Ha Noi Overview

Hanoi is the elegant capital city of Vietnam sprawling its way along the Red River banks. There are many lakes, parks and leafy quarters which make the city just freshly green all year round. Ha Noi was first built in 1010 by King Ly Thai To who checked and found out that Feng-shui here was exceptionally good for the prosperity of the kingdom that time; Ha Noi was called Thanh Long meaning "the city of ascending dragons" then.Hanoi's architecture is the blend of Vietnamese, Chinese and French. The city is known to the locals as three main areas: The Ancient Citadel Area (11th century) which was home to the Royal Family; The Old Quarter (Ancient Business Area) dated back from the 11th century was the business quarter of Old Hanoi; The Frech Quarter with French architure dated back from the 19th century were home to the French residents of Hanoi during their time here.

Ha Giang Discovery - Northeast of Vietnam - Explore Hidden high lands - Khau Vai

Who: Rick Simons, Rudy Fettig and Rick Posnick of Boulder; Tony Tran; and David Nguyen.Where: At Ha Giang Province, 4 days motocycling tours. Ha Giang is in the northeast, just south of the Chinese border, a place many hill tribes live, Khau Vai love market, Dong Van - H'mong King's houseBest meal: We had dinner at the Ha Giang Village, where our guide Huong was the chef. The different courses (spring rolls, fish, tofu, soup, beef, rice) kept flowing until we were satiated. However, the most pleasant experience was drinking the homemade rice wine made by Mr. Giang. He continued to pour it until we finally had to say "no more." We did learn that "took saquaya" is the equivalent of "cheers" for the H'mong people.Best time to go: April and Septemper, October, November were a perfect time, but it was hazy everyday, so pictures did not have blue skies in them. The temperature was pleasant; no rain and no crowds of tourists.Best travel tip: I found the Vietnamese people to be among the friendliest I have ever encountered, and not one of them had any animosity toward American people.Motocycling tours - Northeast VietnamConquer highland - Northeast Vietnam - Ha Giang provinceThru Chain BrigdeEthnic market - Du Gia - Ha GiangSales on Ethnic marketKhau Vai - H'Mong ethnic Love Marketsquare glutinous rice cake (filled with green bean paste and fat pork), rice cake (four-cornered dumpling made of glutinous rice wrapped in rush or bamboo leaves and boiled)Eat Thang Co dish - One of speacial ethnic dishesEthnic smilesExplore Northeast of Vietnam with Active Travel Vietnam

Moto Tour Cambodia

I found a beach further south in Vietnam on an Island called Phu Quoc in the Gulf of Thailand. It was a paradise, a white sand beach and 8$ an night to stay on the beach I wasent complaining! I met some people who were also going to this Island that were on my tour of the Mekong Delta. We had supper together each night and played beach volleyball every night for the week that I stayed on the island. One was a doctor from Switzerland and one was a lady from Quebec who had sold everthing she owned and retired at 43 to travel the world, she owned a sail boat in the Carribian for 2 years and has been all over the world in the last 7 years.I got a flight off the island back to Saigon and did a bit more shopping before grabbing tne bus for Cambodia. After six weeks of Vietnam it was time to move on. I am now in Phnom Penn I have been here for a 5 days now. I have just returned from my first long moto tour of northern Cambodia. I was walking the streets on day and found this bike rental shop, he rented good cond 2003-4 Suzuki 400 Enduro bikes (basicaly a dirt bike legal for road use). The next day I was off to a town that was 270 km north called Kratie. I rode up to a town called Kampon Chamm and spent the night there, mostly because my bike that I thought was in great shape decided to blow a rear wheel bearing while I was on a ride through the middle of a jungle village 30 km from any highway or town. I managed to limp it back to town and found a local who had a small repair shop for my type of bike! Wow was I lucky I only had limited tools and no parts, and I really didnt want to cut my journey short! The the Khamer fellow ( who spoke no English) and me disassembled the rear axle and found the bearing had exploded and the ball bearings had fell into the hub of the wheel and had worn out the inside of the wheel, in short it was an ugly breakdown. This is probably the best country in the world to break down on a motorcycle, cause the Khamer people know all there is to know about how a moto works, and how to fix it fast. He had the old bearing punched out (by welding a stud to the old race and puching it out), a bearing that seemed to fit back in the wheel, and the wheel back on in about 25min. and it only cost 10 bucks! I set out the next day for Karatie. I could have took highway the entire way but I opted for the dirt road that followed the Mekong river north through villages where every time I stopped for a picture or for a drink childern and would swarm my bike and yell hello every time I drove past! The children really were amazing so happy, and they really lived so simple. I took a ferry at one point across the river and the men that were on the boat all squatted around and discussed my bike for about 30min. It was so funny the looks of amazement, or shock that I got as I drove through these small villages!I got a flat tire at one point and had to stop at a little "gas station". Their gas stations were a stand on the road with pepsi bottles and whiskey bottles full of gas, which was more like half gasoline and half kerosene, or paint thinner or whatever. This fella had a air compressor so I thought that will help, but I knew that there would be no English spoken here exept "Hullo!". I did have some tire irons Thank God so we had the tire off and the tube out quickly. The gast station owner quicky patched my tube and we threw it back in and back on the bike! The funniest part was the amount of spectators I seemed to have throughout this whole time. I swear that half the village had showed up to watch the unlucky Westerner attempt to change a tire! I got em laughing when I gave them my terrible Donald Duck impression! The rest of the trip was so scenic, the riverbanks had many rice fields that were sooooo green and palm trees overhanging the trails. Every 5 km or so I would see a large Bhuddist or Islamic temples, without fail, old ones and new ones being made. I never understood it, these people lived in such shambles but would give large sums of money to construct new temples every year.I made it to my destination finaly, and drove down to the little dock they had outside of town. Here I hopped a boat to see what I drove all the way up to see. In the Mekong river they have 75 fresh water dolphins, about 7 feet in length at least, that are hard to spot. Karatie is a sure fire place to see them and see them I did! We seen about 6 of them and some even came up for air about 10ft from the boat! I was impressed! Seen a great sunset and then headded back to town. I rode back to Phnum Penh today to finish my journey and it was beautifull but un eventfull! What a great 3 days off the tourist beaten track!

