Hanoi and Sapa

We’ve spent the last two weeks travelling around northern Vietnam.  Vietnam is a fantastic country.  As most of you know, I have been here before – back in 2007 on solo trip, where I visited Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand over a span of 5 weeks.  It is really good to return to a place you’ve visited before, and to do it now together as a couple, it’s really neat to show Joh some of the interesting things I experienced last time.  We plan on visiting quite a few of the places I saw last time, but now that we’ve got some additional time, we can explore them more slowly and go to a few new places along the way.

We started our travels in Vietnam in the capital city Hanoi, which is in the northern part of the country.  Hanoi was one of my favorite cities I visited last time, so I was really looking forward to returning.  The city is quite large, but the main interesting area is the old town which surrounds a small lake in the middle of the city. The area is really nice, you can walk along the pathways and gardens surrounding the lake, visit old shops, restaurants, and cafes scattered around the old town, and walk around in the markets checking out all kinds of cool stuff. 

One of the main things that shocks you right away when you get to Hanoi (or any Vietnamese city for that matter) is the motorbikes that clog up the streets.  There are millions of motorbikes in Vietnam, and at any given moment it feels as though they are all swirling around you, honking their horns, and zooming in and out of every square inch of free space.  It is tricky to cross the streets as it feels as though one step off the sidewalk will result in a collision within seconds.   However, if you look around you will notice many of the people crossing without problems.  The key to it apparently is to just have faith.  You need to just step off the sidewalk and confidently just start walking. The drivers will see you and swerve around you.  The first few times you do this it feels incredibly nerve-racking but after a while it starts making sense and it is actually quite a neat feeling to just step out and leave your fate in the hands of others.

As you may have guessed by the content of previous posts in this blog, food was of course a huge part of our decision to come to Vietnam.  Joh and I both love to eat Vietnamese food, and we’ve been to Vietnamese restaurants back home quite often.  Our favorite is Pho.  Pho is basically just a bowl of soup, but the flavors and textures are quite unique.  They make Pho by starting with a really good beef broth and then they add rice noodles.  From there they add thin slices of raw beef to the piping hot broth which lightly cooks it while keeping it nice and tender.  They then give you a plate of crunchy bean sprouts, basil, and other greens and you dunk them in and then add hot chilli sauce to taste, and then you’re good to go.  You eat it with chop sticks, slurping up the noodles and other contents, splashing hot broth all over your table and usually your shirt too – never wear white shirts to Vietnamese restaurants ;).  Other part of the charm is that it is usually served on the sidewalk by little old ladies, to a small crowd of people gathered around on tiny plastic chairs or stools only 4 inches high on makeshift wooded tables.  These small “restaurants” also got a fresh keg of beer available, usually for only 15 cents a glass.  As you can imagine, these places are quite popular all over the city.

Another specialty of Hanoi (and I’m assuming all over Vietnam) is the coffee.  They have great coffee here.  One of the traditional ways it is served (and our usual choice) is poured over ice and a big dollop of sweetened condensed milk.  The strong, thick coffee, thinned out by the ice, and mixed with the caramelly flavor of the condensed milk creates a really delicious treat. It’s also really good hot too.  They serve it to you with a small aluminum contraption on top of the mug.  The contraption is stuffed with fresh ground coffee beans, hot water, and a small metal filter, and you need to sit and wait 5 minutes for the coffee to filter out before you can drink it.  You are well rewarded for your wait however, as the coffee is rich and thick and really really good.

Other than the city itself, there are two big reasons why tourists come to Hanoi.  The trips to Halong Bay and to Sapa.  I had previously been to Halong Bay, so we chose to do the trip to Sapa instead.  Sapa is the province in the north of Vietnam – near the China border.  It is a less developed area where there are small villages surrounded by rice fields and small mountains.  We went on a tour there for two or three days, and hiked through the hills and villages, watching the local people, gazing out over the farms, and checking out the locally made crafts.  Unfortunately our first day there was raining quite a lot so we got quite soaked, and on the second day the weather was better, but the trails were extremely muddy and slippery.  I’m not sure why, but for some reason I had thought it was a good idea to wear flip-flops and so I ended up slipping and sliding all over the place.  One of the old ladies from the village was following us (trying to sell us some of her wares) and I ended up holding her hand pretty much the entire way down the mountain.  If it wasn’t for her I would have fallen down and slipped off the trail over the cliff, so even though I felt like quite a wuss the whole time, I’m glad she was there, because if she wasn’t there I wouldn’t be around to tell the tale.

After Sapa, we spent a day or two in Hanoi relaxing, and then headed south to the city of Hoi An.  We spent a week there, and I’ll write about it soon.  We’ve since moved on to Saigon, and we hope to spend a few days or more here, depending on how it goes.

Hanoi

Sapa