Hanoi

We found the lake that is in the middle of the city and apparently very popular with the locals.  There is a pagoda on the island that is in the middle and Renee was kind enough to pose in front of it.

As you can see the traffic is a little ridiculous, but they don't really want to run over pedestrians.  The trick is to wait for the best gap you can get for the time of day and they start crossing slowly and with purpose.  The cars and motorbikes will avoid you, just don't make any sudden moves or stop in the middle of the street.

Enshrined in the box is Ho Chi Minh himself.  They don't let you take pictures and his corpse looks pretty fake.  They move you around him quickly so you can't get too good of a look at him, but it is an entombed communist leader that I can cross off my list of entombed communist leaders to see.  I tried to get there early and it wasn't really necessary.  The line moved quickly, they just make you jump through hoops to see him.  I got yelled at for walking on the grass in front of the mausoleum, so you have to walk all around the side of the building the get into it.  cyclo drivers were trying to get me to pay them to drive me there.  Don't fall for it.  They said it was 2km  to get around the building; it was more like 200m.  They said it would take 30 minutes to walk there and that I would miss the tour time; it was more like 10 minutes with a bunch of tour time left.  You also have to check you camera before you enter the mausoleum, but you give it to a worker of the complex and they give you a ticket.  You claim your camera as soon as you leave the mausoleum.  Behind the tomb, there is a museum to Ho Chi Minh that has a replica of his houses before and after the war and some of his belongings.  It was kind of interesting, but it was the HCM gift shop that really showed how they feel about their beloved leader.

We stayed at Youth Hotel the night before our Ha Long Bay tour.  It was 290,000 VND was a three bed room with a/c and private bath.  It did the trick as it was only $5 a person, but the roomed smelled moldy and there was a hole in the shower that looked like a person kicked through it.  

The last two nights in Hanoi after the HLB tour were at Hanoi Memory Hotel where it was much nicer and only a little more expensive (~$12/ppn).  We did have to switch rooms at one point, but that was because they received a reservation and we were only booking night-to-night.  

Ha Long Bay

We booked a three day, two night Ha Long Bay tour before arriving in Hanoi for 1,976,000VND ($103) per person.  While visually, the tour was spectacular, the amenities were lacking.  The service was generally very friendly and helpful, but focused and time oriented.  Would I recommend a tour of Ha Long Bay? Yes.  Would I recommend this tour company? Probably not.

First the beautiful:

Our vessel

The 'snack boats' that followed us around and served us cheap, cold beer while swimming

View from the caves

Our tour guide Dat trying to explain rock formations in broken English and then looking at us like we were stupid if we didn't see 'The Laughing Buddha'

More caves

In Viet Nam, it is OK to feed your trash to the Dolphins. Renee thought this was just way too ironic. 

Inadequate floatation devices 

Kayaking to floating village

Junk boat + snack boats 

Ahh! Beautiful Cat Ba National Park

Beginning of the 'easy hike' 

While the first part of the hike had some stairs and a clear path, towards the top you were rock climbing and climbing up rusted out ladders. People's shoes were breaking because they did not expect the hike to be so strenuous. We even saw one girl go down barefoot because the mud made her shoes too slippery. 

ALMOST to the top! 

Chris made it, Renee took one look at the weight limit sign and rusted stairs and said 'Not on your life!'

View from the top! Very Jurassic Park-ish! 

Don't look down! 

Monkey Island Resort

Arrival at Monkey Island

Our Hut

Inside our hut

Hiking around Monkey Island

The nicer beach that we could look at, but couldn't go swimming at

Gasp! A MONKEY ON MONKEY ISLAND!! 

'Floating Bar' aka our tour guide with a bucket of booze he was distributing 

Blissful about the Floating Bar and the adequate floatation devices this time! 

Buffet dinner... mostly seafood and some chicken, with the ever present French Fries! Nearly EVERYTHING we ate on our tour was deep fried in one way or another! 

Overall:
During the three days of this trip, I'd say about a whole day was spent traveling.  Ha Long Bay is about 3.5 hours from Hanoi each way, the boat to and from Cat Ba Island took about another hour and there was driving to and from the dock involved, and we got stuck at Cat Ba National Park waiting for about an hour for the bus to pick us up.  Now, I thought that there would be more relaxing time as this is a vacation on a bay; not really.  I think the tour guides count relaxing time as whenever we aren't actively moving, though waiting for a bus or sitting in a car is not too relaxing.  We were granted about an hour of swim time after the cave and kayaking on the first day and we had the last half of the second day on Monkey Island.  We had the nights to ourselves, though I think that was more recovery from the day than relaxing.  We slept on the junk boat the first night, pretty nice boat rooms, and the second night was at Monkey Island Resort, okay huts for the ambiance.
A cruel joke was having air conditioning in the rooms.  While they would turn them on only at night, they would turn them off in the wee hours of the morning to wake us up.  Let me tell you, there is nothing worse than waking up exhausted from the previous day hot and sweaty.  I know they did this to wake us up without "waking us up" but I thought it was unnecessary and started the day on the wrong foot.  The third day was spent almost entirely traveling as we moved from Monkey Island to Cat Ba Island back to Ha Long Bay to drive back to Hanoi.

