The Second Chapter Closes

Another airplane ride has marked the end of the second chapter of our journey, South-East Asia. Since we flew in to Bangkok February 6th, we've gone with the wind through Thailand, Laos and Vietnam, ending with an airplane ride from Hanoi to Hong Kong March 13th. One thing has been made perfectly clear on our two days in Hong Kong so far (and more will come in the next post): We aren't in South-East Asia any more!

This post will sum up our last days in Vietnam, though, and I'll pick up where we left off - upon our return to Hanoi from Cat Ba island.

No climbing in this post, but there could have been!

We had one un-ticked box on the Vietnam agenda: A bowl of phở - traditional noodle soup - on a 

sidewalk restaurant. We'd seen the Vietnamese sitting out on tiny stools morning and evening slurping their favorite fast food dish, so we decided to find the most typical-looking one, order our phở (pronounced "fur"), and navigate our butts to the minuscule stools on the sidewalk. I tipped over backwards once before succeeding. The soup itself was among the blander meals we've had: rice noodles and cured beef is doused in a rather nondescript bouillon, and that's about it. I'm sure there are better ones than the one we got, let's just leave it at that.

My enthusiasm is rather curbed.

We'd booked a one-day tour to Ninh Binh, a province just south of Hanoi famous for its spectacular "terrestrial version of Ha Long Bay"-scenery. Having come across a bakery with proper, dark bread, we treated ourselves to our best breakfast in a long time that morning. But as we speedwalked back to the hostel for our 8:00-8:30 pickup at 8:02, we were just seconds away from being left behind by our tour bus! No harm done, though, we were off to Ninh Binh.

We've mostly stayed away from the whole tourist bus thing, but here in Vietnam we've been on a few of them now. And they all follow the same steps. Too many people, often with very different prospects and promises of what the day will be like, are crammed on to the same minibus. A barely English-speaking guide tries to start with a "joke" a la "welcome to this trip going to Sapa" (or some other totally wrong destination), but with the passengers' past experiences of confusing and badly organised tours, the joke only receives scowls. People voice their concerns, complaints and confusions, to no effect. The next stage is after about an hour in the bus, when they, under the pretence of "the driver needing to rest", send us all into a souvenir emporium for half an hour. Despite being eager to get on with the usually already delayed tour, people inevitably end up buying snacks and mild propaganda items for plenty million dong anyway. On our fourth one of these, we were pretty fed up.

Our first destination of the day was the ancient capital city of Hoa Lu'. There wasn't a whole lot to see or do there, other than have fun taking pictures and visit some un-old temples. (For the record, Vietnamese temples don't have a religious function, they are dedicated to kings or great teachers. People come to pay their respects, but not worship. The Buddhist religious sites are known as pagodas.)

Photo-fun at Hoa Lu ancient capital.

After continuing to Ninh Binh for a crappy lunch and several unnecessary waits, we were ready for the day's main attraction: A two hour rowboat trip down the Tam Coc (three caves) river. The bus ride was through some pretty dismal landscapes and ugly concrete settlements, but from the river the only views were of lush, pristine jungle and picturesque, bright green countryside. We rowed through all three of the caves - dark, spooky and low-roofed - before turning back the same way. On the way back our rower lady let us try the oars for a bit, but we both failed miserably, gaining some respect for her otherwise low-status profession.

For some reason, the rowboat rules were: 2 foreigners/boat, or 4 Vietnamese/boat.

"But there's nowhere to put my feet! And why won't it go straight?"

However, the trip kept improving as we got on bicycles and cycled through the countryside, between rice paddies, past cave-temples and climbable cliffs and people electrocute-fishing in the rivers. We got back just before dark, and had to (almost reluctantly) say ourselves satisfied with the trip all in all.

I'm on a bike!

We didn't have to leave for the airport before 2 pm. the next day, so we spent the morning (after a breakfast at the same great rye bread place) at Vietnam's Museum of Fine Arts, per recommendation from a photo-savvy Israeli from our dorm. It was really worthwhile, comprising both prehistoric bronze age crafts, paintings and sculptures from various middle age dynasties, abstract modern art, absurd communist art, and crafts and costumes of all the indigenous tribal peoples of Vietnam. It was a nice summing-up of many of Vietnam's facets, so despite our short time we felt like we'd gained a decent understanding of this far-away country.

A room full of lovely art... and a statue of Ho Chi Minh, of course.

An early 1800s Vietnamese dynasty saw sculpting arts reaching a fascinating zenith!