Way Down Vietnam Way: Hanoi and Halong Bay

It feels strange to take a vacation when our day to day life (conducted in a city that is itself a tourist destination) often seems so foreign to us. But when, for reasons beyond our understanding, our school went on holiday for a week, we jumped at the chance to explore more of the place we live. We were looking for the easiest possible vacation, something that minimized difficulty and stress and maximized eating and lounging around. And man, we hit the nail right on the head with this one: a week up North in Halong Bay and Hanoi.

We headed to Halong Bay first, and a day after leaving our home, we found ourselves on a luxury cruise, drinking hoarded bottled waters on our balcony that overlooked the breathtaking limestone islands of Halong Bay. About a day and one hour after leaving our home, we found ourselves being served a 5 course lunch, while staring out a giant window. The next two days were basically repeats of the last two sentences with some swimming and kayaking thrown in for good measure.

Despite being on a fairly large boat, half the passengers were a Taiwanese tour group that did their own thing, meaning that for most of our outings and meals there were only three other couples to explore with. Of those three, all were expats and all were exceptionally interesting. One couple was living in Singapore while the husband did something for an oil company, one couple directed and coached for Cirque de Soleil, and one couple (which included another CC graduate!) was living in Indonesia working for USAID. We felt greatly outmatched in terms of interesting careers and life achievements, and communal meals were often very humbling and one-sided experience.

While there were a few experiences where we felt truly isolated, often we were surrounded by other boats and tours, leaving us to wonder where we could go that actually felt untraveled.

After our ridiculous cruise we headed back to Hanoi for three days of exploring. Hanoi was, in a word, wonderful. It's been a city for over a thousand years and its history is palpable in its architecture, winding narrow streets, hidden temples, and, in terms of more recent past, ubiquitous communist statues.

Hanoi's slower pace and cooler climate provided a nice counterpoint to the crazy bustle of Saigon.

Our first night there, we took a walk to find a restaurant recommended by our hotel and pretty instantaneously got side-tracked by a street vendor that was jam packed with people. We couldn't tell what was on the menu, but luckily a surprise English speaker was there to save the day (thankfully this happens with some regularity). This time our surprise English speaker was the ten year old child of someone who worked in the stall. With his assistance, we actually learned what we were ordering was snail soup. It was delicious if a bit chewy.

We cook for ourselves most of the time so one of the best parts of our trip was getting to go crazy with the food. With one notable exception, (when the coconut pudding we thought we ordered turned out to be hot, salty rice mush with some sort of salty meat jerky shredded on top) we really lucked out with our meals.

The above photo was taken at a lunch place with great food and beer that cost 35 cents. We had some incredible people watching (ie large groups of men getting wasted at noon) and some fun street vendors as our entertainment. Our favorite was a woman selling banzais from her bike. A similar thing would happen at lunch in Colombia: people would wander by selling trees and occasionally hammocks. We've always wondered who buys these things on impulse (probably the large groups of men getting wasted at noon).

Aside from the meals other highlights of the trip included walks around Hoan Kiem Lake, a very well used lake near our hotel. We visited there about two or three times a day and each time it had a different feel to it.

These women are cutting the flowers with scissors.

In addition to walks around the lake, we spent most of our exploring the city on foot somewhat aimlessly.

This helped us find surprise temples down random alleyways.

One of the only sights we actually made it to was the Temple of Literature - the first university in Vietnam, which was run by the Chinese and has a pretty strong Confucian bent to it. Apparently, it's a tradition to go there upon graduation from university in Hanoi, a fact we learned when we showed up and the temple was overrun with well dressed men and beautiful girls in their ao dai.