I was looking back at some old blogs of mine from this time last year. I was linking them to my 2016 Christmas one. This time last year I was having Christmas in Hanoi with Yen. While looking through them I realised that I did a very poor job of documenting our time in Vietnam. When I consider that I did blogs in days in 2013 for Manila and for Hong Kong three for the country seems pitifully inadequate. I didn't even mention Hoi An and skimmed Hanoi during the Christmas blog!
I think I was not as in to blogging at that time for a few reasons.
1- CELTA had stressed me out (to be honest a year later and still not 100% sure why I did it)
2- Having no job and no idea where I was going stressed me out.
3- Having fun in Nam kept me busy.
Though doing so a year late means I will inevitably miss stuff, I have decided to do it anyway. I'll start with the city I spent the most time in, Ho Chi Minh City.
Saigon
Or
Saigon, the large city to the south that reluctantly joined the communist forces when they overran the American backed regime in 1975. Today the city is the economic, if not the political, capital. Saigon is where I spent seven of my nine weeks in Vietnam, including New Years Eve. It is also where Will lives, and so the reason I chose to do my CELTA there. To be honest I did not fall in love with Saigon the way I thought I would. In fact, the only blog I did about it consisted of about a dozen sentences and was titled
"Escape from Saigon." It isn't big cities at all. Hong Kong and Seoul are among my favourite cities in the world. It wasn't even the third world nature of it. I like Manila and love Bangkok. I think it was a combination of doing my CELTA there, and living on Bui Vien, the backpacker ghetto street of Saigon, that soured me on it a bit. But it was more than that that I wasn't crazy about. The city is all about electric bikes (much like Nanning) which makes getting anywhere stressful. Say what you will about Manila traffic, there IS a subway system and a jeepney is so much nicer than riding on the back of some guy's moped. I also wasn't crazy about the coffee there, after everyone told me how great it was, it was a letdown (though if I had known what I had waiting in Nanning....). I certainly enjoyed it, but when I learned that a few of my good friends were planning on joining Will there I had a long thought about going myself and decided to stay with the Nanning plan. I am sure that was the right choice for me both personally and professionally.
Bitexco Tower
Ho Chi Minh Statue
delicious
Homes along the Mekong
Mekong delta
Bui Vien
(nicest pic I had)
old French buildings
Notre-dame Cathedral
Reunification Palace.
Straight out of the 70's.
Views from Bitexco.
Street food.
That being said I did enjoy a lot about it. Besides coffee (Starbucks :P) and beers with Will, I managed to see the reunification palace and the old French colonial ruins. The Reunification Palace was cool as a day trip. Being that they have left it exactly as it was in 1975 it looks more like the set of a Roger Moore James Bond film rather than a modern presidential palace. Well almost exactly as it was found.... I doubt there were too many pictures of Ho Chi Minh and Vladimir Lenin in the palace before 1975.....Our Celta group also took a trip to the Mekong delta, which is an amazing place to see. I think that when I go back (with Will and Mike both there it is a question of when, not if) I would certainly spend less time in Saigon and more in the south. Beautiful area. I would also visit
Da Lat, probably the big miss of my trip. I did enjoy being on Bui Vien with Will and some of my Celta group. It was a sight to see, and the bar called 'the View Rooftop Bar' was one of the nicest bar/restaurants I have visited in SE Asia, though you go there for the chicken burgers, so hardly a Vietnamese destination. Will also took me to a few places he eats which are certainly more local. One, where he brought in the New Year with Yen, myself, and other friends, was another of my favourite places in Vietnam. I think where Saigon may excel is in living, rather than visiting (if moped's don't bother you). In a sense Seoul is like that. A day or two is ample to see the sights, but as a city to explore you could spend weeks there. Perhaps being stuck on Bui Vien limited what I saw. As I say I enjoyed it, and would go back, but when compared to central Vietnam I know where I would want to live should I ever live in Vietnam.
Central Vietnam
Without question my favourite part of the trip. Yen's too I think. Our trip consisted of three places, Danang, Hoi An, and Hue. I wrote quite a bit about
Hue last year and so don't have much to add to it, except that it is an amazing place and well worth a trip. Definitely a highlight of Vietnam for me.
Danang
I also did a decent write up of
Danang at the time, and stand by everything in it. I would simply add that Danang reminds me of Asian cities like Busan and Taipei that people don't immediately think of visiting, but are well worth the trip. It was also a very liveable city. It is a great base for exploring Hue and Hoi An as well. I think if I ever moved to Vietnam I would look here first. A year later and it is where Yen and I talk about the most. My review was short, basically saying it was a great place to hang out. Very true. We had a great time on the beach, several great meals (and the worst meal I have ever had, but no place can bat 1.000), and just decompressed after Saigon.
Dragon Bridge in Danang
Riverside
Danang from the mountain
looking north up the coast
Hue
Hue again
Danang beach on a stormy day.
Hoi An
Maybe my favourite part of central Vietnam, and I completely skipped writing about it when I was there. Oh well.
