In case you haven’t even heard of Halong Bay, it’s a bay that’s about 100km from Hanoi that is filled with almost 2,000 small islands, most of which are limestone. As you can see in the photos on this page, they are mostly tall and sticking out of the water in a pattern not seen many other places on earth. Also, the weather in the area seems to make the bay either misty or foggy nearly every day of the year, so most photos you’ll see have a slightly magical feeling, similar to the way that most photos of Machu Picchu in Peru show clouds below the city on the mountain’s peak.

Getting there from Hanoi

My final week in Hanoi (waiting for the post-Tet craziness in long distance travel to settle down) was actually quite cool so I timed my overnight trip for the warmest day of the week, which happened to be the day before my train to Hue would leave.

It’s possible to see Halong Bay as a day trip from Hanoi, but that means climbing on a bus around 8am and getting back to Hanoi around 12 hours later, with 8 of the hours in between sitting on the bus itself. That wouldn’t be too fun, and the overnight cruises are as ridiculously cheap as the hotels in Hanoi anyway, so of course I chose to spend the night on the bay.

In case you are curious about the details of how the cruises work and whatnot, I’ve written a very long article (with photos) on my new travel site called Halong Bay Cruise: prices, photos, and a review. That article is really meant to help people who are in the process of choosing a cruise themselves, so I’ll put a more basic version here along with my best photos.

Two days and one night on Halong Bay

After doing quite a bit of research I decided to opt for a 3-star cruise, and I paid $68 for a trip that supposedly would be less crowded, fancier, and have better food than the 1-star trip that I could have booked for around $45. Both those prices include the infamous “single supplement” of $15. Had I wanted to take a risk of sharing a room with a stranger I could have saved the $15, but this was my first ever cruise and I didn’t want it ruined by some chain-smoking snorer.

A bus picked me up in front of my Hanoi hotel (the wonderful Prince II in the Old Quarter) and four hours and a stop at a big overpriced souvenir warehouse later, we arrived in Ha Long City around noon. My boat from Cristina Cruise had 9 cabins and a maximum capacity of 24 people, but we only had 11 passengers and a crew of 5, including our guide (a local guy whose name is tough to pronounce so he asks people to call him “Lucky”.)

The boat is big enough that it can’t pull right up to the dock, so we first load into a small tender, which then takes us out to our main boat and then is tied alongside the main boat for the rest of the trip.

Once on board the main ship we are assigned our cabins and then served lunch before the ship even started its engine. Now, I had been eating really good meals in Hanoi restaurants for a couple weeks by then, with main dishes averaging around $2 to $3 each, and the lunch that was served on board was freshly cooked and probably would have been worth $10 to $15 by comparison. It was an almost never-ending series of shared dishes that the six of us at my table would divvy up on our own plates. There were pork and chicken dishes, plus octopus and a whole sautéed fish, in addition to quite a few rice, noodle, and veggie courses.

The boat got underway and about an hour later we arrived in the most famous and densely packed part of the bay, and the scenery was stunning in every direction. I’d been taking photos starting once we were moving, but most of those shots are pretty weak compared to the main event that we’d now reached.

Activities in the afternoon

In addition to the bus from Hanoi, the cruise itself and all the meals, these trips include several afternoon activities. There’s a trip through something called Surprise Cave, followed by optional kayaking and swimming. It was too cold for swimming that day, but a few people on my trip did the kayaking while the rest of us hung around on a pier in one of the floating villages. But the highlight was Surprise Cave, which would probably be constantly packed if it were in the US and even cost like $15 to get in.

You walk up about 140 steps before you enter and then it’s down and up stairs while you follow one approved path through three main “rooms” in the cave. The place is lit with different colored filters and it’s amazingly well done. There are a few other caves in this bay, but evidently this is the best one so I was lucky that it was on our agenda.

Dinner and karaoke

Back on board after the various activities, we had dinner that was basically a repeat of lunch except with more of an emphasis on deep-fried things. Again the food was delicious and abundant. It was a nice treat after a couple weeks in Hanoi and Sapa, since portions in this part of the world are more sensible and less American.

After dinner we got to do karaoke by the ship’s bar. Of the 11 passengers, 6 of them (including me) were foreigners and the other 5 were actually Vietnamese people. None of us foreigners wanted to sing but several of us were interested in listening.

