We did a 2 night, 3 day tour of Ha Long Bay which is about 5 hours trip on the bus from Hanoi. It’s only about 150km but the Vietnamese traffic is terrible and progress is slow. This highway is notorious for being dangerous and we witnessed the aftermath of a road fatality on the way.
Ha Long Bay is world class in terms of natural beauty. Huge limestone karsts tower over the calm water and hide many stunning secluded beaches. One of the nicest spots we’ve seen. To make it even more beautiful you need to squint a little bit to make your eyes blurry so you don’t notice the rubbish floating in the water.
We stayed one night on a boat, called a Junk, which was really fun considering the natural beauty and the novelty of staying on a boat. The rooms were good quality with queen bed and ensuite so it was just like being in a decent hotel. We visited a cave, went kayaking, stopped on a beach to climb up one of the limestone casts and generally just enjoyed the scenery from the top deck of the boat. At night there was karaoke in the boat’s restaurant where nearly every song was an American power ballad. Squid fishing was also on the cards at night. Joe caught a tiny squid. There was no doubt the squid was way too small to consider keeping but the locals running the boat chucked it in the bucket with a few other tiny squid they had already caught.
Some people live out on the water on floating houses. They make their living selling stuff from their little boat shops or by fishing. As we travelled through the bay was saw many little floating villages.
The second night we stayed on a beautiful private beach on an island. Just us, the other people on the tour, a few bungalows, the beach and the awesome scenery. It was a perfect little paradise. We could have stayed there several nights but the tour only allowed for one. If we had our time again we’d organize our own way there and stay a while. Mind you we have heard that getting around Ha Long Bay independently can be difficult and prone to scams.
Next morning it was back on the boat to the mainland, then on the bus back to Hanoi.
Onto the overnight sleeper train we go on our way to Sapa in northern Vietnam. We made friends with the couple in our booth on the train and they shared a drink and some food with us. We booked a trekking tour from Hanoi which included the return train trip to Sapa, two days of trekking and an overnight stay in a hill tribe village. This meant we didn’t really see much of Sapa which is unforunate because it seemed like a very pleasant city set in the beautiful Vietnam highlands with cooler temperatures compared to the low lands further south. The trekking was through some of the most stunning scenery we’ve scene in Asia with rugged mountains dotted with villages, deep valleys, rivers and vast areas of terraced slopes for growing rice. One disappointment were the hill tribe children trying to sell stuff. Usually in our trekking adventures in other countries in Asia the children would want to practice their english with you and be all smiles and would continue playing with their friends whilst you walk through. On this trek through Vietnamese highlands all the children repeated “you buy from me” in a depressing flat voice as they tried to sell small handicrafts. Try to engage in friendly conversation and you are seen as a potential sale with many children surrounding you repeating the same mantra.
Excluding the train, our tour cost about AUD$35 each and there were around 8 people in our group, so total revenue was about $280. We learnt that the guides earn about $10 for their two 14 hour days they work guiding the treks. That’s $5 a day or 36 cents an hour. Much of the remaining $270 we assume goes to the pimp who organizes the tours. Our guide showed us her house. She lives in a rickety old wooden shack with dirt floors and no furniture. Makes you feel a bit guilty like you are exploiting these poor people for a bit of fun whilst the rich get richer.
After the trekking we had an hour or two to walk around Sapa and have a quick drink with some people we met on the trek before heading back down the mountain and jumping on the overnight train back to Hanoi. We arrived in Hanoi very early in the morning so we walked from the train station to town to kill some time before checking into our hostel as soon as the doors opened. We stayed the night in Hanoi and then went on another tour, this time a couple of days tour through Halong Bay.
Our time in Laos ended with the new year in Luang Prabang and then a cheap flight to Hanoi in Vietnam. At the Luang Prabang airport it was noticed at the check in counter that Joe’s Vietnamese visa had the wrong date of birth on it. After signing a disclaimer we were allowed to board the aircraft, pretty nervous about what would happen upon arriving in Vietnam. We have heard Vietnamese customs can be corrupt so we were worried we would have to pay a lot of money to cover the mistake or be forced to leave. Waiting at immigration at Hanoi airport was quite nerve racking but we ended up getting through without issue. Not sure if they didn’t notice the error or if they didn’t care – we didn’t ask.
