Outside of bustling Hanoi, Vietnam felt like a very different place. Not a huge surprise with the change from big city to smaller locales, but the two other locations we visited each left very distinct impressions themselves – one a remarkable but understated natural atmosphere, and the other a sunny and cheerful yet somewhat overdone destination.
Halong Bay was, in spite of gloomy weather, a wonderfully moody excursion. Our group was able to rent a private boat for a four-hour cruise in the Gulf of Tonkin, located in the northeast of Vietnam. The drive itself was a great way to see the new-ish (2021) major expressway connecting Hanoi, Hai Phong (the 3rd largest city in Vietnam and the largest port in the north), and Halong Bay in half the time it used to take.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Halong Bay contains over 1600 islands and islets, nearly all of them uninhabited, and the limestone karst landforms rise almost eerily from the warm bay waters – usually turquoise, but more of a murky green on this rainy day.
We sailed through the foggy, misty landscape, taking cover when the sprinkles became real rain, emerging again and again to ogle the clumps and pillars of land covered in tropical vegetation, the rock beneath etched by centuries of erosion into arches, caves, cones, and lateral cuts.
For once, I allowed myself to enjoy the scenery as it was, not how I expected and wanted it to be – all sunny and shiny, the light glinting on the gem-colored water – and I found myself actually feeling glad for this muted view. The bay was serene for our visit, with few boats out, and the peaceful, quiet cruise was a welcome diversion from the activity of the past few days.
*****
We arrived in Hoi An at night after a final, full day in Hanoi, a flight to Danang, and a drive south. The city at night had me a bit flummoxed, uncertain about why this small town collected such accolades. Its trademark lanterns were beautiful and festive, and the streets away from the river were busy in a fun way, but the raucous, brightly-lit party atmosphere along both sides of the riverfront felt like we had accidentally landed in Las Vegas or Disney World.
Inebriated and minimally-dressed tourists roved the riverside promenade, sloshing drinks and cutting us off as we walked and tried to find a photo shot without dozens of heads in it. Put off by the scene, I retreated to the quieter streets lined with shops and restaurants, and all was okay again.
We stayed in an attractive old colonial-style hotel away from the downtown but easily accessible by “buggy” or on foot. It turned out to be a haven in the heat and bustle. Here in Hoi An, we had our first days of real sun, and after a few short hours, we were beginning to regret what we had wished for in cloudy, gray northern Vietnam as the temperatures soared into the 90s (30s C) and the humidity ratcheted up even more.
For me, one of the highlights was a Japanese covered bridge from 1593, totally intact and the centerpiece of the old town.
In the light of day, I enjoyed walking street after street, even along the river, popping into small shops, looking at art, trying on a few pieces of clothing, and admiring the centuries-old homes and bright, modern coffeeshops. My companions were avid shoppers; I am at best a reluctant one, so I split off and walked the town on my own, free to peruse the goods but buy nothing.
In spite of its popularity and sporadic excesses, Hoi An still charmed with plenty of signs of simple, daily life. These humble vignettes, along with the upbeat cheer at every turn, will remain happy memories of my visit to this small, ancient town.
It was 1971 or ’72, and I remember sitting at my school cafeteria table, wearing my POW/MIA bracelet for the first time. For those too young to remember, during the Vietnam War, many of us wore a metal bracelet with the name of a prisoner of war or missing-in-action soldier on it. (About 4-5 million bracelets were sold at about $2.50 each.) A recent story I heard about a woman who has spent over 50 years searching for “her” soldier made me realize what a loser I must be. I don’t even remember the name or the outcome for my soldier – how sad! I hope that means it ended well and I was able to forget for a good reason.
What I do still remember is the way the word “Vietnam” made me feel back then; it was a very scary place to imagine for a naive teenager. Later, as an adult, I watched so many sobering movies about the war and its aftermath (Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Good Morning, Vietnam, Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, among others), and the frightening view I had of this time in history was only reinforced. Given those dark and upsetting memories, I was thrilled to see what a vibrant and joyful place Vietnam is today.
The first week I spent in Southeast Asia last month was dedicated to Vietnam, and it wasn’t nearly enough to see the country in full. We spent three days in Hanoi and its environs, including a day trip to Halong Bay. Then we flew south to Danang and drove on to Hoi An, two very different cities.
