Hanoi, Halong Bay, Sapa

I'm getting down to the home stretch of my trip, so I've been a bit lazier about posting. For most of the last 2 weeks I was headquartered in Hanoi, and traveling around North Vietnam. I actually arrived in Hanoi 4 different times, and went to Halong Bay twice and to the mountains of Sapa once. And for the last 3 days I was in the small, rich island nation of Singapore. Right now I'm briefly stopping in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia until my flight tomorrow back to the US.

I've got a ton of pictures, so I'll keep the word count down. Keep your eye out for some guest appearances in this one.

After a quick day in Hanoi, we got on a boat out to Halong Bay, a huge series of karst island formations like this one here, which is rightfully considered one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.

The front of our boat. And yes, that's my sister sneaking into the picture. We met up with my parents and sister, as well as Arni's mother, for about 5 days in Hanoi.

The sun deck. Spent a lot of time chilling up here.

More karsts.

I think she's about to sneeze...

Big cave in one of the karsts.

We climbed one of the islands, and this was the incredible view from the top. The next few pics are different angles of the view.

Arni found these bad boys in a bush and decided they were too hot to let go to waste.

More breathtaking views.

Arni learning how to make spring rolls. Don't think I won't make him use his newfound knowledge to make these for the house in San Fran...

Boating around.

We kayaked around a similar area later, which I don't have any pics of, but it was pretty awesome. At one point we found a good spot on the side of one of the islands to try to climb, and I hopped off the kayak and climbed up 15 or 20 feet then jumped in, it was really fun. I was hoping to do more of this the second time we came to Halong, but a typhoon made sure that didn't happen...

Our luxury boat. You may have noticed the overall niceness of the boat is a bit out of context for this blog, as usually I don't spend more than 5 bucks a night for accommodation. Parents are good for some things...

We're sailing!

Monkeys! The mom monkeys would be running around doing whatever it is they do, and the babies would just sit there and wait for the mom to pass and just jump on her back and hang on for the ride, then jump off whenever it was where it wanted to go. Free taxi!

In one of the many caves in Halong Bay.

Back in Hanoi. This Soviet looking structure is Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. For this of you who don't know Uncle Ho, he was the founder and long time leader of the Vietnamese Communist Party, who the Americans fought against in the Vietnam War. Ho died in 1969, 6 years before his beloved country was finally unified. Ho wished to be cremated and have his ashes spread over Vietnam, but the Vietnamese leaders decided, in the Soviet vein to embalm him instead. So inside this building Ho still lies peacefully in a glass box, looking mostly as he did the day he died, although perhaps a bit waxier. As with Lenin, who's embalmed body I saw last year in Moscow, it was an unnerving experience, looking at this tiny wax-looking body. It is just the body of an old man, yet he is a god to the Vietnamese people, as well is a huge, important figure in my mind and in modern world history. The contrast is very strange. It would be like us seeing the body of George Washington, who everything in America is named after, who is on every dollar bill, who is a god to us, and him being this shrimpy little shriveled up old dude. Very strange.

Ho's old house during the war.

Confucius say...

Confucian temple which was the first university in Vietnam.

Lake of the restored sword in the middle of Hanoi.

There was a bomb shelter from the war under our hotel, which we took a tour of. Joan Baez, the American folk singer, actually stayed at the hotel during part of the war, and was sheltered in this shelter during the infamous Christmas bombing of Hanoi, which was the 4th largest bombing raid in history. You can see my dad stubbornly refusing to put on his helmet and struggling to get through the undersized doorway.

After my family left Hanoi, Arni and I went north to the mountains of Sapa, near the Chinese border. Wandering around after the night bus looking confused, we met Heather, a Canadian who convinced us to go with her on a 3 day trek to the top of Mount Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina. Here we are on the first night, having dinner and "happy water" (rice wine) with our nice Hmong guides.

Hmong is an ethnic group that lives in mountainous areas in Northern Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Southern China. I mentioned them at one other point in this blog, as they were the people who fought in the American side in Laos during the Vietnam War, then got slaughtered when we abandoned them. Anyway they are very friendly people who live simple lives in simple villages. 

