quick visits to the main sights of northern Vietnam

I couldn’t leave the country without visiting Halong Bay or getting a glimpse of the hill tribes in SaPa, so I booked a couple of tours through my hostel.

I’d read a few reports that Halong Bay gets too overcrowded with tourists these days, but I didn’t feel that seeing a few other tourist boats made any difference to the experience.  It’s a beautiful place, with some 2,000 ‘islands’ (limestone pinnacles) jutting out of the sea, some with impressive caves running through them, , one of which we visited.  We also did a side-trip in local style bamboo boats into a lagoon.  It made for a great day trip - helped by a very good lunch buffet on the boat, and some nice fellow travellers to chat with.

SaPa is further from Hanoi, so I needed to do an overnight trip, spending one night in a village in what was described as a homestay but was actually a separate building built specially to accommodate tourists - with modern rooms and bathrooms - so not a real homestay experience, but comfortable.  I wasn't complaining..  Much of the trip, apart from the drive there and back, involved hiking along small paths through the rice paddies and a small bamboo forest, to get from the main town to a tradtional village - to enjoy the local scenery, spot a few Hmong hill tribe people in their traditional clothes, and hopefully (from their point of view) to spend money on souvenirs.  Of course I cannot buy stuff - one of the side-effects of travelling long-term which I mostly find to be a good thing, as I prefer to spend my money on epxeriences than on stuff.  I was nervous about the trip as the weather forecast was for two full days of rain, but thankfully the weather forecasters got it completely wrong as we did not get a single drp of rain!  & we did get to see a few older women still wearing the traditional clothing.


& all too quickly, my month in Hanoi was over, and it was on to the next country.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

time out in Hanoi

Image
I've been in Hanoi nearly three weeks, trying to see the sights but also trying to get some 'down time' - what would be days at home just pottering about if I had a home.  Not always easy, as for example this morning I'd planned to do just that, but then before I'd finished my breakfast I got into conversation with a couple of other guests staying at my hostel, and suddenly it was 12:45 and time to go out and buy a bread roll for my lunch.  So right now I'm hiding behind the curtain that screens my bed from others in my dorm; I'd rather like a cup of tea, but that would involve locking my laptop away in the locker, going down four flights of stairs to the kitchen, and risking getting into another conversation.  Not that I'm complaining, as meeting other travellers can be as interesting as seeing the sights, but sometimes you do have to work at managing your time and personal space in this type of life. You also have to work at being 'present' in ...
Read more

central Vietnam

Image
I had heard how very touristy Hoi An is, so wasn't sure what I'd think of the place.  & it's true that there were thousands of tourists there, and the vast majority of the buildings in the UNESCO-listed old town are restaurants/bars/cafes/tourist shops - but it is still beautiful.  I happily wandered its streets for days, although helped I suppose by my staying in a hostel-homestay in what I can only describe as a "middle class suburb".  A twenty-minute walk out of town, it was so clean and quiet, probably one motorbike going past every ten minutes on otherwise empty roads. The town is crowded full of old houses, temples, community centres and museums, and there are also a few venues which put on cultural performances.  But walking the other way out of my hostel I could avoid all of the touristy sights and walk beside rice paddies and a nearly-deserted beach - so a nice mixture.  & nearby are towns with yet more temples (most of them seeming to contain a...
Read more

more cats

My time at the cat sanctuary passed quite quickly, particularly since the owner returned as she drove here from the UK with piles of provisions (mostly cat toys and blankets…), all of which has had to be unpacked, washed, sorted through, etc.   I managed to get talked into coming back here for nine days in August, when I should have been seeing as-yet-unvisited bits of Turkey, but I suppose it will save me a little cash again. I think the biggest down-side of being there was the inability to get any exercise.  Whilst I wasn’t doing anything measurable for much of the day (when not cleaning litter trays, watering the plants, etc), I had to either lock the little kitten and one of the disabled cats in a bedroom, or allow them to enjoy the garden but watch the kitten constantly, as it was small enough to escape between the gate bars into the big outdoors where there were feral dogs (as well as the sheep, goats, donkeys and bulls that wandered the area).  After seven weeks of...
Read more