(Parenthetical note from this linguistics geek: I learned while there that the Vietnamese language only contains one-syllable words, connecting them in speech to form different meanings. All of the place names above are more correctly written as Viet Nam, Ha Long, Ha Noi, Da Nang, etc. I would prefer to write them this way because it more accurately reflects the local pronunciation, but I feared that would be too distracting, so I have Anglicized the spellings. Thank you for reading this aside that is basically for me to see in the future!)
As expected, Hanoi was a big, noisy, crowded, gray-skied metropolis, and I enjoyed every minute of it. Like many cities outside the West, this one had a full range of socioeconomic levels living side-by-side. The elegant old French Quarter with its wide streets and monumental buildings had plenty of tiny side streets, some not nearly as nice as the big ones, and the Old Quarter (Hoàn Kiếm) and City Center pushed right up into each other with a mish-mash of architectural styles and old-new contrasts. As an inveterate walker, I took the opportunity to wander this safe-feeling city in multiple directions.
My first outing on foot was not alone. Because my husband finally gave up his chance to join me on this trip, I signed onto a small group adventure and met the best strangers I could have ever found to spend three weeks with. On the very first evening, four of us decided to walk about 20 minutes to dinner. I slipped on the only pair of nice sandals I’d brought and set out into the humid night. The very humid night. The moisture in the air is the only explanation I have to explain how the 2-inch woven wedge heel on my left shoe separated from the sole and began to slap against the pavement, tenuously connected to the front of the shoe.
At the restaurant, I removed the offending thwapper altogether and kept it in hopes I could glue it back on at the hotel. Alas, no – as I left to hobble home after dinner, clumpity-clumping as if I had one much shorter leg, the right heel detached itself from the sole! That one I ripped off with little fanfare and tossed both woven wedges from my very favorite sandals into a garbage can on the street. The next afternoon’s foray into the city on my own was to find and purchase a replacement pair of sandals, and I had so much fun hunting around and then chatting with a charming salesgirl at a shop that I deemed my shoe disaster to be a lucky addition to my adventures in Hanoi.
Official sightseeing in Hanoi was hit or miss. We visited the Temple of Literature, whose raison d’être was commendable – built in 1070, it is dedicated to Confucius, sages and scholars, and the site of Vietnam’s first national university – but it just didn’t really grab my interest aesthetically, and our guide went on a little too long as we stood in the dusty grounds. It was still a fun visit as throngs of local high school students were taking their graduation photos there.
(Another side note: Vietnam’s literacy rate growth is seriously impressive. After WWII, about 5-10% of the population was literate; now it is over 95%, one of the highest rates in the world. By way of comparison, the U.S. literacy rate ranges from 79% to mid-80% depending on the source.)
Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and home were similarly tedious, especially because we failed to go in the morning when we could have actually seen his body. I’m not particularly morbid and interested in corpses, but the stories about sending (or not; there is controversy) “Uncle Ho’s” body to Russia for refurbishment each year was just too sensational to ignore! The park and presidential palace were literal bright spots in an otherwise gray day. Without getting too far into political ideologies, it was also interesting to learn about Ho Chi Minh’s goals that transcended simple Communism, namely Vietnamese independence and the idea of blending Communism with nationalism, including his success in allowing markets to continue to flourish within the system.
The last touristy thing we saw was the most interesting – the Hỏa Lò Prison, aka the Hanoi Hilton. Many of us have heard so much about the American prisoners held there during the Vietnam War, but a number of fellow travelers and I were unaware that this famous prison was actually built by the French in the 1880s and used to imprison, abuse, and torture Vietnamese detainees. Left there in the brief period between French control and the war as a symbol of colonialist exploitation and the bitterness of the Vietnamese towards the French, it began a new life in 1967 when the North Vietnamese began using it to hold and similarly mistreat American servicemen. Needless to say, it was a depressing but eye-opening place to behold.
As is often the case, the parts of Hanoi I enjoyed most were the daily street scenes and experiences. One morning we walked in a local market with zero tourists and saw all kinds of strange produce and an even larger assortment of squirmy animal products.
We crammed into a coffeeshop for egg coffees, perching on tiny stools and sipping this odd but tasty combo. I so enjoyed seeing the industrious local ladies in what looked like silk PJs, pushing their carts and balancing their huge woven baskets on a pole throughout the old part of the city.