One very interesting thing about Hmong culture, which our guide, Sho, told us about, is how they date. In Hmong culture, a girl never goes to a boy's house, as that would make her a "bad girl"(ie slut). Instead, if a boy likes a girl, he first asks the girl's parents' permission, then gets some of his friends together and goes to the girl's house at night and kidnaps her. They drag her, kicking and screaming and crying, to the boys house. For the next 3 days, she lives at the boy's (and his family's) house, and at the end of 3 days, if she wants to marry him, they get married, and if not they take a shot of rice wine and part ways. We thought this was pretty crazy when we first heard it, and thought that "kidnapping" must just be a translation error, but after he explained it further, that's exactly what it is. Although the screaming and crying are often feigned, as the girl doesn't want to seem like she wants to go to the guy's house, because that would make her a bid girl... They do this very young, our guide Sho was 20 and already had 2 kids.

On the flight from Bangkok to Hanoi, I had stupidly forgot to cover my backpack when I checked it, and my shoes, which were just strapped in an outside pocket, didn't make the journey... So in Hanoi I had to find something to replace them because I knew I would be doing some hiking in Sapa. This proved to be a bit tougher than I thought, as not many Vietnamese have size 14 feet... After shopping for a couple hours, I bought the biggest shoes I could find, these size 12 Converse All Stars. 

View on the trail.

View from the mountain. During almost our whole 3 day trek, it was extremely foggy, as well as consistently rainy. Which is unfortunate, as I'm sure the views would have been incredible. That said, the hike was still really beautiful and fun.

After hiking 12 km and vertically about 1.1 km in about 6 hours, we reached the summit.

Arni is pretty proud of himself. And Vietnam, for some reason.

The summit is at 3,143 m. We started at about 2,000 m, and we would hike down to a village at about 1300 m.

Striking a pose on the trail.

Heather is a little more into it than us...

Some mountain goats invaded the camp for a while. The cat tried to show them off, but was intimidated pretty quickly. The puppy, on the other hand, took a couple headbutts from the papa goat before she left them alone.

Said puppy, being puppylike.

Dinner the second night, with some newfound Vietnamese friends. We played a card game with these guys later that night, which was very strange. Each player was dealt 3 cards, then immediately showed them. Each players cards were added, and the remainder by 10 was taken to get their score, ie 22=2, 18=8, 7=7. The player with the highest score was the winner for the round, and the lowest was the loser. The winner then got to flick the ear of the loser 3 times with his finger. Then the round was over, and the cards would be shuffled and redealt. And that was the game, which we played for like an hour, and the Vietnamese just loved it.

Our friend Mike challenged Arni to an arm wrestling match. Much to Arni's surprise, Mike was actually a champion arm-wrestler, and won in a long, hard-fought battle.

At about 1,800 m on the way down the mountain on the last day, we finally got below the cloud level.

The views were pretty incredible.

Two Hmong women carrying rice back to their village.

More views.

Two Hmong dying clothes in the river.

My undersized shoes by the end of the hike. Needless to say my feet were in even worse shape...

Hot herbal bath after our 3 day, 30 km, 13 hour hike where we were constantly wet and cold. Felt so good...

Whew it's getting steamy in here...

Back in Hanoi, drinking some Bia Hoi, or "fresh beer". Each of these mini kegs cost us about 3 dollars.

Watching some traditional Vietnamese music. 

Who's that? Oh, just Bender sneaking his way into Vietnam. Arni's a lot happier that Bender's here than I am apparently...

Some creepy mannequins in the Hanoi Hilton, the prison used by the French to torture and hold Vietnamese political prisoners before 1954, and afterward used by the Vietnamese to torture American POWs, including John McCain. The museum made no mention of the American POWs, of course. 

The French used this guillotine as late as the 1950s to execute political prisoners.

This dude is somehow taking a nap on his bike. At one point in Saigon we saw a guy sleeping like this, except he had a burning cigarette in one hand.

A cool sculpture at the Ho Chi Minh museum.

My last meal in Vietnam, it had to be pho.

An avocado smoothie at the airport. Avocado is eaten a lot in Southeast Asia, but as a sweet, rather that savory food. They mix it with sweet condensed milk and ice, and make other desserts out of it. I'm undecided over which way I prefer...

OK this is already really long so I think I'll stop here and do Singapore and KL in a couple days, as I have a ton of pics from Singapore. 

Till then,

tam biet