The whole thing turned out to be far more tame than you might expect. I recorded the video below of Lucky, our guide, singing a local English-language hit (I first heard this song in the taxi on my way from Hanoi Airport when I first landed, and it seems to be originally sung by someone from this area, in English). All the other songs that the local people performed were in Vietnamese, so it was just about as odd and exotic as you’d expect.

Apparently karaoke continues to be wildly popular in Asia, including Vietnam, and having a good voice is not a requirement to join in and feel comfortable.

The next day

After a pretty good night’s sleep on the most comfortable bed I’d slept on in the country so far, we had breakfast at 7:30am, and it was only toast and mini omeletes, but still pretty good and plentiful enough.

We were asked to pack and check out of our cabins by 9am so they could clean and prepare them for the next day’s guests. I guess this is typical of cruises in general, where they don’t want to waste a day in the harbor if they don’t have to, so they keep the schedule tight and only stop in the harbor long enough to move one group off and another on board.

I was hoping that we might have some interesting morning lighting to contrast with the hazy mist the day before, but it was pretty much identical all morning. Still, the scenery we witnessed during the 90 minutes or so of cruising on a different loop back to the harbor was stunning nonetheless.

The bottom line

Especially for the money, it’s an amazing bargain. These cruises are probably the single most popular thing for visitors to Hanoi, and I felt it all lived up to the hype. Seeing all those islands coming out of the mist was really breathtaking, and something I doubt I’ll ever forget, especially since I took nearly 200 photos.

I’d read that there really aren’t any must-see attractions in Vietnam’s capital, at least in the sense that the Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, and Christ the Redeemer statue are must-see attractions in Paris, New York, and Rio de Janeiro. As far as I could see, that turned out to be true, but of course in a city of 6 million people that has been the area’s capital under many different rulers, and that was also celebrating its 1,000-year anniversary, there are at least a few worthwhile things to see in Hanoi.

The week before Tet vs. the week after Tet

Tet, as you probably know, is the Vietnamese version of lunar new year, and the country goes wild for it. I arrived about 10 days before the big day, and after my side-trip to Sapa, I was back for the holiday and then for another week afterward. As previously described, Hanoi is a complete madhouse as Tet approaches, since each person is buying new things (like clothes and shoes) to make the new year as happy and as lucky as possible.

And then starting on Tet day itself, the city gets relatively quiet, and it seems that about two-thirds of the businesses close down for the whole following week. That part seemed nice to me, and there were enough choices among tourist restaurants and small shops to keep visitors happy. A few more businesses seemed to open up every day, so it felt like an insane asylum slowing coming back to life.

The problem with just wandering around Hanoi randomly

As I think I mentioned before, there really are no pedestrians in Hanoi, at least not local pedestrians. Honest to god, every single person scoots around on a motorbike or, if they are unlucky, a bicycle. The only people actually walking more than just a few steps at a time are tourists and old ladies (almost never old men) carrying those balanced stick carrier things.

The result of this is we tourists stand out like sore thumbs even more than we otherwise would. Being a “well-fed” Westerner that is over 5’6” tall already makes you a target for a seemingly infinite number of xe om (motorbike taxi) or cyclo (bike taxi) drivers who are constantly calling out to you, but when you are also the only person on foot within a sea of motorbikes, there is just no hiding.

After my first three days of this I was still finding it quite stressful. I have no problem saying “no” and/or ignoring people making offers, but when you have to do it literally every few seconds for as long as you are out and about, it gets old fast. So I discovered that wearing ear buds and listening to something pleasant on my iPod was a great solution. I still got constant pitches, but if I mostly looked down as I walked it became much easier to just tune the whole thing out.

Still, you can see why a person wouldn’t want to just randomly wander the streets like you might do in New York or Amsterdam, so I picked my spots and usually did one touristy thing each day, spending most of the rest of my time trying out dining and drinking opportunities, or just hanging out in my fancy-but-small hotel room in the Old Quarter.

So here’s a report of some of those highlights:

Water Puppet Theater

I’d heard good things about this combination puppet show/live music performance, and with tickets being only $3 for the good seats, I decided to check it out, even though I heard it was best for children. I went to buy a reserved ticket early in my Hanoi stay and I asked for one ticket for the 2:30pm performance (there are about 6 shows each day). The crabby old woman manning the ticket both told me the 2:30 show was sold out, presumably because she wanted me to buy a ticket for a later show instead.

