Map, Journey and Costs

Note: prices are for 2 adults with baggage

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From	To	Mode	Duration	Cost
🇻🇳 Ha Giang	🇻🇳 Hanoi	Coach	06:00	£31.51
🇻🇳 Hanoi	🇻🇳 Cát Bà	Coach	03:30	£20.13
🇻🇳 Cát Bà	🇻🇳 Ninh Binh	Coach	04:30	£17.83
🇻🇳 Ninh Binh	🇻🇳 Ninh Binh Train Station	Taxi	00:10	£3.37
🇻🇳 Ninh Binh Train Station	🇻🇳 Đồng Hới	Train	08:00	£30.46
🇻🇳 Đồng Hới	🇻🇳 Phong Nha	Minibus	00:03	£4.22
🇻🇳 Phong Na	🇻🇳 Đà Nẵng	Coach	07:00	£30.78
🇻🇳 Đà Nẵng	🇻🇳 Hội An	Taxi	00:50	£14.56
🇻🇳 Hội An	🇻🇳 Đà Nẵng Airport (DAD)	Taxi	00:45	£14.21
🇻🇳 Đà Nẵng Airport (DAD)	🇻🇳 Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport (SGN)	Plane	01:20	£104.32
🇻🇳 Tân Sơn Nhất International Airport (SGN)	🇻🇳 Saigon Amigo Hostel	Taxi	00:43	£5.83

Apologies for the delayed blogging! Our latest accommodation only had a strong enough WiFi signal if you literally sat on the loo. Some would argue it’s where I do my best work, but it caused a delay.

Our snaking down Vietnam continued, Hanoi was the first stop. It all got a bit whistle-stop until we arrived in Hội An - so buckle up!

Alas, we really didn’t do too much in Hanoi! This was partly down to being knackered after the Ha Giang Loop, and partly due to Laura recovering from being ill.

One thing we did do was frequent Train Street, thrice in as many days.

It’s a fairly narrow street, with coffee shops running down both sides. About once an hour, a train will come down the street - it barely fits and is quite a spectacle:

It’s an endearing place, and Laura in particular got very addicted to it. It’s now one of her favourite places in the world!

The Vietnamese authorities are (almost certainly rightly!) worried about health & safety at Train Street. This has led to a farce that further contributes to its charm.

There are barriers, signs and guards in place banning entry, but if you pre-agree with a coffee shop owner to buy something they’re allowed to escort you in. People take photos on the tracks, but a man with a whistle will wave a stick at you if you dawdle:

And every so often the police come to throw everybody off. But they will let you finish your drink, and they won’t follow if you go back onto another section :thinking_face:

A popular tourist attraction in Hanoi is the Water Puppet Show. Water puppetry has a long history, being performed in the flooded rice paddies of Northern Vietnamese villages since the 11th century. Hanoi has a large dedicated theatre in the centre, and the 5 showings per day sell out like hotcakes.

We heard that it was pretty abstract, so hard to follow what’s actually going on. We decided to put that to the test: I bought the audio-guide and after the show Laura had to explain to me what she fathomed.

The quality of the audio-guide unfortunately meant that we were both lost and a couple of quid lighter. The audio-guide was mainly used to explain things like how the fox running up the tree is a particularly complicated bit of water puppetry.

Understanding aside, the show itself was enjoyable and definitely worth doing:

Immediately outside the theatre, a circus was in full swing. We left as a lady was casually spinning a table on her feet, then a man whipped a couple of gigantic snakes out of a basket 😱

We had a cool meal at Tung’s Kitchen where we accidentally ordered build-your-own spring rolls.

After a quick demo from the chef, nobody went hungry:

Another cool stop was The Note Cafe. Every table is equipped with a pen and post-it notes, and you’re free to decorate the place as you see fit.

I drew a picture of Laura that was swiftly relegated to being underneath the table :pensive_face:

A short bus transfer brought us to Cát Bà Island, where we were able to get some outdoorsy stuff done.

Many people go on a multi-day cruise to explore Cát Bà and Ha Long Bay, but we decided not to. We’d read horror stories of the cheap cruises, and didn’t feel like we could financially justify the more pricey ones.

We decided to spend a bit of time on Cát Bà, and see Ha Long Bay on a day-trip.

The trip gave us a day to sit back and take in the views around Cát Bà and Ha Long Bay. It weighed in 10x cheaper than a multi-day excursion, and we felt it struck a good balance.

We got to have a bit of a paddle through some cool caves:

And had a bit of a cycle to a village:

Most of the time was spent taking in the sights on deck:

A taxi driver accepted a small amount of dosh to drive us to Cát Bà National Park, and wait for us to hike up the viewpoint.

We’re well versed in viewpoint hikes now, and this one didn’t break the mould. It did offer some fantastic views:

But we’re both now craving a long rambly hike to break the short-sharp viewpoint monotony. Fingers crossed that Hong Kong will be able to deliver :fingers_crossed:

Ninh Binh is a tiny city with some breathtaking surroundings. We stayed a few days, and were able to do plenty of outdoorsing.

Our hotel rented some knackered bikes to us, for 75 pence/day. They were quite something, you could hear me coming from a mile away - with the mudguards making a screech whenever the wheels moved.

They just about did the job though, and we had a good cycle around some rice paddies and a pagoda:

There were some questionable signs about the specifics of karma:

The hassle levels at the pagoda, but also throughout the whole of Vietnam, were very high. Upon approaching, several coffee shop owners walked in front of our bikes to tell us they have free parking (if you buy something from the cafe). When walking into the pagoda, an old lady was grabbing my arm whilst trying to pull me back to buy some odd meat thing that I didn’t want.