Another afternoon, I left the group and walked the mile around Hoàn Kiếm Lake in the historical center of the city. It was a brutally hot, humid, and smoggy day, but it was great to get in a brisk walk while watching local families and couples enjoy their city.
We ended our time in the capital with a fancy dinner in the French Quarter, the only really high-end meal we had on the trip. Housed in a restored French colonial villa, the restaurant served traditional Vietnamese cuisine and provided a calm oasis in the middle of this bustling city. It was a perfect last evening in Hanoi, itself a great introduction to Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
The bags were 99% packed, and all systems were go for our trip to Southeast Asia on Wednesday evening. And then they weren’t. What changed? As I noted in my last post, we’d wavered a little on leaving for a long vacation in a place increasingly affected by the coronavirus outbreak, but all of our knowledge, intuition, and local contacts suggested that we were extremely unlikely to actually catch anything.
Including our flights! We’d already rebooked our return flights (a time-consuming and stressful task), which had a problematic Hong Kong layover. As the number of virus cases mounted, however, we began to rethink the seven regional flights we had booked and even our return via Tokyo. We didn’t have that many destinations, but many of our flights involved layovers back in Bangkok, and we started to eliminate some of them in an attempt to salvage our trip.
With every adjustment, we ran into a domino effect of problems. Eliminate Cambodia and the four planes associated with just that one stop? Oops, no flights from Luang Prabang to Danang a few days earlier. Spend more time in Chiang Mai? Nope; Laos was already getting short shrift, and what was the point of flying for over 24 hours to get to Asia and then cut our top destinations short?
Neither our friends on the ground in Thailand and Vietnam nor our families in the U.S. pushed us in any one direction, but there were plenty of signs that this might not be the carefree and fun vacation we had planned six months ago. We are not retired and have obligations at home, and we could ill afford a problem at any point with a return. Though getting sick was not even on our radar, getting stuck or, worse, potentially quarantined based on where we had been, was a worry.
It did us in. Call us wimps, but we wanted to really enjoy this trip and not just get through it. Thirty-six hours before takeoff, we pulled the plug. Before I canceled all the flights, hotels, guides, and drivers, we went online, searched for cheap fares to anywhere we’d never been, and bought tickets for Guatemala for one day after our original departure date. We didn’t even really have to repack the bags!
So here we are in Antigua, the old capital of Guatemala, where we landed two hours before we would have in Bangkok even though we left a full day later! It’ll be a short stay, but it’s a nice consolation prize for the trip to which we sadly bid adieu. For the next few days, we’ll speak Spanish and climb volcanoes, but we’ll be headed back to Bangkok and all of our other SE Asian stops in November if all goes well!
Buenas noches, all, and thanks for all the support throughout our decision-making process!
It’s countdown day 10! A mere week and a half separates us from takeoff on our long-awaited flight to Bangkok and Southeast Asia. We drained a couple of frequent flyer accounts for some cushy Business Class seats, and we cashed in a bunch of hotel and credit card points for a string of comfortable hotel stays throughout Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
We made plans to meet several blogging friends; we have tours set up and hikes charted out. I’ve practiced my Vietnamese greetings and refreshed my internal map of Bangkok’s streets and the way to a fun rooftop bar. I’ve even started a little pile of clothes and toiletries, shoes and sunscreen, plane entertainment and sundry supplies.
But with each passing day this week, our trip becomes a little more untenable. The Wuhan, China-based coronavirus is putting a growing crimp on things, and it’s not because we have any real fear of getting the disease. Our concerns now are that we could get stranded in a country that has decided to close its airports (we route home through Hong Kong, for example), or that once in Southeast Asia, we will find things shuttered or devoid of life.
A few days ago, we were still gung-ho on going. Fewer crowds – yay! We are not going to China itself – no problems for us! The news media always overblow everything, we rationalize. Today, we are beginning to worry for real. Bangkok department stores are scanning temperatures, Hong Kong’s streets are emptying out, a few more cases are cropping up in the countries to which we are heading. What if …? we keep asking ourselves on a burgeoning list of topics. Wahhhhhhhh!
Unwinding the trip may take as long as planning it out. Can I shift everything to fall; will we be safely out of the woods with the virus by then? Will my airlines and hotels let me make changes or cancel without massive fees? Where else might we escape in these two and a half weeks we have carved out of our busy schedules?
I’m curious to hear some of your thoughts. Do we stay or do we go?