Nha Trang

This is a a little bit of a super post as it covers the entire several days in Nha Tran, VN.

  

  


The sleeper bus from HCMC to Nha Trang.  They said it would take 9 hours, but it was closer to 12.  It cost only 171,000VND ($9) each and it is available as an open tour, where you buy one ticket that allows you to move south to north or visa-versa and get off along the way at certain cities.  DO NOT sit in the back.  We thought we were all sly getting the last row of seats, but the back is where you feel every bump in the road and the road is BUMPY.  

A short walk to the beach from the hotel

We got to our hotel that was listed in Lonely Plant and was of described condition, but here they experienced the same power outages as in the south.  Not the hotels fault, but annoying non-the-less.  475,000 VND/night ($25) for two beds, bathtub, and small balcony.  

 

View from the roof.  

A real treat was the Louisiane brewhouse located right on the beach.  They craft their own beers and offer pool, showers, toilets, and beach chairs for a low 30,000VND ($2) fee per day, per person.  We spent most of our time in front of this place as it offered all the comforts we needed to enjoy the beach (read: cold beer).  

The view from a beach chair at the Louisiane

As an added bonus we noticed that around 6pm everynight, local vendors would walk along the beach selling fresh seafood.  They served whatever you ordered cooked on a charcoal grill that they carried over their shoulders from one spot on the beach to the next.  They were not allowed to cross into the Louisiane's part of the beach, but anyone that wanted to enjoy the food just stepped over the property line towards the beach.  We paid 200,000VND (~$10) for a lobster, crab, and clams.  Probably some of the freshest seafood I've ever had.  

You can see the woman with the hot coals cooking the food, while the young man cuts the crab for us.  

We are definitely enjoying this.  You can see the property marker and security guard in the background by the flag.  We brought our beers with us.  

Vung Tau

 OK, this is what I know everyone is interested in. . . the classic beach scene.  We made it to Vung Tau, which was 3+ hrs from HCMC by minibus for 120,000VND ($6.25).  The road was bumpy from construction and a child threw up from motion sickness; the minibus is NOT recommended when mostly locals use it.  

  Once we got to our hotel via taxi from the bus station we were doing much better.  So far we have been using online bookings for our rooms and provided transportation to get from A to B.  This was the first time we had arrived in an area without knowing where we were staying or even for how long.  We told a tuk-tuk driver that we wanted a taxi to the Back Beach area (longer stretch of beach) and he proceeded to get into the taxi with us to see if we would go to a place he would get commission.  Luckily the taxi driver was not in on the commission plan and we were able to pay him the metered fare.  The "chauffeur" wasn't to eager to let us walk away from his choice in hotels, but he didn't fight us too hard.  We ended up finding a place for 250,000 VND/night ($15) for a double bed with a/c, TV, and across the street from the beach.  This sounded great until we were introduced to communist rationing and rolling power outages.  The woman working behind the reception desk didn't seem too shocked when we were surprised to be woken up to the sun coming in through our windows and no a/c the next morning.  We later figured out that the rivers were running pretty dry from the drought and the hydroelectric plant comes in second after rice irrigation; everywhere in our budget and below was without power or only had generators for the lights.  The power would return sometime after 7pm but before 11pm.   

Our hotel was just to the left of the tall, bluish building.

  Beyond the power outages, the location was fine for relaxing.  This town is popular with the locals because it is so close the HCMC.  For the most part, we were the majority of the foreigners we saw.  We saw a few oil rig workers in restaurants and we met a Australian teacher on holiday, but it was most just us and Vietnamese.  Now the price of the room did double for the one weekend night we were there, but that was fine because the room rates were posted in the lobby and we didn't feel like we were being ripped off by being foreign.  

  The water wasn't too clear, but it was warm and not very dirty.  It was also inhabited by locals who wear their street clothes when swimming.  Also, for 20,000VND ($1.20) we were able to rent a lounge chair for the day.

The chair guardian was moving the seats closer for low tide with a cig lit 

The last three pictures are of the Front Beach.  There was a tiny beach near a sea wall and port, but all the non-Vietnamese restaurants and bars were located there.  It was only about 60,000VND ($3) to get there by taxi from our hotel.