March 10, 2008

Written by: Brian

Hanoi-

We arrived in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, after a long twelve hour train ride from Hue. Upon arrival we checked into our thirty-five dollar a night hotel room. We decided to splurge and spend a few extra dollars to have internet in our room. Susan's mom had decided she wanted to join us in going to Halong bay so we met her at the hotel the next afternoon and set out to explore the “Old Quarter,” basically an area of old French colonial style buildings where our hotel was located. When the city was first built the people were charged taxes based on how much space their house took up on the street. So most of the houses were built  narrow and long to avoid being overtaxed. As we walked around we felt like we  had been transported back in time to an old French city, besides the beeping of the horns from the motorbikes, of course.

The evening came and we relaxed and watched the sunset over the temple in the middle of Hoan Kiem lake.  We strolled back to the area around our hotel and found a place for dinner and then walked to the corner of our hotel and sat down to enjoy a BEER.  Now what most people don’t know, including us, is that Hanoi is one of the cheapest places in the world for a beer. The local beer is called Beer Hoi.  It’s a pilsner style beer that is brewed daily and then delivered so it is always fresh. The best part is for about 0.20 (USD) you can drink fresh brewed beer.  The beer stalls are all over the city and each serves its own local micro brew. You just need to choose your favorite place, sit and enjoy.  We each enjoyed our own beer before heading upstairs for some much needed sleep.

The next morning came early as we needed to be at the Chinese embassy to pick up our visa's from the day before and then headed off to the One Pillar Pagoda and the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. We were looking forward to the pagoda but came away a little disappointed. We must have set our expectations a little too high. So we decided to go see the corpse of Ho Chi Minh.  I am not sure why after the disappointment of the the peaceful pagoda, we felt the need to cheer ourselves up by viewing a 30 year- old dead body but we did.

Ho Chi Minh is the one of the most important people in Vietnam’s history and is considered a hero to the people.  He is the person that brought freedom to the country by getting out from under the French colonization, athough he is also the one who brought Communism to the country that led to the Vietnam War.  

We saw a disappointing pagoda and a corpse all before lunch, what a way to start the day.  What were we going to do for an encore? Well after lunch, we headed off to a Water Puppet Show, you read it right, water puppets on the water.  Water Puppets go back over a thousand years in Vietnam and are one of the must see things, or so that is what the Lonely Planet book says.  The puppets are wooden and  controlled by people pushing the puppets around using wooden sticks underneath the water as thay are standing behind bamboo looking blinds. The puppeteers go to school for three years to learn to control the puppets.  We had bought our tickets the day before and were lucky enough to be given front row seats for the show.

The show starts with a live Vietnamese orchestra playing traditional instruments. There is about fifteen different acts to the show that range from villagers planting rice, fisherman catching fish and dragons dancing on the water.  I think I only nodded off once during the entire performance.  The show was less then interesting to us but Susan’s mom thought it was great.

After the performance it was time for dinner and a movie, but sadly there was no movie but we did find a great little place for dinner that served a great ‘make your own’ beef spring roll plate with great pot sticker sauce. We left the restaurant stuffed and decided we needed to walk around the old quarter looking at the shops for awhile. We had already been in every souvenir shop in Vietnam so it was difficult to find anything new that we felt compelled to purchase.  We did grab a few more DVD's for a dollar and headed upstairs to pack for Halong Bay.

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March 6, 2008
Written by: Susan

Without or without you, I can’t live…..with or without you……….

Ahhhh, yes most of the time it’s associated with some torrid love affair that you really shouldn’t be a part of in the first place. On the contrary, when you’re traveling around the world, it means your relationship with taxi drivers. We can’t live with them and we can’t live without them. Most of the time they are the bane of our existence and just when you think you cannot handle one more taxi driver, the next one happens to be the nicest person you’ve met in the last week.