But I had plans later, so I just thanked her and started walking away, and then she started calling out to me like we were haggling in a souvenir market or something. I came back and she said she had a ticket for that show, and I pulled out a 100,000 dong note (about US$5) to pay for the 60,000 dong ticket, and she insisted I pay with smaller bills instead. In case you haven’t spent much time in these so-called developing countries, everyone always wants you to pay with small bills.

If I’m buying a 10,000-dong bottle of water then I know better to try to pay with a 100,000-dong note, but this was a damn 60,000-dong ticket, and this was a big cashier booth in a big and famous theater that sells these tickets all day long. In this case I didn’t have smaller bills anyway, so once again I just marched on down the street. Because of this (and the fact that it’s most recommended for children), I never went back. Screw that Water Puppet Theater and that old lady!

Hoa Lo Prison (the Hanoi Hilton)

Especially since this might actually be the most famous Vietnamese thing still in Hanoi (since Hanoi Jane Fonda lives in the safety and comfort of the USA), it was actually at the top of my list. It was a relatively short walk from my hotel, and only 10,000 dong (50 cents) to get in.

I’d read that most of the former prison was demolished so they could build a glass skyscraper on the lot, and that is all true, though enough of the prison remains to get the idea. It only took me about 30 minutes to walk through and see the exhibits, and along the way I saw an American man who probably served in Vietnam (and maybe even in the prison itself) checking it out as well. I’ve heard that it’s a popular stop for Vietnam vets in Southeast Asia, and I can see why.

The one thing I kept thinking about is that old saying that “the winners get to write the history books.” In this case, which is a rare one, the opponents of the USA were the winners so all the displays were wildly slanted propaganda, which I’m sure is also exactly what they teach kids in school as well.

Interestingly, only a couple small sections were anti-US propaganda, and most of it was anti-French propaganda. A plaque in front described the way the French (who were running things in the late 1800s when the prison was built) destroyed a thriving craft village in order to build the prison. Inside it described how the French tortured and killed the Vietnamese revolutionaries who were prisoners there until the early 1950s. A real guillotine was one of the more sobering displays.

The next section was a collection of photos of various people and groups demonstrating and protesting the war, which seemed fair enough, even though of course they don’t mention that to this day the locals aren’t allowed to protest anything themselves (or even use Facebook).

Then near the end you get to the section devoted to the US pilots who were shot down in the area and kept at the “Hanoi Hilton.” John McCain was famously one of them, and his sworn accounts of torture and ill treatment don’t match at all with the photos on display there. The prisoners are shown having volleyball games, receiving gifts for Christmas, enjoying cook-outs, and generally being treated like they were on a cruise ship. The only thing missing was Isaac, your bartender, pointing at you with both hands in the background before he mixes them up a pina colada.

I’m glad the thing is smaller now than it was, as it made for a fascinating and quick visit.

Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum

In the tradition of such communist leaders as Lenin and Mao, Vietnam’s favorite guy is still on display in the capital, in spite of him being dead since 1969. They call him Uncle Ho (no joke) and he seems to be as popular as ever.

The mausoleum was about a 1.5-mile walk from my hotel, which turned into almost double that since I got lost at first. I reached the place just a bit before its 5pm closing time, and I joined up in the line of (mostly foreign tourists) who were there to pay our respects. The rules out front and in the guidebooks say no short pants, no laughing, and definitely no photos, so I was careful about all of those things.

I didn’t know what to expect from such a strange sounding attraction, but heck, it’s free to enter and I had time to kill. The line shuffled along at about half normal walking speed until we actually started going up the front steps and entered the building. Everyone just walks in line, and the huge number of uniformed military guards in the area discourage you from any possible hi-jinks.

Inside the building the line goes up another flight of stairs, and suddenly you feel some very refreshing air conditioning. It was a steamy February day so I appreciated the AC as much as Uncle Ho probably did. Around one more corner and you are in the room with him. Visitors are about 20 feet from his waxy-looking body, so you can’t really see many details. Evidently they close this thing down for 2 months late each year as the body is sent to Russia for maintenance.

