Vietnam 2020

Hanoi: Back Into City Mode

Island paradise, tribal villages, wonderful scenery, small towns and villages, now in the blink of an eye we are transported to a crazily busy capital city and our whole mentality has to change. This regular shift is a part of travel which we are finding particularly stimulating, there’s not much chance things will go stale.

We’ve read a lot on line about difficulties in entering Vietnam with onerous visa checking, so what with that and the Coronavirus threat we arrive expecting delays: in reality there is no such issue and after some health checks we are quickly through. And so we leave Laos where it was around 11,540 kip to the £ and enter Vietnam where it’s about 29,805 dong to the £, so just getting started with taxi fare and a first bit of spending money means taking a cool 3 million from the ATM. 

So we switch the mentality to city. And, as we are to discover, this is where the Coronavirus issues really start to have an impact on our trip.

Hanoi Old Town

The labyrinthine back streets of Hanoi’s old town are terrifically atmospheric. By day the narrow streets with grubby buildings entangled in a spaghetti like mass of electrical cables are bustling markets, plastic bowls lining the floor displaying untold amounts of fresh produce, some appetising, others not so. The chopping of meat and fish, blood splatters abound, the shouts from vendors desperate to outsell their rivals. Souvenir shops overstocked with silk basket ware, tiny cafes selling Pho ensuring that there is just one aroma hanging in the air. We dodge mopeds galore even in these small streets, ladies either on foot or bicycles laden with baskets of produce weave in and out of the confusion of pedestrians and this army of two wheelers, all the time we have to keep our wits about us. From mid afternoon the tone changes in the old town, produce recedes, an army of tiny plastic blue and red stools and tables are placed out on the pavements, locals start to take their places, it’s time for Bia Hoi. Dusk falls, lights come on, the streets are swathed in an orange glow, the miniature chairs fill as visitors join this local tradition. The evening progresses, the bars overflow and the loud music blasts out the convivial chatter as the evening evolves.

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Bia Hoi

Isn’t it fabulous when you arrive in a city and discover a sub culture that you know nothing about until you stumble upon it. Here in Hanoi that sub culture is “bia hoi”, and it’s pretty unique. Every day around mid afternoon, the pavements fill with miniature plastic stools and tables, and crowds start to gather in convivial groups, all drinking a yellow liquid from identical glasses. This liquid is actually a straw coloured beer (“bia hoi”), low alcohol level at around 3%, and is drunk by just about everyone. It’s unique character is that it is “fresh” beer – it’s brewed overnight and in the morning and then delivered in small barrels to the cafes and street vendors at lunchtime, and drunk dry by nightfall. Of course, it’s much more than just a drink: it’s a sociable and inclusive activity and you immediately engage in conversation with those sharing your table, travellers and locals alike. We even meet a mosquito expert who is here to advise the Government on malaria defences. One other small thing: this beer sells at about 40p a pint….little wonder it’s the choice of everyone!

Climate, Culture & Corona

Some things are different here. It’s a little bit cooler, we’ve lost the sunshine and gained grey skies and a bit of overnight rain, Hanoians are wearing coats. Toothpaste tastes salty rather than minty (and that is ODD!). We can’t access any BBC websites as the BBC has offended the Government here and is blacklisted as a result. It’s pot luck whether we can go sightseeing as many public places are closed as protection against the spread of Coronavirus, though these closures seem to be temporary as each place is sterilised and then reopened.

The City And Its History

So we can’t access the prison which was dubbed the “Hanoi Hilton” by American GIs during the Vietnam War, though the exhibition outside is informative if somewhat politically biased. The rather lovely looking Ngoc Son Temple, on a lake island in the city centre, is also closed at first, but we manage a visit before we leave. Also closed is St Joseph’s, the cathedral which looks like a mini Notre Dame. 

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But the Water Puppet Theatre is open and we attend one of the rather quirky shows, which is amusing if a little baffling to follow the storyline. Musicians sit above the water stage, although the “stage” is more like a paddling pool, an array of unusual musical instruments accompany the haunting, high pitched singing which tells the story as the puppets dance and splash and skip around the pool. It’s amusing, we have no idea what is going on. For those of you Brits of a certain age, it’s a bit like watching an episode from Michael Bentine’s Potty Time.  The show ends, the puppeteers appear from behind the screens, waist deep in water and take a bow, it is all a bit of fun.

