in an English speaking country to improve his English which would also improve his job prospects.
After this point, our day turned to crap. You know those pictures from the 60's of people trying to see how many people they could stuff into a VW Beetle? Replace the VW with a van and set it in motion down a twisty, bumpy, half-paved mountain road and you have a pretty good image of our two-hour ride from Sapa to the Lao Cai train station. The van had 14 people and luggage stuffed into it. One of the 3 girls next to the driver was throwing up into barf bags, although discretely enough that most people didn't even notice.
When we got to Lao Cai, the dropped us at a cafe where we found the guy with our tickets. We were told that we got a 6-person compartment instead of the 4-person that we paid for. Then we found out that it was on a train that left 2 hours earlier than our scheduled train. This rushed us, since my order at the cafe (a baguette and a block of cream cheese) took 40 minutes and several prompts to get. (As if this wasn't bad enough, I had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich.)
When we got on the train, we discovered that it was not only a 6-person compartment, but it was also not air-conditioned and it was a hard-sleeper instead of a soft-sleeper. I was getting more and more pissed with each discovery. It wasn't that these accommodations were that bad--they were ok--but they were not what we paid for, and the tour company didn't even bother to tell us any of these things. We would have been happy to wait in Sapa for another day if we knew that our accommodations were so screwed up, but since they never told us, we didn't have the choice.
Things seemed to be taking a turn for the better when we left the station with only us in the compartment, but SURPRISE! the train was not an express (which we had paid for) and ended up stopping several times, and in the middle of the night, people came into our compartment and got off a few hours later, waking us up each time.
Tuesday, 6/24/03
We arrived at the Hanoi station at 4:30am, and had to rush off because the stop had not been announced. In the rush, Thien's jacket got left behind.
After a bit of searching for a new hotel, we went back to our old hotel, bathed, had some breakfast and slept.
Later in the day, we went to the travel company to complain about the trip and try to get a partial refund. For those of you going to Vietnam soon (a few are on this mailing list) the company was ODC (Old Darling Cafe). They first tried to tell us that shitty accomodations were the norm for Sapa (which is absolutely not true--most hotels were clearly nice, and other travelers concurred that we got screwed.) We stated our case, called them on their bullshit, pointed out where many things promised in the brochure were not delivered, and in the end all that we could get was the price difference between 4-person AC soft-sleeper and 6-person non-AC hard-sleeper--$6 of the $140 that we paid. I told them I would have to get satifaction elsewhere--like posting our experience on the internet as well as sharing our experience with people in thier cafe. (There was only one guy there, who had heard part of the conversation, so I gladly filled him in on the rest.) I still have to post my gripe to the Lonely Planet thorn tree, but I have it written up.
Even though we didn't get much compensation, I felt better for calling them on their shit.
Wednesday, 6/25/03
We took a day trip from Hanoi to Tam Coc on a bus. Tam Coc is pretty interesting--jagged rock hills jutting straight up out of the flat ground. We toured a temple in a cave on one of these hills. Then took a row boat through the wetlands between the hills. The "river" went through three caves before reaching the point where the valley was closed off by a wall of hills. Pretty cool.
Thursday, 6/26/03
Just relaxed and made some travel arrangements.
Friday, 6/27/03
We started a package tour to Halong Bay, in spite of our previous package tour experience to Sapa. There were a lot of boat legs to the trip, so we just took the easy way out and got a package. It was actually fine except for the hotel.
We rode 4 hours from Hanoi to Halong city, where we caught a large boat for the several-hour ride to Cat Ba Island where we were staying. Halong Bay is impressive, with thousands of little islands that jut straight up right out of the water. It is just like Tam Coc, only under water. And MUCH more touristed. I have never seen such a fleet of tour boats. On the way to the island, we stopped on one of the little islands to tour a couple of caves.
Cat Ba city is a tourist hole that consists of nothing but hotels. It is not actually bad, just not interesting and not very sophisticated. It is clear that the town would not exist were it not for tourists. Our hotel was very noisy--you could clearly hear the conversation in the next room (as well as smell their cigarette smoke.) There was a rock quarry out our window, which was better than the construction in front. The whole town appears to be under construction, with even more hotels going up.
Saturday, 6/28/03
We took a bus to Cat Ba National Park. On the way there, the road was blocked by boulders which had fallen off the hillside. The three boulders had fallen in the perfect position to make a wall across the road. After failing to budge the boulders in the road, some of the smaller ones off to the side of the road were moved so the bus could go around the blockage.
We took an 11 kilometer hike through the park. It took all day and was quite arduous because a large part of it was up and down hillsides walking on slippery rocks. The sun was not out, and we were in the shade, but it was incredibly humid and I was wringing the sweat out of my shirt along the way. It wasn't the most scenic hike, and it got to be a bit long with all of the slow rock climbing, but it was decent. The scenery was pretty much just trees, with not vistas from the hill tops. There was a pretty cool swampy lake on the way called Frog Lake. Some of us were a bit startled by what sounded like a dog barking from a "cave" between some boulders and trees. It turns out that it was a frog. We also saw several poisonous spiders on the way. I had a real National Geographic moment when an insect leapt into a web and the spider rushed in and killed it.
The hiking trip really got enjoyable when we finished the forested part and got to the little village. It was in a scenic valley formed by sheer rock walls covered with greenery. We walked through a rice paddy to a little eating place where we had a lazy lunch. The road out of the village was carved out of the woods, with trees overhanging. When we got closer to the boat pier, we were on a half constructed road, which was clearly going to be very attractive when it was finished. From the looks, there were intentions to make this place into a mass tourist attraction which, of course, would completely ruin it.
The road wound along a beautiful little bay hemmed in by rock mountains. The water was unspoiled and very green in color. No buildings existed on the bay, except for one small house.
When we got to the boat pier, our boat had not yet arrived. The 50-year-old Danish guy that Thien and I had been hanging around with decided to go for a swim, and all of the rest of us except Thien followed. (He's shy. ;) ) There was no one else around.
Our boat was a small wooded craft with a putt-putt engine. Rather than sit on the benches under the roof, we all sat on the bow of the boat with our legs over the side. I dangled my feet in the water the whole way back to the town--except where it was polluted. Very scenic, very relaxing, with the sun setting behind the islands.
When we got back to the hotel, our Danish friend discovered that everything had been taken from his hotel room and moved to the one next door. Not surprisingly, he was pissed.
Sunday, 6/29/03
We took the boat and bus back to Hanoi. We then flew from Hanoi back to Saigon and stayed at Thien's place.
Monday, 6/30/03
Just lazed around, ate, hung out in Thien's favorite bar (Lost in Saigon), and booked a Mekong Delta tour for the next day.
Tuesday, 7/1/03
Thien dropped me off at the tour office so I could take the Mekong Delta tour. (He had taken it before.) The tour was OK, but having already taken other, more interesting boat rides in Vietnam, I don't know if it was worth the bother. Oh, well--I can say that I did it. We did get to see coconut candy being made and play with pythons.
Back in Saigon, just eating and playing pool at Lost in Saigon.
Wednesday, 7/2/03
Slept late, read travel books in bed, wrote postcards, and used the internet.
Later,
Sid
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