Southern Vietnam

There was a time when I thought that coming to Vietnam was a bad idea from the start; the everlasting rain, the incredibly pushy hawkers, and the constant sound of mopeds was driving me mad, and I was ready to skip most of the country and move on. I'm glad we didn't though, because the last couple of weeks in Vietnam were absolutely lovely; we had glorious sunshine, the hawkers seemed to give up on us, and even the mopeds didn't seem too bad anymore.

Maybe it was just the weather that was getting us down before, or maybe we had just got a bit tired of moving about all the time for the last three months. Whatever it was, the curse was lifted by a tour of the countryside around Dalat in the "Highlands" of Vietnam, five days on the beach in Mui Ne, the buzzing chaos that is Saigon (officially Ho Chi Minh City), and finally a boat trip in the Mekong Delta.

In Dalat we took a tour out to the countryside and saw a coffee plantation, silk factory, rice wine making, and a lot of gardens and fields of flowers and veg. It was pretty nice change from hanging out in the bars and waiting for the rain to stop. And, of course, we sampled some of Dalat's famous(?) red wine.

Mui Ne was like a holiday from a holiday. We spent five days doing absolutely nothing. Swimming, eating, and some more Dalat wine filled the days quite nicely. The only touristy thing we did was a walk up the Fairy Stream to see some waterfalls. The waterfalls actually turned out to be a little trickle of muddy water but the walk along - and in - the river was nice.



After charging our batteries in Mui Ne we headed off to Saigon, which turned out to be another big surprise. I had imagined not to like the city at all after what I had heard from other travellers, but Saigon turned out to be quite charming in a slightly decadent way. If you can ignore the old fat western guys and their young local "girlfriends" the city is really nice and I wish we had a little more time to explore.



From Saigon we went to the Mekong Delta to take a boat trip around the delta and then on to Cambodia. The trip was fantastic! We saw some beautiful jungle scenery, waved to about a million little kids on the shores, screaming in joy at seeing strange western people. Of course there was also some crocodile feeding (what kind of a tour would not have it in the itinerary?), local music and singing (sorry, but that sounded like cats being strangled) and snake wine tasting. After all this fun we found ourselves at the most laid-back border crossing we have experienced so far. It was literally just a bloke by a fence, glancing at our passports as we walked past with beers in our hands. Nice!



We are now in Phnom Penh in Cambodia, but due to some vicious drinking games last night we haven't really done much sightseeing yet. Well, we have time, we're on holiday!

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...