Hoi An, Vietnam

We had a good trip from Hue to Hoi An. We could have got a public bus for just a few dollars each, but it wasn't too expensive to hire a private car and driver for the 3 and a half hour or so trip, so we did just that. It was very luxurious travelling in style in a nice air-conditioned vehicle and being able to stop whenever we wanted. Our base for our 3 nights in Hoi An was the Loc Phat Homestay which had been highly rated and well reviewed on several different websites. This was with good reason. Our room was lovely and spacious with a huge bed and nice private balcony. Breakfast was excellent (as they had been in every place we stayed during our trip and there was also the free super-quick internet that every place offered. The owner tipped us off that the best banh mi (Vietnamese sandwich) in Hoi An was to be found from a cart that set up for a few hours each day just a few doors down from the homestay. We gave it a go on the first day and it was amazing! A super light baguette filled with several cuts of pork, pate, salad, spicy condiments and loads of fresh herbs, all for less than 1NZD. That ended up being our standard lunch each day we were there. There was always a queue of locals waiting for their daily banh mi fix which was a good recommendation in itself.  

This temple was a couple of doors down from the homestay and we would walk past it as we walked the 15-20 minutes into the centre of town every day.

Hoi An seems to be every traveller's favourite place in Vietnam and Will and I loved it. It's a cute wee town without the hustle and bustle of Hanoi. If we had stayed longer we would have taken advantage of the bicycles offered by our homestay to go out and explore the surrounding countryside. Bars and restaurants line the riverside and we enjoyed taking advantage of the late afternoon happy hour cocktail specials.

The town is a shoppers paradise! If you were after handbags, scarves, custom-made shoes or any leather goods in general, you were in the right place... I might have left Vietnam with about 5 more scarves than I arrived with...

Of course, Hoi An is most famous as the tailoring capital of the world. Will took the opportunity to get a new suit custom made. There are literally hundreds of tailors in the town, but he chose Bibi Silk and was very pleased with the results. Next time I'm in Hoi An (for there definitely will be a next time!) I plan to arrive with very little and get a whole lot of clothes (and shoes) made. The photo below makes me laugh, Will blames Christmas at home in the UK, followed by the very good and very cheap Vietnamese food and beer on possibly needing a larger suit made than when he left NZ!

The centre of town is limited to pedestrians and cyclists only in the evenings, so it was very refreshing not having to constantly look out and dodge people on scooters and motorcycles. Below is the scenic and historic Japanese bridge.

Will even got to try his hand at a spot of wedding photography! We saw loads of weddings during our time in Vietnam, it was obviously the season for it...

Cao Lau is the local delicacy. It is a noodle dish that is only found in Hoi An, and it is delicious. The best version we ate was amongst the locals, on the street, at communal tables for less than half the price at the tourist restaurants. The only downfall was having to sit on the minuscule stools that the locals favour...

The town looks its best at night with brightly coloured lanterns hanging everywhere and the main bridge linking the river banks all lit up.

 

I'm a sucker for a good lantern market... If you don't share the same enthusiasm for them as I do you might want to scroll pretty quickly through the following pics! One of our regrets is that we didn't actually end up buying any. We intended to, but never quite got around to it.

 

 

 

  

 Of course, it doesn't look too bad during the day either. 

 

As well as all the tourist shops, there is also the 'local' market that is very interesting to have a wander through.

 

It was lovely just having the time to relax and chill out a bit after some of the more hectic travelling earlier in the trip. This bar/cafe was a very good vantage point to watch the world passing by for a bit. In the foreground you can see my highly addictive super potent Vietnamese iced coffee.

 

All too soon it was time to say goodbye to Hoi An. We caught a taxi to Danang (the nearest railway station to Hoi An) and then embarked on our longest overnight train trip yet, getting into Hanoi at 12:30pm the following day. Once again the train trip was a pleasure. It is definitely my favourite mode of transport when travelling, even if on this trip we shared our cabin with an ancient Vietnamese man who was quite enamoured with my thighs (having possibly never seen any quite that size before!) and at one stage reached out to grab a handful, unable to keep the delight off his face! Will of course found this all quite hilarious... Luckily it wasn't long before he disappeared off to his top bunk and left us in peace for the rest of the trip.

 

Once back in Hanoi we had a day and a half for any last minute sights/shopping. We did return to our favourite restaurant and managed to nab the premium table on a private balcony a couple of floors up. We didn't even know that space existed on our previous trips to the restaurant. I got to enjoy my last humongous bowl of green mango salad, quite possibly my favourite food in the whole of Vietnam.

The next day we flew back to Hong Kong for a couple more nights with my brother (staying at his apartment this time round, as opposed to his hostel) before heading back home to NZ after a brilliant 4 and a half weeks away.