You enter near his head and walk down to the end of the room for a left turn, and then another left turn so you can see his other side, and you are done after about 20 meters total. A family in front of me slowed down for a quick moment and one of the guards tapped them to keep moving. I think that’s mostly so the line itself keeps going rather than them being afraid of a security breach.

Honestly, I spent maybe 4 minutes inside the building, with less than half that inside the corpse room. Especially since it was free and air-conditioned, I didn’t mind much, but still you just never expect to be done so quickly at a major attraction.

Once outside the mausoleum you can walk straight ahead to the Ho Chi Minh Museum, but I wasn’t really interested in that so I just skipped it and walked back to my hotel.

Huu Tiep Lake (aka B-52 Lake)

One of Hanoi’s weirder attractions is something that doesn’t seem to be in all the guidebooks, but it interested me nonetheless. Evidently a B-52 named Rose 1 was shot down over Hanoi in late 1972, and it crashed into a lake in a residential area. The locals just left the wreckage sit exactly where it is, so it’s now a minor tourist attraction.

This was quite a walk from the Old Quarter, and I might have skipped it altogether except I was feeling energetic on the main Tet day, and I figured I would barely be hassled my drivers and merchants on such a solemn holiday. Well, the city actually turned out to be way busier than I had guessed.

My understanding was the Tet itself is spent with your immediate family, and later days are spent with other relatives and then friends and such, but in reality it seems like half of Hanoi spent Tet riding around on their motorbikes just like it was any other day. Many of them were dressed up, some even in suits, but traffic was crazy, though most cyclo drivers weren’t out, making it a bit easier to deal with for a foreign pedestrian.

Not only was it a long walk, but the map on my iPhone couldn’t really convey what I was in for. When I got close it turned out that the roads I needed to take were no more than tight alleys, with enough room for me and one passing motorbike, but not two. There was plenty of traffic out there and I wasn’t even sure I was going in the right direction, so it was a weird feeling as I wound deeper and deeper into a suburban residential neighborhood.

But just where the map said it would be, there it was. It’s not actually a lake, but more a drainage pond of stagnant water that takes up a city block and is surrounded by buildings. I was the only tourist there during that time, and from the looks of things, maybe for the whole day or week. It’s definitely off the beaten path.

The amazing thing to me was what a lovely setting it is in general. There’s bright-green algae covering much of the “lake” and really interesting French colonial buildings surrounding it. I took about 25 photos and they are some of my favorites from the whole city, mostly for the colors.

Shortly after I arrived an old man came out of one of the buildings and I’m pretty sure he was trying to invite me inside for food or a drink. I’d read that it’s very lucky to have a “wealthy” guest as your first guest in the new year, and though I’m not wealthy, my camera probably cost half as much as his house, so I guess I qualified.

Unfortunately I couldn’t understand him at all, as he spoke no English at all and I still no zero Vietnamese. For all I know he was threatening to call the cops, but I do think he was actually inviting me in, which was nice, but I decided it would be too awkward to attempt to accept his invitation, especially since I couldn’t confirm what he was actually inviting me for.

The walk back to my hotel was less stressful than the walk there, and that’s how I spent my Tet.

Other attractions

There are a few other notable things in Hanoi, including the lovely Hoan Kiem Lake that is just south of the Old Quarter, and I checked out a bunch of them, but none are really worth mentioning here.

I had part of a day to kill between the time I checked out of my hotel and before the night train to Sapa left, so I went to see Avatar in 3D at a theater complex in a modern mall. Seeing the mall itself was quite interesting. The movie ticket was $5 and the mall was fairly posh and filled with young people, so Hanoi isn’t really the impoverished city that I was expecting. There are definitely people making US$10 and under, but honestly nearly every one of them seems to own a new $700 motorbike, so things aren’t all that bad for everyone.

And just in case you were wondering, I was the only tourist in the theater, and the Vietnamese seemed to be rooting for the noble Na’vi savages and against the “American corporation” just as you might expect.

I hear they have to buy certain things, like new shoes for good luck in the new year, as well as various decorations and food items to prepare for the big holiday. And raising prices to try to accumulate more money for Tet is accepted and normal.

