Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam is a quaint
little town of around four million people (after India it really does feel
quaint). It’s host to the Ha Lao Prison
(a.k.a. Hanoi Hilton) and Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum where their former leader is
enshrined in the same fashion as Stalin and Moa. The amazingly walk able city was a nice
introduction to Vietnam. I stayed in the
Central Hanoi Backpackers hostel which boasts air conditioning, free breakfast,
free wifi and free beer from 7-8pm every night all for $5. The most interesting experiences I had in the
city were watching the locals ogle in admiration at the Ho Chi Minh museum, perusing
the old propaganda poster stores (almost makes me wish that we still used
posters for our propaganda), checking out John McCain’s flight suit in the
Hanoi Hilton and chatting with the Canadian owner of the R&R Tavern about
how over 80% of Vietnamese people have intestinal parasites and I should
probably take the worm pill.
After two days in the capital I left for a three
day tour of Ha Long Bay with people I would later run into all over South East
Asia. The tour is a great example of how
a little kindness and asking for what you want can go a long way. Ha Long Bay was one of the only places in
Vietnam that I for sure wanted to go to and I was disappointed when all the
research I did pointed towards guided tour as the best option. The tours were expensive and after being on
one’s own for a while, feel constraining.
But, with all the horror stories about people going to islands for a
reasonable price and then getting extorted into paying exorbitant prices for
the ride back and other examples of just getting ripped off in every way
possible, I went with a tour.
After the four hour ride from Hanoi to Ha Long,
we boarded a hotel boat and went to an enormous cave. It was incredible to walk through the
handiwork produced from thousands of years of environmental forces. Filled to the brim with stalagmites and
stalactites, the cave comes alive as its features grow to fill it with what
appears to be an explosion frozen in time.
Fast forwarding to the next morning, we had an ex-Vietcong soldier guide
us up a mountain on Cat Ba Island in the heart of Ha Long Bay. The mountain wasn’t very big, maybe only 250
vertical meters or so, but climbing up it in 95F and 100% humidity led to a
very sweaty experience. After the climb
we got back on the boat to head to a private resort on Monkey Island. That evening a small group of us took kayaks
out watched the sunset from the middle the bay.
It was the first time in a while that asked myself how I got so
lucky. After a long night of hanging out
on the beach and betting on games of pool and ping pong with the father of one
of the Vietnamese families that joined us on the trip, we started our three boat
and two bus journey back to Hanoi.
After a 24 hour travel day my cam padres from
Ha Long and I made it Hoi An. Hoi An is
a very small, historic town about half way down the coast of Vietnam and is one
of the most fascinating places I’ve been.
Hoi An was never a tourist destination until roughly 500 stores all
devoted to tailor made clothing opened there, yes, I did say FIVE HUNDRED. The whole town is crammed full of nearly
identical stores and I’m just not sure how they all stay in business, but is
fascinating how a town created its own industry and made itself a
destination. My whole stay of three days
there revolved around getting suits tailored and going to the beach in the mean
time. After choosing one of our
aforementioned many options, deciding what I wanted made, two rounds of
alterations and hours on end making sure everything was perfect I ended up with
a few suits, a hand full of button down shirts, two ties and a pea-coat for
less than the cost of one tailored suit in the States. Winning.
The next stop was Nha Trang, home of the $7
booze cruise. ‘Nuff Said.
Da Lat in the central highlands with a nice
reprieve from the heat and partying that pervades the rest of Vietnam. I was planning on just going to one of the
waterfalls and hanging out there for a while and I asked my hostel how much it
should cost for the ride there and back, they told me it should around 70,000
Dong (~$3.50). When I was walking around
looking for a ride over I found the Easy Riders Club and started talking to one
of the guys who worked there. I told him
what my plan was for the day and suggested 70,000 as a fair price, he said
50,000. My first thought was that I was
going to get mugged, murdered or sold into slavery (this was the first time on
my trip and possibly in all of history that a higher price was refused in
Vietnam/Asia as a whole). As it turned
out he was undoubtedly the nicest person I met in Vietnam and we spent all
afternoon driving around Da Lat visiting a flower plantation, a coffee
plantation, the Dalatna waterfall, a silk factory, a happy water distillery,
and the elephant falls. At the end I
reverse pick-pocketed (i.e. slipped money into one of his pockets) him and
because he didn’t want me to pay him at all.
Da Lat was a very refreshing break.
After Da Lat, I wanted to go straight to
Saigon, but with the open bus pass I got, I had to stop in the small beach town
of Mui Ne first, what a hard life.
In Saigon things took a definite turn for the
worse. I arrived in the afternoon of
June 20th and when I woke up the following morning I had a fever of
102F. After consulting with my aunt we
decided that it could be something as benign as food poisoning and that I
should wait 48 hours to see if it goes away by itself. 48 hours later I’m still showing signs of
infection with a fever of 102F, some severe gastro-intestinal distress and bad
stomach pains. So I asked around and got
the name of a hospital that I should be okay in. I caught a ride to the FV Hospital (https://www.fvhospital.com/) where they
did several blood tests and a CT scan of my stomach. As it turns out I had a bad infection that
was causing Colitis and Appendicitis (swelling of the colon and appendix) so
they told me to stay. It was so bad that
they were not even sure they should let me go gather my belongings from my
hostel and were very adamant that I not pick up my bag and that I take a car
Taxi as opposed to a Xe Om or motorbike taxi because it would be less
bumpy. Once I got back they hooked my up
to an IV with fluids and Cipro. After
three nights and four days of this, all of the swelling went down and it was
clear that I didn’t need surgery, but I had lost over 20lbs in 6 days. After being discharged from the hospital I
spent a week laid up in a nice ($18) hotel room sleeping 12 hours a day and
learning how to eat again. At the end of
that week I had a checkup appointment where I learned that my stomach should be
back to normal in 3-4 months and that I still weighed only 135lbs (that’s how
much I weighed in 8th grade).
The after my check up I repacked my bag and prepared
to once again be on the move; the next day I flew to Malaysia.