In Ethiopia, we had a taxi driver overcharge us for a fare but we were willing to pay because it was late and we wanted to get to our hotel. We had already been to Addis Ababa once on our trip so we knew the range of taxi prices around the city. He was charging us 70 Birr for a taxi ride that should have cost more like 40 Birr. But again, it was late and we were willing to pay. So he drops us off at our hotel and Brian hands him 70 Birr. He looks at the money and says “where’s my tip?” At the beginning of our trip, we would have been totally flustered and not known what to do. We would have probably handed over another 10 Birr just because we wouldn’t want to be rude and didn’t know what the customs were in Ethiopia. This night, he picked on the wrong people. Instead of giving him his “tip”, we gave him an earful. About how wrong it was to tell us one price and then try to get more money out of us. About how he shouldn’t ask for a tip. How he had already overcharged us on a ride that should cost half the amount. Etc. etc. In the end, he sulked away….

In Egypt, you curb the whole arguing with taxis about prices by just paying them what you think the amount is. There are no meters and you don’t negotiate (or they’ll definitely screw you). Instead you ask your hotel how much it should cost to get to X destination, hop into a cab, and when you get out hand the taxi driver the money and walk away. Don’t look back, just keep walking as if you know that’s the amount and you’re not paying a cent more. The first time, we made the mistake of pulling the money out in front of the cab driver and of course he asked for more. All the other times though, we made sure we had our money ready, hopped out, and then handed the driver the money. Always remember to get out of the cab before handing the driver the money. That way you can make a quick sprint or pretend like you can’t hear him if he starts yelling at you.

In Thailand, the taxi drivers were the most arrogant and lazy taxi drivers we’d encountered on our entire trip. Not the most devious though. We’ll leave that for Vietnam. In Thailand, they would just refuse to take you anywhere for less than 200 baht (about $6) which is a lot of money for them and for us, especially considering the distances covered. They would refuse to use the meter and if given the choice, would rather hang around with the 30 other taxi drivers waiting for the perfect prey where the could get their $6 fare for driving you 5 minutes away. The only way to get around this was by going to a hotel where the hotels mandate that they use the meter.

When we first arrived in Bangkok, we were with our friend Marni and a friend we’d met in Nepal. They have taxi stands outside the airport that charge you $30 to get into the city. Most people pay because it looks official and everybody else is doing it. We ask for the meter. Arguing ensues and the taxi stand guy shoves us toward one of the waiting cabs. Of course the driver is pissed that we request the meter and swears at us in Thai the whole 30 minute ride into town. Welcome to Thailand. We think it’s funny because we don’t understand a word he’s saying except we’re pretty sure it’s not nice and he keeps glaring at us. But hey, it ended up being a 200 baht ($6) ride instead of the $30 they wanted to charge us.

On our last night in Bangkok, we had tried to flag down at least 5 cabs, all of whom refused to take us to our hotel (about a 100 baht ride) for less than 300 baht. Totally frustrated and at the end of my nerve, I declared to Brian that I was going to get in the next cab no matter what and just force them to use the meter or raise holy hell outside the cab in front of everybody. I was ready for war! Of course, when you’re ready for war sometimes it never comes. The next cab pulled up and I hopped in ready for a fight. Instead we were engulfed in the sweet smell of gardenia and a nice clean cab with fluffy velour seats. It was like stepping into a spa. The driver was a sweet lady who used the meter without us having to ask and drove us to our destination without giving us a courtesy tour of Bangkok. We, of course, hired her to take us to the airport the next day and gave her a big tip just for being the only decent taxi driver in Bangkok.

Vietnam takes the cake in the whole taxi drama. Actually, we never had problems with taxis in Ho Chi Minh City and got around quite pleasantly. In Hanoi though we would run into a different story……………we’d heard horror stories and were ready to battle when we got off the train. Our hotel even told us that a taxi should only cost $3 from the train station to our hotel. We took a deep breath and entered into the madness of the Hanoi train station. The key is to walk away from the tourist area and pick a cab who doesn’t look like a cheetah who hasn’t eaten in a week. Still hesitant, we got into the cab with our fists ready. Of course, he turned out to be an incredible decent taxi driver and the ride only costs us $2. Our guard was down.