It got really draining after a while. That is a privileged and insensitive thing to say, but:

• 10s of times per day we were asked to buy bags/hats/sunglasses/magnets/candles/fans/shoeshines/massages/…
• “No thanks” is not an acceptable answer until your 3rd repetition
• Context wasn’t appreciated
  • On 2 occasions whilst I was cycling down a busy road, motorbikers rode alongside me and tried to sell me things 🤦

As the days in Vietnam went by it left us feeling drained.

We ended our cycling adventure with a short viewpoint hike before sunset.

Approaching the viewpoint there was more hassle from coffee shop owners, walking out in front of us to offer free parking. This ultimately led to Laura trying to cycle past the official security guard as she thought he was a coffeeshop person, he wasn’t happy 😱

We got a good view:

On our last day in Ninh Binh we hired our faithful bikes again. We cycled out to Tràng An pier where it’s possible to hire a guide to row you around a set route for a couple of hours (we did route #2 for what it’s worth!).

There were some great views:

There were a couple of stop-offs at temples on the way. Bit morbid, but definitely found my ideal gravestone:

Onwards to (yet another!) short stay in Phong Nha, a national park that is popular with backpackers.

The main event here was a boat tour into a gigantic cave. Logistical information was scant, so we arrived at what looked like a pier and tried our hand. It turned out that tours were of fixed price per boat, and you could have up to 12 people in one. We waited a few minutes, and soon had a posse of German and Swiss tourists we could join.

There were some cool views:

After a whole load of short stops we were more than ready to settle down somewhere for a few days. We considered stopping in Huế and Da Nang - but in the end decided to skip straight to Hội An for 5 days of rest and recuperation.

After a long lie-in and a lot of coffee we went out for a wander, and saw an island with a sign - “Hội An Memories Land”. Intrigued, we sauntered over and found out it was some form of… well we’re still not sure what it was. But the entry fee was £1.50 ish so we thought it would be worth popping in.

There were lots of mini shows:

And many oldish people in army uniforms seemed to be very into it.

There was a moon you could take a photo with.

And we had our first exposure to the local delicacy: ice cream rolls.

Still a bit unsure what it was all about, but we had fun.

One of our favourite things on Vietnam was The Lantern Lady’s Lantern Making Class. We need a couple of lampshades back home, and were very up for trying our hands at some craftwork.

We opted for the smaller sized ones in the hope they’ll survive our travels, and set to work.

The suggested length of time it takes to complete the class is 90 minutes. Me and Laura took 3 and a half hours 😱. In hindsight we were being quite perfectionist.

There were a couple of mishaps:

• I got too excited with the glue, and ended up with my hands and arms covered with it. Everything I touched would fuse to my skin, luckily the lantern lady quickly noticed my pickle and showed me to the sink
• We were under strict instruction to trim the edges of the fabric, but in no circumstance to cut the string that assures that lantern’s structural integrity. Laura got a bit carried away with trimming, and had to bashfully ask the lantern lady to help rescue her collapsed creation

We were happy with the outcome and had a great day.

We hired a couple of bikes, and had a cycle out to the beach via. some paddy fields:

After a couple of hours relaxing by the coast we went to try our hand at basket boating:

It was very good fun. Laura was allowed to sit back and relax, whilst I was put to work rowing (and singing):

We paid a bit extra to have someone spin us around their boat:

And got to wear some conical hats:

Reaching out teahouse was set up to provide employment opportunities for deaf people. We enjoyed a coffee there:

Last but not least, we had a few days in Ho Chi Minh City. We ended up flying from Hoi An to Ho Chi Minh City, as it would have taken 20 hours over 2 days by land and we didn’t have enough time left. Bit of a shame, as it’s the first flight we’ve done since early January - but unfortunately it’s going to be necessary in the coming months.

Ho Chi Minh City was the first place that we’ve been too scared to walk around due to the traffic 😂. The public transport isn’t great. After a couple of trips on foot, we resolved to bite the bullet and just pay to get a Grab (South East Asia’s answer to Uber) everywhere.

We very much appreciated the lift in our hotel, it came equipped with a speaker that pumped out music by ABBA on shuffle:

These were really cool. It’s an apartment block that’s been overtaken by cafes:

There are tonnes of exhibits about the Indochina Wars. It’s very much worth going to see, and extremely moving.

On our final day in Ho Chi Minh City we boarded a bus to go visit the Củ Chi tunnels tunnels to the North of the city.

The tour guide was very active, and went to a lot of effort to help everybody understand what was going on during the Indochina Wars.

It was very interactive. We got to see what an original sized part of the tunnel system was like (check out how quickly Laura exits when the guide says the word “rat”):

Pop into a tunnel entrance (I would not last in the Viet Cong, Laura would do well):

Climb into a burnt out US tank:

And ended by going through 120m of the tunnel system that had been widened to allow tourists to appreciate the conditions. It was tough to get through and we were a sweaty state afterwards!

That brings us to the end of our 30 days in Vietnam. On the whole, we really enjoyed Vietnam and are glad it was a part of our South East Asian adventure.

This is a very controversial thing to say, but it didn’t quite live up to our expectations 😱. We couldn’t quite put our finger on why that is, but feel that others report leaving with a much more enamoured feeling than we have. Maybe it’s partly because we loved Laos so much :thinking_face:.

A few things contributed to a bit of malaise during the stint:

• Traffic and motorbikes get stressful!
  • What we would give for a pavement.
• The level of hassle was constantly high, and nothing like what we’ve experienced anywhere else
  • Possibly this was exacerbated by the tourism downturn of COVID-19?!
• We preferred the food in Malaysia/Thailand/Laos
  • Vietnam had less interesting veggie options
• We both got a bit ill

However, as I say, we did really enjoy it overall and feel very fortunate we had the opportunity to experience Vietnam.

We’re now off to Hong Kong :flexed_biceps:.