Halong Bay to Sapa: 4 seasons in one day

From Hanoi we headed for the coastal delights of the magestic limestone islands of Halong Bay. On our junk cruise boat we were joined by some Spaniards, some Germans and a lovely English couple from Cornwall. The first day ended with lots of swimming and jumping in from the boat, until we spotted some serious looking jellyfish slinking about beside the hull of the boat. At night Pamela and Kathy were transformed into Karaoke Queens, dragging the Spaniards and the English into life. I put on my best evening dress, a little bit of lippy and performed a baritone version of Madonna's 'Like a Virgin.' At night there was the most severe thunder storm. The lightning flashed like gunfire outside our cabin window.
The next day it rained and rained. We did a spot of kayaking. A rather snobby Aussie lady joined us for a while, reluctantly joined in our postit game (she had never heard of Freddie Mercury - she preferred jazz singers...), but then dined alone on a beach at a table all by herself. See ya. We spent the final day lounging at our hotel with the English couple. The hotel fortunately doubled as a water park resort. Just like the end of 'We Are the Champions'!

Our next adventure took us to the hill town of Sapa, very near the Chinese border. The train journey was a bit of a nightmare. We were unable to get any sleeper berths so shared an 8 hour overnight 'soft seat' carriage with a group of Vietnamese who played and betted on cards all night long.
Sapa is the closest to Scotland we have come to yet on our travels. A beautiful, stunning landscape. They also have the saying 'four seasons in one day' to explain the dramatic change in weather that can strike the town. After the searing 38 degree heat of Hanoi it was also lovely and cool. On the first day we hired a couple of motos in search of the silver waterfalls, an abandoned catholic monastry and fraternised with some women from the local Red Dxao hill tribe.
The next day we hired a jeep and a guide who took us to Ban Ho, amongst the people of the Black H'Mong and Day hill tribes. At lunch time the guide got tipsy on rice wine. Fair enough, if you offer some to your party - which she didn't!!
The train back to Hanoi was less of an ordeal this time. Sleeper berths for all.

Our last evening in Hanoi was spent enjoying the food and old colonial ambience in the classy Green Tangerine restaurant.
The next day we said a teary goodbye to Pamela at the airport. It was an amazing 10 days, full of laughs, full of adventure, full of delicous food and many songs about geckos - it's a long story. Another time.
Pamela. We love you. We miss you. Good luck in your new school!

Little did Kathy and I know that we were to spend the next 28 hours after Ms. Hills's departure stuck in the depressing oversized double garage that is Hanoi 'International' Airport...

Celebrating the arrival of Ms. Pamela Hill in Hanoi

We were both a bit nervous about the arrival of Ms. Hill. We were also really excited and couldn't wait for such a close friend to come and share our adventures. Pamela and Kathy go way back. They trained and swam competitively for the same Weegie swimming club. Apparently, Pamela use to wear what is known as a 'toxic waste lady' because of her swimsuit - one of those uber bright luminous Speedo creations. Don't worry, she has more sense now. I'm not one to talk, I once proudly wore a pair of lemon jeans with an aqua-marine blue top for more than a year. Not a proud moment.

Pamela was greeted at the arrivals lounge by the two of us in matching Vietnamese conical hats with a newly scribbled Scottish flag on the front. We had one for Pamela too. Everyone was giggling and pointing at us. That wasn't making us nervous either, we were quite used to that by now. And then Pamela told the funniest joke I have heard in ages. Dad, you will love this!



Why did the baker have brown hands?

He forgot he was needing a jobby!!! (Hee hee hee hee.)



Team Kathole was temporarily abandoned and Team McHillong formed with due haste.

So, why were nervous, you ask? Well, many people we had talked to told us how much they disliked Hanoi. The people were gruff, too serious and you got ripped off left, right and centre.

After 4 full days in Hanoi, we absolutely LOVED the place. Yes, it is a little bit hard skinned at first, but underneath the people are warm, friendly and possess a very dry, very Glaswegian sense of humour. It is really easy to get ripped off and the taxi drivers are amongst the most scheming, untrustworthy bunch I have met for a while. The meters are generally rigged and they cry like big babies when you scoff at their inflated quotes. But you know what the secret weapon is - BANTER. Good old fashioned Weegie banter, parleyamo Glasgow if you will. At first, Pamela was a wee bit unsure (Kathy and I are extremely battle hardened to the way of the barter by now) but by the end of the 10 days she was strutting her stuff and leaving taxi drivers shivering wrecks by the side of their cars, pleading, no begging, for us to take their taxi!