The next day we had to go the Chinese embassy to get our visas for China. None of the cab drivers knew where it was although we had showed them on a map where we wanted to go. One driver comes running up to us saying he knows where it is. We should have been suspicious but we really needed to get there and start the process. So we hopped in. All was well until the last 10 minutes of the drive and I watched the meter as it kept clicking up. The strange thing was that we were at a red stoplight. How weird I thought. Since we didn’t know how far the Chinese Embassy was, we really didn’t have a gauge for how much a ride should cost. So we handed over the 100,000 dong ($6) that was on the meter. When we got out, Brian says to me “I think that meter was rigged”.  Hindsight, as always, is 20/20 (20/15 in Brian’s case after his laser eye surgery!)  

So the next day, my mom comes into town and we take a cab back to the embassy. 5 minutes into the ride, we see the meter clicking up very rapidly. Rigged! We told the cab driver to stop the vehicle and got out. We paid him the amount on the meter (which we really shouldn’t have done) and hailed another cab that “looked” honest. All was well and we got to the embassy with our wallets still intact. On our way back to our hotel, we hailed another cab. This time we were watching the meter like a hawk. Since my mom is with us, Brian is sitting in the front seat. He’s watching the driver. Typically, the passengers can’t see what the driver does because they’re normally in the back. All of a sudden, Brian goes “I know how they do it”. This taxi is rigged! We had already agreed that if we got into another taxi that was rigged that we just wouldn’t pay them. Brian goes “we’ll get out when we know where we are.” Then he says to the guy “What’s that?” and points to the guy’s belt where he has a button that controls the meter on the taxi. Guy plays dumb, smiles and pretends like he doesn’t know what Brian is asking.

So Brian reaches over and starts pushing the button on the guy’s belt and keeps going “what’s that? What’s that? What’s that”. He keeps pushing it and we just keep watching the meter roll up – it was like watching the progessive roll at the slots in Vegas – we were mesmerized.  Bingo – we’d caught him! Brian tells him to pull over and the guy is practically crapping his pants by now because knows he’s been caught. I know you all think Brian is such a nice sweet guy but he can be a totally merciless jerk when he needs to be. It’s one of the “skills” he’s acquired on this round the world trip. So the cabbie stops and we all hop out – me slamming the door as hard as I can (that’s my contribution to all of this!) and the cab speeds away. He didn’t even bother asking us to pay for part of the ride (not that we would).

So Brian is the hero of the day and now that we know how they do it, we want to hop into every cab in Hanoi and bust all those bastards who are overcharging the tourists.

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Clothes, clothes, clothes

Written by: Susan

Date: March 3, 2008

We arrived in Hoi An after an overnight bus trip. The only other time we’d taken an overnight bus trip was in Turkey and it was not the most comfortable form of travel. Our hotel promised though that this was a nice bus. A nice bus indeed but it was still an overnight trip on a bus. This bus though had reclining seats where you could kick out your legs and almost lay flat in the chair. We luckily got the back of the bus, a row of 5 seats shared by only 3 people. Had the bus been going along interstate highways in the States, it would have been a blissful trip. Since we were in Vietnam on a 2 lane highway fit for motorbikes, the trip left us swerving, bumping, and hopping along for 12 hours.

I actually slept pretty well but poor Brian’s body did not fit in the seats made for little Vietnamese people. So we arrived at 7am after a fitful night of sleep and were thankfully greeted by our hotel. Never was it so nice to not have to think about where we were going to stay and hassle with all the touts that were crowding around the entrance to the bus. We zipped through Hoi An just as the city was beginning to wake up and checked into our hotel. We fell fast asleep for the next 4 hours and woke up in a groggy state trying wondering where we were. I’ve been doing that a lot these nights since we’ve been traveling to new cities every few days that I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and wonder where I am.