And so to something we’ve been looking forward to seeing for a very long time, the famed Train Street, where the railway passes tightly between cramped buildings on its way out of town. So many blogs and websites tell you it’s all been closed for safety reasons: it definitely has NOT been closed, you just have to be “invited” by a cafe owner, and then you can take your seat by the track. Simply looking at the track wedged between houses, children playing on the tracks, is surreal enough, but sitting literally within inches of the express train as it powers through is a very unusual, and exhilarating, experience.

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A little further out of the centre is the trio of the ancient citadel, the flag tower and the massively imposing Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, fascinating places charting the history of Hanoi but in particular the fight for freedom and reunification during invasion by “the American imperialist”. We climb down into the underground War Rooms where the 1975 victory was strategised. The pride of the city and the part it played in withstanding invasion is palpable.

A Lenin statue looks sternly across a park; the Communist party flags fly adjacent to the national flag; information boards pour out detail of the comrades’ defence of their nation and their right to reunification. You are left in no doubt where you are in terms of political orientation when you’re in Hanoi, even if its Parisien tree lined boulevards still provide a strong reminder of its French colonisation.

Food Update

The big local dish here is Pho. Pho Bo is beef, Pho Ga is chicken. Like Khao Soi and numerous other dishes on this journey, it’s basically a noodle soup, only this time with spice levels diminishing, so definitely inching in the direction of bland. Maybe we haven’t seen the best of Vietnamese cuisine yet but so far it’s a lot less edifying than Thai. Fancy an egg coffee? Yes that’s another Hanoi speciality, gloopy egg custard on the surface of an espresso like strong coffee – the effect is kind of tiramisu but ten times sweeter and gloopier. 

And finally

In reality we haven’t seen the best of Hanoi, the Coronavirus closures, the overcast grey skies and difficulty fighting off the “travel tummy” have combined to make our time here one of the less edifying of the trip so far. Through no fault of the city itself, we are ready to move on.

Halong Bay, Coronavirus And Us

In the few days we’ve been in Hanoi, the news around the COVID-19 outbreak has raced on, both at home in the UK and across the world. And as these days unfold, so the evidence of change becomes more obvious here too: we are issued with face masks; Michaela is refused entry to a shop simply due to her Western appearance, and the talk of our next destinations on this trip being on shutdown is escalating.

So we are only half surprised when our bus to Halong Bay fails to show, and the message comes through that they are refusing to take us on board because we are British. It takes some persuasion that we left the UK before the virus hit those shores before we are allowed to travel on a later bus.

Halong Bay was originally intended to be one of the major highlights of this trip, but we already know that the cruise boats have been suspended, and Halong city itself is shut down. We think that by choosing a room in Tuan Chau on the other side of the bay, we may be able to find smaller boats still operating.

Wrong. Tuan Chau is an absolute ghost town, streets and streets of hotels and restaurants completely shut down, empty roads, silent apart from the building sites. All of the cruisers and ferries sit idly in the bay, nothing but nothing is open. Our hotel is empty apart from cleaning staff who have to unbolt the door to let us in. What should be, and would normally be, a thriving resort, is utterly deserted.

Walking around this ghost town is weird. There is zero chance that we will be able to sail around the famous karst islands, and no chance of having a choice of places to eat. Or things to do. And we are now even more concerned that onward travel will not be straightforward.

So regrettably the first thing we do in Halong Bay is to arrange our transport out of here, a day earlier than scheduled. Given that this was destined to be a major highlight of the entire trip, and given that we actually have probably the best room and balcony view of the whole trip so far, it’s all a big disappointment. The grey mist shrouding the islands is somehow sadly appropriate.

To avoid another bus issue, we’ve resorted to hiring a private car and driver to take us to our next destination, Tam Coc, but again we’re not sure what we’ll find when we get there. After that we have tickets for a sleeper train heading south, we just have to hope we’re allowed to board.

So we can only idle away a couple of days in the ghost town; there are just two cafes and a Circle K open. We wander round its empty streets and beaches, sit on what would have been a lovely balcony, and wonder how the rest of our trip will pan out. Perversely, we feel quite content: why we would feel quite so content in a shut down resort, we don’t know, but we’re calm. Until….

Around midday on the Sunday, having taken another stroll around this odd deserted place, we return to our hotel to find the boy on reception in a state of panic and calling to us. In broken English he manages to convey that the resort has been quarantined and we must check out and leave town NOW or face 14 days in a quarantine hospital. Needless to say this is the fastest we’ve ever thrown our stuff into our backpacks.

We try not to panic but it’s not easy. All buses and ferries are already suspended, there is no railway here, the only way out is by road. The hotel guy calls the girl at the agency who booked our Monday lift; she can get us out tonight, but not for 4 hours. They’re telling us it’ll be ok, but we will be mighty relieved when we’re in that car.