The Old Quarter of Hanoi is amazing. Life starts at about 5am. People are up eating bowls of delicious Pho Bo for breakfast, playing badmintion, jogging or doing group work outs with swords or table tenns bats next to the lake. The food in Hanoi was unbelievable. Simple, cheap, plentiful and with so much choice. We ate Cha Ca (grilled gish with turmeric), Bun Cha (rice noodles with pork) and the tastiest ribs I've ever tried (oven roasted with chili and garlic salt). Colin, big brother, you would kill for these ribs. The drink was good too. Everytime we stopped for a drink we pulled! We shared a freshly squeezed sugar cane drink (refreshing and clean like fresh pineapple juince, but better!) with a small group of banana sellers taking a break from the market. Pamela's Vietnamese phrasebook came in very handy. When I asked the lady next to me for a dance, it prompted the older grey haired woman across the other side of the room into a flurry of excited language, that I can only guess was some sort of matchmaking marriage proposal. Later that evening at a Bia Hoi bar (incredibly cheap but strong freshly brewed lager) Pamela had great success using the book to impress a gentleman well past his 60th year. After accumulating a total of 16 bia hoi's and a dried squid for me(to replace the lack of a Kebab shop), we left in high spirits, not having a clue what anyone had really said, but friends for life. Mr Diem's "1,2,3 - HANG ON BABY," (in Vietnamese) broke the ice perfectly both times.

We spent some time at Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and at his museum. Sadly, we walked away none the wiser about the man, his past or his achievements. The museum is a truly bizarre place, with large scale exhibits that embody the evils of Colonialism, Capitalism, Fascism etc. Unfortunately, there is very little information and what information there is is poorly displayed and too dense to flick through. Disappointing. Uncle Ho is still hugely revered by many Vietnamese. We learnt nothing.
At the Hanoi Hilton (The old prison) we enjoyed an exhibit of the belongings of a former inmate you may have heard of - one Senator John McCain, who was imprisoned here when his plane was shot dwon during the 'American War.'

From the Delta to the DMZee...

On our last day in Hoi An, we got on a motorbike and headed out to the country to escape the tailored temptations of the city. Most of our best experiences on this trip have been when we have gone it alone, left the tours and tourists behind and discovered places by accident rather than by design. There is a large Catholic population in this area. We stopped for an iced coffee outside the first church of the day. The young teenage girl who served us gingerly took out her English homework at the table next to us. She ended up taking us round the church, explaining all the pictures on the noticeboard and her confidence at speaking English improved with every step. Next, we screeched to a halt outside a house where the loud rhythmic thwack and shunt of the loom was in full swing . It was a rickety contraption and the couple working it looked exhausted and sweaty in the midst of the extreme dust, heat and humidity. So, this was where the cloth for all those wonderful clothes had originated. We felt humbled. The couple were finding it difficult to smile, despite their kind invitation to watch. It was hard work.
Our next church was spectacular, on open air Cathedral majestically perched on the crown of a hill. The panoramic view from the top held a commanding 360 degree sway across the entire valley. The sounds coming from below were a chorus of looms shunting and weaving away, an industrial contest to the usual contributions of the frogs and the cicadas. The Vietnamese are a proud and hard working people. And they know what it is like to graft.

From Hoi An we traveled to the old Imperial city of Hue, famed for its Imperial Palace and its Imperial cuisine. It was also nearly bombed to extinction during the 'American War.' Money is now being pumped in to renovate the ruins of the Imperial Palace. It is a less foreboding place than the Forbidden City in Beijing. Perhaps it is because it is mostly ruins, but you can wonder more freely and closely amongst the buildings and get a closer sense and appreciation of the style and architecture.