Nha TrangWe caught t

Nha TrangWe caught the overnight bus from Saigon to Nha Trang, which turned out to be quite an experience. Besides the fact that the bus was not the most comfortable of buses ever, we had a very dodgy character on the bus who deprived us of most of our sleep. He had been acting really strangely the whole way on the bus, changing seats a number of times, lying down on the back seats and even lying in the aisle. Luckily South America taught me a thing or two about guarding your possessions on a bus, so I had one foot on Warren's bag, and the other one on my bag. So when he pulled Warren's bag backwards, I immediately felt it and moved it back towards the front. It didn't take long for him to try again, but we caught him at it again and moved Warren's bag right to the front, out of harm's way and facing forwards. A few minutes later, he was fishing around at my bag, but as I felt my bag moving, I kicked really hard backwards, and caught him on the hand. Realising that he had been caught out, he tried to cover up by pretending to look for something that he had dropped on the floor, and even had the cheek to ask us if he could borrow our torch so that he could have a look! Anyway, when he had no luck with our bags, he changed seats yet again. Even though we were both keeping an eye on him, neither of us noticed when he finally hit the jackpot. About 5 minutes after he got off the bus, the girl that was sitting in the seat in front of the last seat he had sat in noticed that 150 Euros was missing out of her wallet...The weather in Nha Trang was miserable. Rainy, and really windy. As it is a coastal resort, there was not much else for us to do, so we decided to spend only one night there, and head out on the overnight bus the next night. There was a huge storm on the first night that we spent there. The wind was so strong that it was blowing potplants over, and our windows rattled so badly all night that we didn't manage to get much sleep. When we wanted to leave the next day, we were told that there were no buses as there had been a landslide, so we decided to take the overnight train instead.Vietnam Travel Directory: http://www.VietnamTravelDirectory.com