So I got to Hanoi about 10 days before Tet, and the city feels like a complete mad house to me, with people racing around in every direction at all hours of the day. The problem for me is that I don’t know if that’s close to normal or quite unusual. As I write this I’m in the mountain resort town of Sapa and it’s quite mellow here. When I get back to Hanoi on Friday morning it’ll be 2 days before Tet begins, and I’m told that by Saturday most everything closes down and the city becomes a ghost town for at least 3 or 4 days. I purposely timed it to leave this week and then see the place again during this “ghost town” phase, but once again I’ll have no idea what normal days are like.

After all the craziness I’ve seen, I feel like I owe it to myself to see the nearly empty version of it, even though I’ve been told it might be a minor struggle to find places to buy food and drinks, at least at normal prices.

Hanoi for me so far

I’m staying in the Old Quarter, which is the historic district full of interesting architecture (though admittedly a bit run down as well), and the traffic of infinite motorbikes and a few cars mixed in makes it feel like pandemonium at every hour of the day. Old timers say that 15 years ago it was 50 bikes to one motorbike, and now it’s pretty much the exact opposite ratio.

The only pedestrians are my fellow tourists, and the occasional woman carrying two balanced trays of local produce. Aside from that, it’s almost 100% motorized vehicles, nearly all of those being motorbikes. The thin sidewalks in the Old Quarter are used as motorbike parking, so walkers have to walk right with the traffic in the street. It doesn’t really feel dangerous, until you have to cross the street.

Near the lake in the Old Quarter

I had heard and read about this before so this wasn’t surprising, but it’s still amazing to see in person. There is literally no traffic control (stop lights, stop signs, traffic cops) of any kind in the Old Quarter, so motorbikes just drive ahead and carefully weave through cross traffic or other obstacles (like pedestrians). If you wait for a break in the traffic to cross you might be waiting all day, so the key is to just wait until stepping out a few steps looks safe, and then go. After that you stare into traffic and move forward a step or two at a time. The key is to NEVER step backwards, as drivers are used to people crossing this way and they’ll drive around you as long as you move in a predictable pattern.

In a way it’s fun, but in another way it’s stressful and terrifying. I’ve been told that an average of 5 people die in traffic in Hanoi each day, though I have no way of confirming that stat. It’s a city of 6 million people so on any given day the odds are with you, but still this is a terrible and uncivilized system that seems to have gotten this way incrementally so no one involved ever noticed it because it came on slowly to them. In a way it makes me really appreciate European-style planning. If they saw something like this coming they’d make motorbike licenses hard to get and build streetcars and buses to carry people around.

The food is great, and cheap

I’ve always liked Vietnamese food, which is one reason I wanted to come here. The signature dish is pho, which is a soup with rice noodles and vegetables, plus beef, pork, or chicken if you please. It’s served at all hours of the day, and evidently is most popular for breakfast. You can get a modest bowl of the stuff at a sidewalk stall on nearly any block in the city for around US$1, but that means eating it while sitting on a tiny plastic stool surrounded by locals staring and laughing at you. Fortunately there are plenty of small restaurants catering to Westerners, so for only a bit more money you can eat in surroundings that are more comfortable for tourists.

Bowl of pho for breakfast at a proper restaurant

One restaurant that I went to did have dog on the menu, along with scores of non-canine options, but I hear that pet-eating is quite rare here and only practiced by a small minority of locals, and generally not only for poverty-related reasons. Also comforting to me is the fact that they seem to use pretty good cuts of meat in the meat dishes, at least the ones where tourists usually eat. I remember being in Hong Kong and when you’d order beef you’d get hooves or knuckles or various unidentifiable organs. Chicken in Hong Kong meant heads or that butt thing and whatnot. But here they serve desirable cuts that are exactly what you hope for.

Beer is cold and easy to find

At the top of my list of beverages to try is what they call “bia hoi” (fresh beer), which is served at sidewalk “cafes” around the city, with one famous corner in the Old City known as Bia Hoi Corner, since 3 of these places are famously competing facing each other. The downside is that you have to sit on those same tiny plastic stools, but particularly on Bia Hoi Corner, there are plenty of other tourists there so it’s not quite such an ordeal. So far I’ve only managed one glass of the stuff, and then they ran out for the day.

It seems that this “fresh beer” is brewed each day and then a single keg is served up at each place until it’s gone, usually starting around 4pm. The stuff is watered down and about 3% alcohol, but it’s also about 15 cents per glass, said to be the cheapest beer in the world. When I’m back in Hanoi I intend to drink more of the stuff.

