Sarah & Richard's Travels

We've now had about 6 days in Hanoi, Vietnam. The city itself can be totally infuriating, but it's a pretty interesting place to be. Trying to cross the road with all the motorbikes and traffic is a nightmare. I've learnt to follow someone else across, because you just walk over; there's never a break in the traffic so that you can cross with no worries; you walk and hope they avoid you! There's also a ridiculous number of fakes and impersonators here, it is soooo hard to find something genuine. We've been trying to organise tours to Sapa / Halong Bay and there are 10-15 agencies using the same name and logo, luckily the LP / Rough guides list the names and addresses of the real ones, otherwise you're giving money to cowboys!

We had booked a two night, three day trip to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island, however the tropical strom Ketsana which has caused widespread damage to the Phillipines is on it's way here and for two days now we haven't been able to go, so we've cut our losses and got our money back (luckily this is a company that allows that) and are flying to Ho Chi Minh City tomorrow. I'm really disappointed that we can't go as it was the main thing I was looking forward to in Vietnam...we'll have to come back. Originally we wanted to head to Hue / Hoi An / Da Nang onthe central coast but at the moment they are underwater and all flights and trains heading that way have been cancelled. We don't want to hang around in Hanoi any longer, so straight down to HCMC which I guess means more time for the Mekong Delta.

We booked a tour with our hotel over to Mai Chau a few days ago which is where the Thai ethnic minority live. It's around 3 hours drive south west of Hanoi and is situated in a hilly area near to Loas. It's basically a collection of small villages in the hills situated around rice paddies. The villages are all pretty small and there's not a lot to do, but it's a great place to relax and enjoy the countryside. We stayed in a homestay in one of the traditional stilt houses which is what all the locals live in. They are all made of wood and have thatched rooves and bamboo floors; well the floors are like mats really that have just been placed over the main supports in the floor, so you can sort of see through to the ground, it's a bit wierd. They look pretty flimsy, but held up just fine, even when the group of school girls who were also staying started jumping and dancing around when we saw the local culture show! The local culture show wasn't too bad, they were wearing the traditional skirts and bands and scarves. Most of the dances were related to the harvest and praying for a good one etc, there was also quite a lively one involving jumping between bamboo poles, at which all the Vietnamese school girls screamed and ran up to join when the bamboo poles came out!

That afternoon we were supposed to go with a guide to the villages in the area, but it was pouring with rain and we had to turn back unfortunately. The guide was leading us down a path until we got to two Geese who started attacking us as soon as we got too close! A local guy came up to the guide and said they'd put the Geese there to stop people going down the path because they thought the area was going to flood and they didn't want anyone going down there, so thats when we headed back.

The next morning we had a guide walk us around the villages in the area through all the rice paddies. We saw all the stilt houses with the looms underneath for all thier weaving. They also keep a spare set of everything for the house in case something needs replacing as it means the house remains exactly the same! There were loads of chickens and geese roaming around everywhere. They were all getting their water from the wells and washing near all the wells and tending the paddy fields. They have four crops of rice per year and were about to harvest them when we were there, so we were lucky to see them full rather than old stalks sticking up! We stopped for tea at the ladies house which was cool and she was showing us all the postcards and photos from people who had visited her from around the world which was kind of cool to see. She feed us some rice that she'd cooked inside tubes from banana trees and dipped into some kind of sweet dip thing and it was actually really tasty.

Back in Hanoi we've visited the 'Hanoi Hilton' which is the old prison and housed some of the Vietnam war vets including John McCain. Half of it has been raised and a huge tower been put there which is a shame as you can't see much now and the info about the Vietnam vets was pretty one sided towards treating the American's well etc, so it was kind of hard to believe some of it.

We also had a fight with a taxi driver when we went out to Van Phuc village for the silk markets. It's now an area in Hanoi, but used to be a village and is famous for producing silk. We had a wander around and saw some of the looms working inside the people's houses which was a little crazy. You'd wander through the small streets and hear the constant clatter of these ancient machines. We even saw a load of silk worms in a jar which one guy had on his shelf. Anyway, this taxi drier took us to Van Phuc street which was definitely not where we wanted to go. He was adament that he'd taken us to the right place and we were adament it wasn't right and wanted our money back. So it went on like that for while until he went into a hotel and was told Van Phuc village was a completely different place, so that wasn't very fun!

We went to a Water Puppet theatre show last night which was pretty funny. It's basically a puppet show set on water. So the pupeteers hide behind this bamboo screen and all these wooden puppets fly out from behind the screens and show different aspects of Vietnamese life including planting rice, seeing the water buffalos, fictional dragons fighting, complete with firworks coming out there mouths and loads more. It lasted for about 45 mins and there were several short scenes to which traditional music was played. They were pretty good the way they moved these puppets around and although weird it was quite good; something different anyway.

Other than that we've had a few relaxing days wandering the shops in Hanoi. We've not really got used to the bargaining here. In China it was like a sport and you could say a price way lower (often up to 90% lower) than thier price and you'd quite often get it. Here however they hardly bargain at all! We say a price and they'll say no and put it back and that's it, others have bargainined slightly but we've quickly learnt not to bargain more than 50% or we'll get turned away in seconds.

Tonight we met an American war veteran when we were booking out air ticket to HCMC. He was having a hard time changing his flights because of all the cancellations so we got talking to him and ended up having dinner with him. He was an interesting guy and it clearly still affected him. It was a shame that he couldn't see the parts he wanted to because of the typhoon, hopefully he can make it back one day.

We fly to HCMC tomorrow night, so have to sort some things out to do there!

Please click on the link below where you can see a video about the typhoon, dubbed under the name Ketsana.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/8281159.stm