Our Three-Day TourUp

Our Three-Day TourUpon arrival at our hotel in Hanoi (Vinh Quanh) we were immediately questioned about tours. We knew we wanted to visit Halong Bay and had been told and read that a tour from Hanoi was the most economical way to go. "Go now, weather is good" they said, which we also knew as we had been watching the weather keenly for the past week. Our hotel also told us that we could lock up our stuff while we were at Halong, "lockers in back, no problem," which would be great. Thinking we were now savvy to the game we declined this initial offer and went around town checking prices and asking questions. We got our low bids and went back to our hotel to see if they would match it. After a "serious" bargaining session, we got our 3 day small group tour, with kayaking and one night on the boat for $38, down from $45. With low expectations but a good price, we were satisfied with our dealings and excited to get out on the water.The morning of our trip we went down to the lobby to lock up our stuff and low and behold they didn't actually have the keys to open the lockers. But we were told we could leave our stuff in the back room. The back room was scattered with other travellers bags and two beds for the hotel workers. Seemed sketchy, but what most others were doing and the people at the hotel were very nice. Kelley said forget it and brought all of her things with her on the trip and I took out the important items from my bag and left a bit of clothes and a rain jacket. The whole situation was quite disappointing due to the fact that this was the reason to book the tour from our hotel. Anyway, our van showed up and we were carted off around town picking up our fellow travellers.The Old Quarter of Hanoi was very interesting in the fact that it seemed to get things going very late as compared to the other places we had been. At 7:30am, the relatively few vehicles in the streets were dominated by white and silver mini buses picking up people to cart them off to their varied destinations. Shops were still mostly closed up and it was even difficult to find food. Quite different than the streets of Lao and Thailand.The 3.5 hour drive form Hanoi to Halong was fine, we stopped for lunch then boarded our "Junk." The Junk, as with 95% of the boats in the bay, were more like ferries with little decorative sails. And that was if they were even to put the sails up, which none bothered.Unlike the "sailing," the bay itself was spectacular! Steep, pitted limestone islands covered with tangles of lush forest vegetation. The distant views were reminiscent of jagged mountain peaks in the Sierras, though they were surrounded by water. We motored through the bay islands, checked out some caves (more like Disneyland than natural caves, but they did have amazing formations), and were dropped off at a floating village to wait for our sleeping vessel. Twenty minutes later a much nicer boat showed up and we joined a new group of people for the evening. We cruised to a beautiful cove and anchored there for the night. The evening was great and we woke the next morning to sunrise on the water and another beautiful day.We came to port on Cat Ba Island and did a bit of hiking up to a peak and clambered up a rickety old tower for a great view. Once to Cat Ba town we started to realize our plight when the tour guide split us off from the group at lunch. We were told that we would be eating at a different restaurant for lunch and would stay at a different hotel than the rest of the group. We would also be having "free time" while the rest of the group went kayaking. It turned out, after persistently asking our guide, that our hotel actually booked us for a completely different, inferior tour and overcharged us for it as well!Lesson numbers 23, 24 and 25:Don't bargain for services, the people selling them to you are smarter than you are and you do not speak their native language; make a copy of your receipt as the tour company will take it from you when you get on the bus; and finally, go over your itinerary with your tour guide and travel agent before you leave, this is difficult to do, but if you don't you will probably get screwed at some point (ask almost anyone) and it is easy for them to pass blame on each other.So, we took the low budget meals and hotel in stride, that is what we had been doing anyway. We did however, (along with the help of the rest of the people on our trip) force the tour company to take us kayaking, which was great. We also got to stop at some devil monkey island that was nice, but the aggressive, tourist-trained monkeys were far from an appealing sight (the guide had gotten bitten the week before chasing a monkey off a stupid woman with cookies strapped to her back). We called our hotel back in Hanoi to let them know that we were upset that they had screwed us, only to have them hang up once they realized we were mad.The next day we split off from our tour and it was fantastic! We got the most beautiful room we have had over our entire trip, met some great local people (read Unlikely Teachers journal entry) and had some great food! We joined our group the next morning back to Hanoi on the "crappy bus" and with the "cheap food" and with a little forceful instance, they dropped us off grudgingly at our hotel.The throw down at the hotel also proved a mixed bag. We did get some money back our our tour "mistake" but, after 20 intense minutes of searching for my bag, I found it under the slats of a bed in the back room with two shirts missing. The hotel blamed the theft on other travellers, of course! We left them with heaps of bad karma and told everyone in the hotel not to book trips or store bags. They were pretty mad as well and we were happy to leave.We found a great hotel a few blocks away with a comedic employee who frantically yelled "Chicken Flu" everytime he sneezed. It was hilarious and a much needed break from our earlier stresses of the day.The next day we tooled around Hanoi trying to figure out trip planning. Everyone we talked to said southern Vietnam was pissin' rain and thus literally, no one had had a good time. We decided to bag the bad weather of Southern Vietnam and booked a cheap flight back to Bangkok for the next day! Sad to leave Vietnam after such a short time, but we couldn't justify heading into bad weather in hopes of a lucky break. We flew back to Bangkok on the 22nd of December with little idea on where to head from there.

Farewell Vietnam