Trip to Vietnam - Part 1

Hello!

I made it back fine from Vietnam earlier this week. To get back to Kobe, I flew from Saigon up to Hanoi on Wednesday afternoon and then took a flight Thursday morning from Hanoi back to Osaka.

I'll split my notes from Vietnam into two updates - this week and next.

The group tour I was part of was scheduled to run Monday, December 26th through Wednesday, January 4th, making it about 10 days.

I flew from Osaka to Hanoi on Sunday, December 25th to give me some time on my own in Hanoi before the tour started. I think I mentioned last time that there is a bus from Kobe that regularly takes people to the Osaka airport, so I grabbed that to get there before my flight.

When I arrived Sunday evening Christmas Day into Hanoi, I did not have much time to do anything other than get dinner in the downtown area. I picked up a sim card from the airport and took a taxi to my hotel. The sim card would allow me to use my phone while in Vietnam - this cost about $12.

When I landed, there were plenty of desks selling sim cards and taxi rides, so it was not hard to get what I needed and get into the city.

After getting settled at the hotel, I went out to eat. There was a restaurant called "Little Hanoi" that had many vegetarian options. I would later find out while traveling in Vietnam that finding vegetarian food is very easy - most restaurants have options on the menu.

While walking around that first night, there were motor bikes everywhere. It is a very popular mode of transportation throughout Vietnam. There are a fair number of bikes in Japan, but it is not used there to the extent that the Vietnamese use them.

On Monday, our tour group did not meet until 6pm, so I had time to do some exploration of Hanoi on my own. I booked a motorbike tour that took me to various places and markets around the city. I rode on the bike behind the driver.

The air pollution in Hanoi is noticeable, probably coming from all of the people using motorbikes. It is the first city in which I could feel that the air was causing me some minor breathing issues.

After the bike tour, I picked up a late lunch at a vegan buffet restaurant close to my hotel. It is called Veggie Castle. There are some pictures pictures of the food there in the album.

After lunch and walking around a bit more, I went back to the hotel for our tour group meeting.

In the group, there were about 15 people - most of them had been together for about two weeks before Vietnam, traveling through Thailand and Laos. And some of them would continue the tour after Vietnam - going into Cambodia before going back to Thailand and then back home.

I was the only American, most of the others were from Australia or the United Kingdom.

On Tuesday, we ate breakfast at the hotel and then we went to Halong Bay, which is here. It took maybe two to three hours to get to the bay from Hanoi.

I did not know much about Halong Bay before the trip, but once we arrived we boarded a boat to take an overnight cruise throughout the area. It was a nice boat - each person had his or her own room and we ate lunch, dinner and breakfast on the boat.

We mainly spent time sailing through the rock formations before stopping at an island from which you could swim at the beach or hike up about 20 minutes to the top of a small mountain to get a view of the area. After that, a few of us did kayaking for about 2 hours around one of the bays.

One done with kayaking, we had dinner and went to sleep for the evening.

In the morning, we visited a large cave complex inside one of the rocks and then rode the boat back to the harbor.

Once back in Hanoi, we visited the Hoa Lo Prison, otherwise known as the "Hanoi Hilton." This is an old prison that housed American POWs during the war.

The prison was not originally on our tour itinerary, but enough people on the tour wanted to visit it, so our guide and bus driver took us there before we went back to the hotel.

The prison's museum had lots of information explaining its history. It started as prison used by the French and then the Vietnamese took it over after the French left.

Speaking of the French, the French and other European colonial powers had a long history in Vietnam, influencing the language and food. It is why the Vietnamese language uses a Latin-script for its alphabet. The French baguette also influenced one of Vietnam's popular food items - bahn mi, a sandwich.

The museum had a section devoted to Americans held at the camp, although it seemed to describe the facilities in positive terms. There were many photos of Americans playing pool and other sports. So it might not have been a completely true representation of actual life in the prison at that time.

After the prison tour, we some free time before we were to catch a train to Hue. For dinner, I went back to the Veggie Castle restaurant.

That evening, we boarded the overnight train. There were four of us in each room sleeping in bunk-style beds. The front of the train had a cafe car, but I did not end up going down there. The train was fairly and comfortable, although it was a small room for four people.

We were on the train for about 13 hours until we reached our destination of Hue, which is in central Vietnam.

It was pretty rainy the whole time we were in Hue. And I would not say that there was anything particularly notable about the city - there was a large market and a citadel there that we spent time checking out.

We also did a motor bike tour on our second day in Hue. Even though it was raining, we still did it - the drivers gave us ponchos to wear and I wore sandals so as to not get my shoes too wet.

Riding the bikes was fun and never seemed dangerous. The roads are in fairly decent shape, so we did not have to worry about hitting any potholes.

During our two days in Hue, we ate lunch at local spots - one day was with a local family and the other day was at a temple/nunnery.

I will go ahead and save the rest of the trip update for next week, but photos from the whole trip are in the album below. If you sort the album from "Oldest to Newest," that will have the photos line up with the notes above.

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Until next time,