Hoi An was a trading port from the 15th to the 19th century, with merchants from China, Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Portugal, Arabia, India, and Persia all stopping by and setting up shop. The Chinese influence in particular, is very strong. In the 19th century the French moved the trading hub to the south, which accommodated the larger steam vessels better, and Hoi An became a backwater. Its status as a backwater left it effectively untouched by both the Japanese invasion during WWII and the American invasion of 1965-1973. Today it is a UNESCO heritage site, a tourist trap, but nonetheless a very cool city to see.
Yen and I set off from Danang in the early morning to a hotel I had found online. It was nice, though a decent walk from the town centre. When we arrived there was torrential rain, and so we spent our first afternoon in Hoi An at the hotel reading and watching TV. By the evening the rain had stopped and we got out for dinner.
The next day was actually very nice and so we headed out on foot to the town centre. It is very much a tourist trap, with the only Vietnamese people being the vendors. However, it was also an amazing place to see a bit of the history of this part of SE Asia. However, it got even better at night. The government has mandated that along the river there is to be no electric lights. Only the lamps that would have lit up the harbour in the 19th century are to be used. The result is a very authentic feel for what an ancient port like this would have felt like 200 years ago. We only had one full day here, which was a shame. If we go back I would like to spend 3-4 days here, and preferably do so in the summer.
dinner after the rain
river near Hoi An
busy streets
and old buildings
the Japanese bridge
more old streets
canals of Hoi An
no idea
at night
again
Hanoi
The capital city, and one of the oldest cities in Vietnam,
Hanoi was another very cool place we visited. Cool in every sense of the word too, as during the winter it gets chilly, with daytime highs of 14-16 not uncommon when we were there.
We actually arrived just before Christmas, and with so much moving about in central Nam, we opted to spend the first two days in the apartment we rented on airbnb, having a quiet Christmas. After our 2014 Christmas party it was a more subdued Christmas, but still a nice one. Hanoi is a very different city from Saigon, as it has a history going back over 1000 years. It has been, at various times, a Vietnamese capital, a Chinese provincial capital, and a French colonial capital. It was also a more, well serious city. The people are certainly more reserved than in Saigon, which I personally kind of liked. It was a bit like going from Los Angeles to London in terms of weather, history, and etiquette.
We stayed very close to the old quarter, the part of Hanoi which helps you remember that Vietnam is an ancient country. We were able to walk around the west Lake and in to the city from our apartment without having to actually stay in the old quarter (which is beautiful but can be cramped).
We spent our first two days in Hanoi at the apartment, as it was Christmas. On Boxing Day we decided to walk through the old quarter to Hoan Kiem Lake, the spiritual centre of the city. Along the way we saw one of the few Lenin statues still around, the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, some amazing French architecture, and some decent urban scenery. I am not sure why communist leaders are embalmed and put on public display like they are, but I guess Lenin really was a trend setter. Unfortunately Ho Chi Minh was away in Russia for further embalming (seriously), and so we couldn't see the man himself. I am okay with that. I also thought it was interesting that 25 years after the collapse of the USSR the Russians still do that. I wonder if they will do that to Castro?
a pond near the apartment
west lake
a temple on the lake
again
a student revolutionary
Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum
the square by the mausoleum
don't see too many statues of him anymore do you?
old French colonial architecture
Hoan Kiem lake
More old French architecture.
Hanoi was the one city in Vietnam that I feel we didn't get to explore enough, and being in Nanning I want to make the 8 hour train ride down there at least once or twice. Between Christmas and our trip to Ha Long Bay, we only had two days in the actual city, which simply isn't enough. I may save a full blog for the city and do it after we go back.
Ha Long Bay
One reason we missed so much of Hanoi was because we opted for a full day trip out to
Ha Long Bay, a few hours east of hanoi. Our tour company sold us a deluxe bus, which then crammed us in to a regular bus. This made more than a few people very angry. Be warned, tour companies in Hanoi are notoriously dishonest, and we got suckered. However, once we got there it was well worth the effort and annoyance, as the cruise company they set us up with were amazing and went above and beyond. Ha Long Bay itself is a bay filled with limestone islands and caves in a bay filled with emerald water. Of course being winter we had overcast and downright chilly weather, but it was still amazing and among the coolest places I have ever visited.
A Few pictures:
Overall
Vietnam is an amazing country, and one that I do hope to go back to. While I certainly wasn't crazy about Saigon the south did have a certain appeal, though it wasn't the part of the country I fell in love with at all. Central Vietnam is a place that everybody who can should see at some point. Danang, Hue, and Hoi An are all well worth a visit. In fact I would love to go back on a 2-3 week Central Vietnam stay. I don't think I stayed in Hanoi long enough to fully appreciate it so I will refrain from any real verdict. I liked it, but I feel like I need to go back to get a full appreciation of it. What I want to do is get a few of my friends in Saigon to meet me half way (Danang or Hanoi) during one of the term breaks and have a summer long weekend/week in one of those places. When I head back to Hanoi I will do a better job of documenting it.