After waking up, taking a hot shower, and ordering tea from room service, I proceeded to make a little breakfast of crackers and cheese. It was time to hit the streets of Hoi An and get some clothes made!! We weren’t sure what we were going to do or even where to shop since there are over 500 tailors in Hoi An. Every places is calling to you to come into their shop. Every shop pretty much has the same material though so it really all comes down to the tailor. In the end we ended up buying things from different tailors according to how much money we wanted to spend and what kind of quality we wanted. For example, I had several skirts made and since they didn’t have to be of the best quality tailoring we could use a tailor that was less expensive. For Brian’s suits, we chose a tailor that was a bit more than others but we felt more confidence in their skills.

We ended up spending only 3 days in Hoi An running around doing 1st fittings, 2nd fittings, and 3rd fittings. The old town is beautiful though and probably deserved a bit more time to just wander around and explore instead of running from tailor to tailor. Although I must admit, it was really fun being able to design our own clothes and tell the tailor exactly what we wanted. We know Hoi An is definitely a city that we will return to in the future and spend more time wandering the streets.

HUE

Hue was our last stop before Hanoi so we took a 3 hour bus trip from Hoi An to Hue. I’ve been really impressed with the bus system they have in place here in Vietnam. It makes it very easy for travelers to travel from the North to the South or vice versa. These “open tour” buses come at least once or twice and day and are usually comfortable buses that stop a couple of times along the road for bathroom breaks and snacks. Plus there cheap. The most expensive bus we’ve had was the overnight bus that costs us $11. All the day buses have ranged from $3-$5. Taking the bus is also not a bad way to see the Vietnamese countryside, which has been one of my favorite parts about the trip.

The countryside is full of beautiful, bright, green rice paddies with women working the fields in their conical shaped hats. Women and men peddling down the roads on their old-fashioned bicycles with tall green mountains rising in the background and the South China sea twinkling to the East. It really does look like all the pictures I’ve seen of the Vietnamese countryside. It’s hard to believe that only 30 years ago, this place was ravaged by war. You can still see some remnants, especially in the bombed out cemeteries and some of the old abandoned churches that still litter the highway along the coast. It seems to all just add to the quaintness, charm, and mystery of Vietnam.

We arrived in Hue yesterday evening to a very nice hotel room that costs us $20 a night with breakfast. Although Hue seems to be a majoring stopping point for a lot of people in their travels through Vietnam, it is probably the least developed we’ve seen as far as a tourist area. We ate dinner and just wandered around for a bit before heading back to our hotel.

In the morning, we walked across the bridge to the Citadel. We were honestly a bit disappointed. Except for a palace that had been refurbished, most of the other parts of the grounds had been destroyed so there was a whole lot of nothing except for grass and rocks to look at. It might actually be one of the most over-hyped places we’ve been so far on our trip. So after spending a few hours wandering around the citadel looking for buildings that ceased to exist, we decided to move our train departure to Hanoi up by a day. There was no point in staying in Hue any longer and we would rather get up to Hanoi to get our Chinese visa process started.

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February 29, 2008

Written by: Susan

After 5 weeks of hanging out with my mom, it was time to head up country. We had ended up spending more time in HCMC than we had planned but alas we were on the road again. Since we had gotten a little too comfortable in Saigon, we were now on a bit of a time crunch. It’s now the end of February and we have until April 6th to make it all the way up to Beijing, a distance of 2100 miles from HCMC to Beijing. We have yet to get our Chinese visas so we will somehow have to factor the time it takes to get the visas when we get up to Hanoi.

MUI NE

Our first stop was Mui Ne. It sounded like a really cool place to go. A beach town that is reportedly quieter than its more popular sister city, Nha Trang, Mui Ne provided us some great R&R. They also have some great first class resorts for really cheap compared to some more expensive destinations like Hawaii. We could have gotten a great little bungalow that would have cost $200 a night in any major beach town but only $40 in Mui Ne. Unfortunately, $40 was still over our budget and we had to settle for the $18 bungalow down the street. Not as much charm but it would do, especially since there was aircon. Basically there is nothing to do in Mui Ne except go to the beach, watch the wind and kite surfers and sip drinks at one of the many fine restaurants lining the beach. It was really nice and peaceful for the 1st night but than Brian and I started getting restless. We had already spent time doing a whole lot of nothing in Saigon so sitting at a beach wasn’t really our cup of tea at this point in our trip.