Our next destination is a 3-hour drive away and, apart from the fact we’ve managed to sort out a bed, we don’t know what we’ll face from now on. 

So as we write this, we sit outside the booking agent’s office, wishing these next 4 hours would pass quickly. And crossing our fingers.

To be continued….

Our Place In The World As The World Collapses

And so we pick up our story from our eviction from Tuan Chau….

For 4 hours we sit at the offices of Halong Tours, at first outside and later, as it chills, inside with the lovely Nhur Minh (aka Julian), who is incredibly sweet and helpful and looks after us for those four hours, from providing water to reassuring chat to organising our driver. Nothing is too much trouble for her.

We will never forget these four hours. As we sit here, scared and bewildered, news is changing at an incredible rate as nation after nation take extreme measures to combat the pandemic. Everything is collapsing across the globe and things are changing at frightening speed. By the time our driver arrives, we have moved a considerable distance from thinking our trip can continue, and our thoughts have turned to how, or whether, we can get back to the UK before they close the borders.

Julian, who two hours ago was saying things will be easier for us in the south of Vietnam, is, by the time we leave, saying “I think perhaps you need to get home”. The 3 hour drive to Tam Coc goes surprisingly quickly. Neither of us sleeps. For long spells neither of us speaks. We know we are in trouble.

It’s just after 11pm when we reach Tam Coc, our hostess Khang Le is incongruously smiley and welcoming. We leave our backpacks untouched and instead spread paperwork and iPads on the bed; we know now that we have to get out of Vietnam as quickly as possible. We secure flights for tomorrow night, Hanoi to Bangkok and Bangkok to Heathrow, but booking flights is only a small part of the challenge we face now. If things escalated still further out of our control then the fix we are in deepens.

We suddenly feel desperate to get home.

Sleep is fitful at best; we just can’t wait for it to be morning. Khang Le cooks breakfast and rather wonderfully arranges a family member to drive us the 2 hours plus to the airport. There are some incredibly helpful people around when you need them. We vow to repay her by returning one day when this is over.

Now, we sit in Terminal 2 at Hanoi, it’s several hours till our first flight, but we figured it was best to get here early and show that we are doing our best to leave. What else can we do?

The drive here was dominated by fog, rain and heavy traffic; now we stare out of the Terminal window at more of the same. We would give absolutely anything to be staring at the English rain by this time tomorrow.

Glad To Be Home, Gutted To Be Home

First things first, we got home. The euphoria of escaping Vietnam was soon replaced by the sadness of losing our dream year after 7 weeks, which was in turn soon replaced by the stark reality of how much life has changed back here in the UK, and how insignificant are our own experiences in the face of this crisis.

After almost 24 hours travelling home we had missed the latest developments and quickly tried to appraise ourselves by scouring the internet as we neared home. And it seems the new buzz words are social distancing.

We couldn’t have imagined what was going to happen when we set off on what was to be the year of our travel dreams, back on January 29th. At that point there was precious little indication of just how fast and far reaching these unprecedented changes would be, it is difficult now to know where life and the World will go next.

On a smaller, and we hope not too trivial scale, we were delighted with the first 7 weeks of living our dream, and know now that long term travel will be the delight we always imagined it would be. We loved the variety of destinations, loved the changing types of temporary home, especially the homestays, and loved the experiences of meeting people of all different types and backgrounds.

We also now know we must have been incredibly lucky to get those seats on the flight home; the Heathrow flight was a completely full Airbus 380 with 507 seats, yet somehow we had managed to book it less than 24 hours earlier, albeit two seats in different parts of the plane. An overnight long haul flight in separate seats is a bit odd, but we weren’t complaining.

We would like to mention a few people who helped us get home and/or showed compassion, even financial compassion. Julian at Tuan Chau and Khang Le at Tam Coc were incredibly helpful ladies; both the hotel at Tuan Chau (which had to evict us) and the homestay at Tam Coc only charged us for the one night we stayed rather than the full booking, and Vietnam Railways immediately refunded most of the fare for the sleeper train we’d booked ahead for next week. And we must mention Thai Airways, who could so easily have exploited the situation we were in, as other carriers apparently were, yet charged us only £330 each for that last minute booking all the way from Hanoi to Heathrow, which we think is incredibly reasonable in the circumstances.

International travel for everyone now goes off the agenda. Our dream may be on hold, but that is an insignificant thought in the face of this worldwide crisis. And of course, all being well, we can simply resume when this is over, whenever that may be.

Next step, social distancing, self isolation. In our own home. We aren’t complaining.