Northern Vietnam

We've been in Vietnam around 10 days now and we're still not sure what to make of it. Things seem to be improving, but overall we've been a bit disappointed with the country so far. In comparison to China, the sights are similar, the food is tasteless, it's noisier, less safe and you have to haggle for everything you want to buy, right down to a bottle of water. I know you have to expect those kind of annoyances in South East Asia, but I was kind of expecting something amazing which would compensate for that, and so far we haven't found it. Don't let this put you off going to Vietnam though; Mikko and I are definitely a minority, every other person we meet on our travels is loving Vietnam!



After Sapa, we made our way to the capital, Hanoi. Aside from the hostel, with its rooftop terrace and free beer, I don't think we liked anything about Hanoi. The worst part for me was the traffic; it's noisy and it's incessant, you take your life into your hands every time you have to cross a road (which is a lot, because most of the pavements are blocked!. You're so busy clutching your valuables and hopping out of the way of motorbikes and ignoring all the hawkers yelling "BUY SOMETHING!" that you have no time to absorb the atmosphere around you. We stayed in Hanoi just long enough to recover from the bad nights' sleep we had on the way in, and to book a 3-day tour out of there, to Halong Bay.

Halong Bay was nice! (Yes, honestly, in spite of my whining, it's not all bad!) We were picked up early in the morning and transported to the bay where there were literally hundreds of boats and thousands of tourists waiting to board them. We got one of the nicer boats, I think. We set off into the bay where there were hundreds of the karst rocks (the same type we saw in Guilin and Yangshuo back in China) rising almost vertically upwards from the sea.



It was beautiful, and very relaxing to be on the boat and away from the madness of the city. In the afternoon we went swimming for a bit (the sea was clean and warm!) and then went kayaking for a couple of hours. You could paddle through some of the caves which was fun as there were some pretty strong currents in there. The night was spent partying and sleeping on the boat.



The next morning we split into two groups (kayakers and rock climbers) and I went off to do more kayaking while Mikko went to learn to climb.



In the afternoon, after I'd had enough, I went to watch the climbers. Mikko did a great job. He sailed up the easier climb with no problem. He didn't quite make it up the harder one, but then nobody else managed it either. Maybe they deliberately make it that way so you don't get over-confident and go off climbing by yourself ;-)



We spent that night on Cat Ba island but unfortunately the tour didn't give you any time to explore there. We had another delicious meal of both local food and pizza, and the following day went back to Hanoi. I still didn't like it!!

From Hanoi we caught a luxurious overnight train down to Hoi An, where we've spent the last two days. It's been pretty rainy again and the river through town has burst its banks. The restaurant I'd set my heart on is somewhere under the water.



Hoi An is a much smaller town, and thankfully much calmer. It's main claim to fame is its shops; shop after shop selling tailor-made suits and dresses and all at a snip of the price you'd pay back home. I was quite restrained and just bought one summer dress, for 15 US dollars, very nice!



Tonight we're moving on again. We finally get to go to the beach!!! Mikko is hoping to do a diving course there but that scares the hell out of me I will settle for a few easy days on the beach, sipping cocktails and reading a good book. I can hardly wait!

From China to Vietnam

After all the fun we had in Yunnan province we felt a bit sad to leave China but we knew it was time to move on and head south. For one thing, the weather in Yunnan started to get a bit chilly and we thought that the beaches of Vietnam sounded quite tempting.

To get to Vietnam we took a 10-hour bus ride from Kunming to the border. At the border we had to leave the bus and cross the border on foot. This wasn't quite as easy as it sounds; our bus dropped us off at the bus station in the border town of Hekou in the darkness and nobody could speak enough English to tell us which way the border was. In the end I took my passport out and they seemed to get the idea. We walked in the direction we were sent and came to a barrier. Over the barrier we could see a road leading to Vietnam but short of jumping the barrier we could see no way in. Finally a friendly (no irony here) Chinese border guard came to our assistance and directed us to a small dark alley where the entrance to the chinese customs was found

The procedure on the Chinese side was pretty straightforward; the borderguard took our passports and asked why we didn't have Vietnamese visas, I opened the page of my passport where the visa was and she was happy, then she studied my passport for a while and asked me where I'm from, I told her Finland and she pretended to know that it's a country. Then we were off to get our passports stamped and stared at at another desk and motioned to go to Vietnam. As we had no idea which exit to take we asked another border guard where Vietnam is, she looked at us a bit funny and said 'you go over the bridge'.