We decided to stay one extra day because I wanted to see the sand dunes that were nearby. We haven’t seen sand dunes yet on our trip and I was fascinated that Vietnam would have sand dunes that looked as beautiful as the ones in Namibia (not that I’ve seen those in person yet but those are definitely on my list). So we booked a jeep tour to head out to the sand dunes. The thing about the jeep tour is that it was never necessary to have a jeep. Here I thought, cool that must mean that we get to go jeeping through the sand dunes or something. I mean, why else would you have a jeep? Instead the jeep was a 1950’s leftover US military jeep that had obviously now been cleaned up and used as a tourist vehicle. The condition of the jeep was actually mighty impressive considering it was from the 50’s but then again, it only ever drove on paved roads.

In every tour package they like to take you to not only the place you want to go, but also 4 other places in order to make you feel like you got your money’s worth. Reason #1256 of why we dislike tours like this. Luckily we were alone and didn’t have to be at the mercy of anybody else. Our first stop was called the Fairy Stream. Basically all our driver did was drop us off and told us to walk up this stream to the waterfall. Ok we said not really sure what we were doing. We hadn’t really paid attention the day before when the tour lady had gone over our itinerary. As with all tourist places though, we need not worry because there was a bevy of kids waiting to offer up their assistance for a few George Washingtons.

These kids are incredibly bright and clever and could probably sell ice to Eskimos if given the chance. First, they start off with innocent questions like “What’s your name?”, “ Where are you from?”, “Where are you staying?” The last question being a bit odd because you’re thinking ‘is your little buddy going to go rob my room while you’re innocently walking up the fairy stream with me?’  First you ignore them but inevitably you answer one question because you don’t want to look like a totally jerk tourist. But of course, that is the beginning of the end because that’s basically the “yes, you can guide me and ask me for money at the end of the walk” signal.  So they continue to walk with you and somewhere you will end up needing there assistance in directing you along the right path. After our walk through the fairy stream to a very tiny waterfall (about 5 feet tall), totally anti-climatic, we headed back and made our way to the sand dunes.

When we arrived at the sand dunes, our driver put the jeep in four wheel drive and Brian and I started getting excited. Cool, do we get to go riding in the dunes? No, we get to ride a whole 30 feet in the sand down to the restaurant located at the base of the trail and than had to slog our way up the sand to a good vantage spot. The white sand dunes were amazing though and I’m glad we stayed the extra day and made the trip out there. We did not slide down the dunes on a little sheet of plastic that of course we were offered (for a charge no less) from some local kids hanging around the dunes. Although it looked slightly entertaining, the idea of getting sand up our crotch was not.

Tomorrow we would head off to Nha Trang.

NHA TRANG

Nha Trang was another beach town although much bigger and more industrial. We arrived after a 6 hour, $4 bus ride along the coast and through rice paddy after rice paddy.

We didn’t have a hotel booked yet which can be good or bad. Sometimes when you book a hotel, it ends up being crappy and you’re stuck with it. On the other hand, not having a hotel means you are at the mercy of the touts that converge on arriving buses.

On this occasion we decided to let one of the motorcycle touts takes us to a hotel where he gets a little commission. That’s fine with us as long as the price is right and the location is good. Well the price was right at this place but the location was less than desirable, which we didn’t know since it was evening and we had just gotten to town. So we decided to stay one night and check it out the next day. It was a $12 room on the oceanfront with a full view of the South China Sea and a deck. Not bad except all the restaurants were a taxi ride away and we have learned that it sucks to have to ride taxi’s everywhere instead of just being in the center of town.

So we switched hotels the next day and just spent the next couple of days walking along the beach promenade and city. Again, not much else to do in this town unless you just want to lounge on the beach. Unfortunately, the weather turned on us and we knew we were heading out of the tropical weather of SE Asia and into the cold winter of northern Vietnam.

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