Hue, Vietnam

We arrived back in Hanoi from Sapa at the crack of dawn on our overnight train and headed back to the 3B Hotel. We were heading south on another overnight train that evening, so had decided to pay for a room for the day. Even through we weren't going to actually sleep there overnight, at only 20USD it was well worth it to have a place to crash and sort our stuff for the day. The hotel looked after us so well the whole time we were there. Whenever we headed out on our excursions we would just take the clothes we'd need for the few days away and leave the rest at the hotel. We would leave washing to be done that would be waiting on our return (you can't under-estimate the positive effect that clean clothes has on the psyche when travelling!) and would always be greeted back at the hotel with big smiles, the ubiquitous fresh lemonade, and the offer of breakfast. Just what you wanted after a long night on the train...

 

That night we headed back to the train station (which we were now pretty familiar with!) for our third overnight train, waking up in Hue the next morning. I really enjoyed travelling on the trains. They were really comfortable with clean linen on the beds. We had booked bottom bunks for each trip as there was no way I could have made it up the top with my injured knee. There are no ladders, you just use the small metal step you can see to the left of Will below. The other advantage of the bottom bunks is having use of the small table between the bunks. Will and I would usually play cards for a couple of hours before turning in for the night and trying to get some sleep. 

Hue is situated approximately half-way down Vietnam, on the banks of the perfume river. It was Vietnam's capital from 1802 till 1945, and the imperial city was what we were there to see. The banks of the river were lined with colourful wooden tourist boats, with desperate vendors wanting to take us across the river for 1 or 2 USD. Despite it being a fairly drab grey kind of day, Will and I decided a walk would do us good instead.

We walked past some flower stalls selling super cheap orchids that I would have loved to have brought home if I was able...

You enter the imperial city through one of several imposing city gates. We weren't really following a map, we just walked along until we found one of them.

The imperial city complex was huge! We spent about 4 hours wandering around before we got a bit fatigued, and we feel like we could have spent at least that much time again and still not seen everything.

They loved their topiary in this complex! All sorts of bushes and hedges had been trimmed into animal shapes...

 

 

 For a boy who likes his dragons, Will thought this was pretty cool!

 

Parts of the temple complex were incredibly ornate. Some of it has obviously had a lot of time and money spent on restoration, and some of it was still a work in progress.

 

 

Some more pics. We did a lot of walking this day!

 

 

 

 

Having had our fill of the imperial city we wandered back to our hotel and got ready to head to Hoi An the following day.

Sapa, Vietnam

After arriving back at our base in Hanoi, the 3B Hotel, we chilled out for the rest of the afternoon before catching an overnight train to Sapa. Sapa is a  town set in the mountains right up the top of the country, not too far from the Chinese border. We had booked a 2-day 1 night trekking trip through our Hanoi hotel. We arrived in Sapa early the next morning after a good night on the train. We were taken to a hotel where we had breakfast and were able to have a nice hot shower, before setting out on our walk.

There was quite a crowd setting out from Sapa, and to start with it was bit of a route-march. However, as we got going the crowds thinned a bit as the different tour guides took their groups off on different paths. The tourist companies use women from the local villages as guides

 One of the first stops was for some fresh sugarcane to chew on (and spit out) as we walked.

The scenery in this part of Vietnam was spectacular. The area is known for its picturesque terraced rice paddies, and I certainly got my fill of them during the 2 days!

 

Everybody kept telling us how cold it was going to be in Sapa, so we had packed our winter woollies! A couple of weeks earlier they had had snow up there, but we managed to strike some lovely mild weather and were walking in t-shirts both days.

It was interesting walking through the small villages as we came to them. We'd be inundated with locals wanting us to buy their handicrafts! Below is the area school that some students walk miles to and from each day.

 More scenic shots... I came to Sapa for the terraced hills, and I certainly got what I wanted!

 

 

 

 

We had signed up for the 'home-stay' option overnight, but it was actually quite disappointing. We would have been better off staying overnight in a hotel in Sapa. Nevertheless, we still had a nice evening meal and managed to get a decent nights sleep, ready for another day of walking the next day.

 

Looking back, it's a wonder I managed some of the trekking with my dodgy knee! Some of the tracks were quite steep and I had to suffer the indignity of the little old women helping me along! It also helped that Will carried all of our stuff and I just had a light day bag with a warm top and some water in it. A lot of the tracks were clay, so it would have been an absolute nightmare if there had been any rain. The guides did say that during the wet season they tend to use alternative tracks, as well as walking more along the main roads.

 

 

 

Lunch each day was in one of the small villages and the food was always plentiful and very very good (as it had been the whole time in Vietnam!).

 

 

At the end of our trek we had a couple of hours to chill out and explore Sapa town. It is an interesting little town, with every third store seeming to be a North Face outlet store! Some of it is apparently real, but a fair amount was also fake... We chilled out and rested our weary legs in a very good little cafe where I enjoyed the restorative powers of a decent Vietnamese coffee and will had his first hot chocolate for a few days. The family sitting behind us happened to engage with the locals trying to sell them handicrafts, and that group of women stayed and harassed them for about half an hour!

 

After we were nicely rested it was a case of catching an overnight train back to Hanoi, and back to our friends at the 3B hotel.