We managed our way across the bridge and reached Lao Cai, the Vietnamese side of the border. There three different people stared and stamped our passports without a word, then pointed at a piece of paper we were supposed to fill in with no pens, reluctantly gave us one pen to share and finally stamped the piece of paper and made a point of not welcoming us to Vietnam

As we left the building there were a number of shifty looking 'taxi drivers' offering to take us to places we didn't know. After a bit of bartering we took one of them up on his offer to drive us to Sapa, a little town in the mountains about an hour's drive away from Lao Cai. We probably paid far more then was the going rate for this journey but we got to Sapa just in time for dinner and booked ourselves into a fairly nice hotel



Sapa is quite an interesting place after China. The town has a very European style of architecture and they sell lovely hard crusted rolls (both thanks to the French colonialists, I guess). After the tranquility of the mountain towns of China, Sapa is a bit hectic, everyone and their grandmother is trying to sell you stuff. In fact, they are selling such random stuff that their most common sales pitch is 'you, buy something'.



Sapa is a beautiful place though, and if you can ignore the hawkers and the millions of mopeds it is a nice place to spend a couple of days. We have done a couple of half-day walks in the area and the scenery is pretty wonderful. Last night we also splashed out and spent 30 euros on a meal and a bottle of red wine (the first time we had any wine since Finland!), which was a nice change from local food and weak lager



Tonight we are going to catch our first Vietnamese night train to Hanoi. We are travelling in relative luxury compared to Chinese trains since we are in a compartment of only four people. What that is like in reality remains to be seen...

Around Yunnan province

Hi again! Quite a lot has happened since we last wrote. Our first stop in Yunnan province was Kunming. It's not a particularly interesting city and to be honest we weren't really inspired to explore it much since because of the constant torrential rain, but anyway we needed to go to Kunming to apply for our visas for Vietnam, and because Kunming is the main transport hub for the rest of the province. From there we moved on to a small town called Dali but since the weather showed no sign of improving there we pushed on to the northwest since we knew we'd have to come back the same way later. So, we went to Shangri-La. It's a really beautiful Tibetan village surrounded by the snowcapped mountains of the Himalayas and close to the Tibetan border.



If you're not going to Tibet (and we're not) then this is apparently the next best thing. It's a beautiful place and the people were really friendly. The only small problem was that night times were freezing; we were wearing gloves and sleeping with electric blankets which was a bit of a shock to the system after the 30 degrees heat of Yangshuo just the previous week! After two days in Shangri-La we moved on to Tiger Leaping Gorge which was one of the things on our "must do" list for China. We weren't dissappointed!



Tiger Leaping Gorge is a 2-day trek in the mountains. We walked with 2 others; Nancy from Canada, who we've been travelling with since Kunming, and Neil from Australia, who we met in a bar in Shangri-La. It's hard to describe how beautiful this place is. Neither words nor photos do it justice. It's simply stunning; every way you turn there is a view, be it a waterfall, a snowcapped mountain or a valley of pine trees.



And to top it off, after a week of cold and rain we were blessed with glorious sunshine once again. The trek was the best part of the trip so far and possibly the most amazing scenery I've ever seen. At the end of the trek nobody was in any hurry to leave the gorge so we stayed a night at a hostel at the end of the route, rested our aching legs and treated ourselves to a few beers!

The next day we moved on to the town of Lijiang. It's a nice town but it's somehow spoilt by the hordes of tourists passing through (yes, I realise we are tourists ourselves, but still...). Also, after the beauty of Tiger Leaping Gorge, I think any place was going to be a disappointment. We went to see an orchestra playing local Naxi music. Unfortunately that was disappointing too; the musicians' beards were more impressive than their music!



After that, we went back to Dali which is where we are now. There's not a great deal to do here but it has a pretty old town and the hostel we are staying at is a wonderful place to just sit back and chill for a while; I think we were really ready for that! And besides, there was heavy flooding in Vietnam last week so it's probably best to wait for them to clear up a bit before we move on.

November 6th was Mikko's birthday, before we left to go hiking for the day I asked Dave and Song from the hostel if they could arrange a birthday cake in the evening. They came back with the most beautiful cake I've ever seen with all kinds of exotic fruits on top.



Mikko was surprised and happy, and after a while very full of cake. We also had the best company that night; the hostel staff, Neil, Nancy and also Max, a guy we met earlier on our tour in Mongolia who suddenly showed up at the hostel, so it was nice catching up with him again and exchanging travelling tales.
Mikko had plenty of Tsingtao's bought for him throughout the evening and a great night was had by all. Needless to say, we didn't do much the following day!