Hue is also a stone throw away from the DMZ, the demilitarized zone. Cut across the 17th parallel, this divided Vietnam into 2 distinct regions after the French were defeated and was also the area of some of the most furious and deadly fighting during the 'American War.'
Propaganda in Vietnam is of classic old style vintage. The artists and word smiths responsible for museum exhibits and large public billboards seem to be stuck in a 1960 / 70s airtight bag. The art is about bold blocked colours and large heroic persona. The words celebrate heroic deeds, national unity, strength and sound clunky and out dated in their manipulative rhetoric. Everyone who fought for the Southern Vietnamese army (ARVN) was brain washed, a puppet of the state and wrong. The Northern army (NVA) treated all prisoners respectfully and all war crimes were to be found at the guilty feet of the American and ARVN troops. The version of events is simplistic and in some respects seems to play down the strength of conviction of what most people in the north believed the were fighting for. It is difficult to put your mind in a different place and time to understand but you must. A comment from a an Aussie war veteran in the comments book in the War Remnants museum in Saigon seemed to ring true, that 'not one side came out of the war with any great deal of respect.' The Americans dropped bombs, napalm, chemical weapons indiscriminately and at a massive cost to lives and the environment. Soldiers fighting for the ARVN were not just puppets, as the propaganda tells us. They believed in the high ideals of that word Capitalism and that the arch enemy of Communism must be squashed. When the country was reunified in 1975, hundreds and thousands of Vietnamese fled the country, fearful of the Communist regime. Many of these 'boat people' were confronted with new horrors in the form of sinister Thai pirates waiting for them around the coast or years spent in refugee camps. Vietnam was a starving and forgotten country for much of the 1970s/80s, with only the Russians and Cubans willing to offer a helping hand. But they booted Pol Pot from power in 1979 in Cambodia, and in the same year defeated the Chinese from invading their border. It is sad, it is brutal, it is bloody. There are many versions of the same events. But it is also deeply fascinating.

Our guide across a one day trip of the DMZ was to be a Mr Diem, former translator to General Wesmoreland, the 4 star General and one time Chief of the US forces in Vietnam. After reunification, Mr Diem, like many others from the South was sent to reeducation camp for six years. Since then, his family and others like him have suffered massive discrimination in their opportunities and success in work and education. It was not for us to take sides but to listen. He was bitter, he was proud, he was a Capitalist but in war he had been defeated. We visited strategic sights like Charlie 2 hill and the 17th Parallel. In daytime, both sides blasted the other with their respective propagandist messages, watched carefully by the bully busting troops from India and Canada, making sure no-one was breaking the rules. After dark all the rules were broken. The NVA would secretly ship their weapons and troops across the 17th Parallel and down the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail, whilst the Americans would show off with massive forays of bombing raids and scorching use of chemical warfare (Agent Orange and the like). We saw the Vinh Moc tunnels where the NVA hid away from the enemy in a cramped claustrophobic warren of tunnels. They took 6 years to build and during their use 17 babies were born underground. 16 of them are now apparently high ranking officers in the Vietnamese navy.
When the war finally ended in 1975, the DMZ was a toxic flattened wasteland, battered and bruised with the massive craters from B52 bombs and where the only sign of life underground were the millions of deadly land mines waiting for the unfortunate overground.
Over the years, nature and man has slowly reclaimed the wasteland from the toxins and the land mines. Rubber tree forests are plentiful. But for people like Mr Diem, the scars of war are deep and unforgiving. He is currently in the slow process of applying for American citizenship.
I'm sure an ex NVA soldier's version of events would have been no less passionate or convincing, just different.
He also had a great sense of humour and taught us to toast in style. "Mawt , hau, baa, YO!" Which, roughly translated, means, " 1, 2, 3 HANG ON BABY!" It proved to be the perfect ice breaker with the locals for the rest of our days in Vietnam.
Mr Diem was also not some hardlined warmonger. When we visited the mass graves of the Vietnam War Memorial, he took care to point out how young most of the dead men had been. Of course, the older of us will remember Paul Hardcastle's '19', the number one song chanting the average age of the American soldier fighting in Vietnam (surely one of the strangest ever chart topping singles - did people dance to it in nightclubs? At least I am not old enough to remember that!) Scanning the Vietnamese graves, it felt that their average age was more 18 or 17 years. And many were young girls too. Mr Diem kept reminding us how young he had been then too. And that is really the lasting impression we took away from the DMZ, not as the real life playground and set design for all the Vietnam war films we watched on VHS in our formative years, not as a crucial stand of between the forces of Capitalism and Communism, but as a killing ground of young men and women. Nothing more, nothing less.