Preparing my 75-cent sandwich for dinner

Aside from bia hoi you can get cold bottles of Tiger (from Singapore) and several other local lagers that are actually world class. Even in tourist-friendly restaurants you can usually find 500ml bottles for around US$1 so it really hits the spot in the oppressive heat and humidity.

General impressions of Hanoi

I’ve visited a few attractions and I’ll write about those in another post, so I’ll wrap this up with my overall impressions of the place. I had actually considered coming back to Hanoi to find an apartment and work for a month or two, but I really don’t think that’s going to happen. There are just too many things that are too frustrating about the place for an extended stay like that.

For one thing, I’m a bit surprised by how little English is spoken in Hanoi. I’m told it’s different in the south of the country, but this is the capital and center of communism, so as of 20 years ago there was virtually no tourism and a generally negative feeling toward Americans and most other Westerners.

Just as is true is many other parts of the world, people tend to speak just enough English to complete the financial transaction with you, be it at a hotel, restaurant, bar, or tour company. Beyond that it’s just about impossible to communicate, and if you do find a local who excels at English then they are definitely working up to a sales pitch of one kind or another.

Of course I realize that I’m in their country and I have no interest in learning Vietnamese, so this is my problem and not theirs. Still, their tourism industry can be greatly improved when more people can communicate with the visitors with money.

I mentioned the traffic chaos earlier, and that is another thing that would make a longer stay out of the question. I am fine walking longer distances even while others are driving, but in Hanoi it’s just not pleasant at all, especially the whole street-crossing lottery you have to enter every block.

I’m looking forward to experiencing the mellow version of Hanoi during Tet, but even then I’m sure it’ll be frustrating in different ways.

Still, as a tourist stop the place is exciting and exotic and the challenges feel worthwhile so far. I’ll be heading for a one-night trip to the famous Halong Bay next week, and then a train down to Vietnam’s cultural capital, Hue, which is also famous for being on the dividing line between north and south during what they call The American War.

Still, just to get things started, I want to file this report from Hanoi – my first stop – so those interested can get a sense for where I am beginning this trek.

Arriving in a time warp

I had a 5:15am wake-up call at the airport Ramada hotel in Portland on the Tuesday morning I left. By 6am I was at the airport, and I discovered that AT&T had already disconnected my mobile phone service, per my request. My flight to San Francisco was an uneventful 2 hours, followed by a 3-hour layover as I waited for my Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo.

We left San Francisco around noon on Wednesday, flying into the sun, and landed in Tokyo on time at sunset on Thursday. The flight was 11 hours, and thanks to a surprisingly comfortable seat (and an empty seat next to me) plus a good selection of on-demand movies that I’d never seen, I arrived feeling pretty good.

The most common anti-jetlag tip I’ve heard is to set your watch to your destination time as you are leaving, and mentally get used to it ASAP. That was really no help in this case, since there seemed to be no relation at all between where I started and where I was heading. But thanks to sunlight the whole way across the Pacific, at least I was still wide-awake.

I only had about an hour until my final flight in the series, and this was definitely going to be the tough one. It’s a surprising 6 hours from Tokyo to Hanoi (basically flying completely across China), and then 2 more time zones to the west. My knees were jammed into the seatback in front of me the whole time, and the fact that I could shift around by an inch or two once in a while was the only thing that kept any blood circulating at all.

Though we left on time, the flight actually took around 7 hours, and I don’t remember ever being quite that uncomfortable on a plane. We all filed into the arrival hall around 11pm (about 25 hours after I left Portland), and the immigration process took a full hour more, thanks to long lines and careful scrutiny even of residents.

I was tired but thrilled to be through customs, and quite happy that my hotel had indeed sent a driver who was waiting for me with a sign with my name on it. My research had told me that taxi and hotel scams at the airport are the single biggest complaint from visitors to Vietnam, and I’ve seen plenty of these elsewhere so I knew I didn’t want to have to run that gauntlet after that series of flights.

About 40 minutes (and US$15 later) I was at the Especen Hotel in central Hanoi, where I had a reservation for at least a week if I wanted. I checked into a basic-but-clean room and then slept for around 4 hours.

Next up, first impressions of Hanoi…