From the airport we caught a taxi to Hanoi city centre. We were fully clued up on how dodgy the Vietnamese taxi drivers were so we put the address in our phone and tracked our progress on GPS. Well it seems the GPS didn’t matter to the driver – he still drove us around in circles in the city and pretended to not understand when we explained the route with the phone. He’d just keep going the wrong way and turned when he felt like it. We had read that you need to watch out for taxi drivers doing laps around Hoan Kiem Lake and that is exactly what he tried to do. Eventually we were close enough to where we wanted to go so we asked to stop and we walked the rest of the way. It only cost us an extra few dollars, split between two other travellers who we shared the taxi with, so not too bad. It was quite funny that even armed with a GPS and all the research we had done we still couldn’t avoid a taxi scam.
Hanoi is freakin busy! Traffic is horrendous and everyone loves using their horn. Walking around is a pain in the ass because the traffic is bad, the roads are narrow and the sidewalks are an obstacle course of parked scooters, broken drains and bags of rubbish. Often there is no room on the sidewalks so you just need to take to the street and mix it with the traffic.
We did the usual roaming around the city, checked out some big new western style shopping complexes, went to the woman’s museum, the prison museum and St Joseph’s Cathedral. At the women’s museum we learnt about women’s role in the war and religion. Some Vietnamese people worship a female god called Mother Goddess. We saw a video about the life of the street vendors who work 14 hours a day for a 13 days straight to earn about $20. On the 14th day they visit their family in rural areas. Then it’s back to the city to repeat the fortnightly cycle. The prison museum was mainly propaganda about how good the Vietnamese government is, how well the prisoners were treated and how evil the invaders were.
We experienced the typical Vietnamese exchange with street vendors, where they would ask for a highly inflated price, refuse to barter, and ask you to go away if you didn’t want to pay the highly inflated price. It meant we did a lot of walking to get food or water. Water we would only buy at mini marts. Food we would walk around trying to find a reasonably priced restaurant or street food that wasn’t too much of a rip off.
The accommodation we stayed at in Hanoi was called “Hanoi Non Profit Hostel.” I think they mean it’s cheap. We did a couple of tours out of Hanoi to Sapa and Halong Bay, returning to Hanoi each time.
Luang Prabang is a really nice city. The streets are clean, pleasant to walk along and are lined with nice buildings. There’s heaps of good restaurants and pubs. The pace is slow and relaxing and it just feels really hospitable. Much like the rest of Laos really. We thought this is somewhere we could stay for a while and enjoy just hanging out in the city. Only problem with Luang Prabang is, by Laos standards, it’s a bit expensive. Still cheap by world standards but prices do reflect being one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Laos.
We stayed in Luang Prabang for the few days over Laos new year, also called the water festival. So apart from walking around and going out for drinks and food, we got wet and got other people wet. Also we got flour and paint thrown at us. Good times. I’m sure there’s other stuff to do in and around Luang Prabang but we were too busy playing with water. The city’s water supply was so overwhelmed that water service was lost for a few hours in the evening. This was our last destination before moving onto Vietnam, flying from Luang Prabang to Hanoi.
The road from Vang Vieng to Luang Namtha is long, windy, full of potholes and very slow going. So we stayed overnight in Luang Prabang even though we’d be returning there a few days later. It gave as an opportunity to organize accommodation for Laos new year which we’d be in Luang Prabang for. After our overnight stop we headed straight to the bus station early in the morning to make sure we didn’t miss the morning bus. We bought our tickets at about 8am I think, for the 10:30 bus. We walked down the road to a restaurant to burn a couple of hours then rocked up at the bus station at 10am looking for our bus, only to be advised that the bus was full and had already left without us. Bugger! Departure times aren’t really relevant in Laos. They keep selling tickets until all the seats are occupied, then the bus goes. We got our money back and booked the overnight bus, spending half a day bumming around in Luang Prabang.
The overnight bus was rough and uncomfortable. The seats were too small. Our knees touched the seat in front and we got practically no sleep. We rocked up in Luang Namtha at around 4am and the first thing we noticed was that it was pleasantly cool. Actually quite cold with the wind chill riding in the back of a tuk tuk from the bus station to town. Then we spent an hour or two wandering around trying to find accommodation that we could check into so early in the morning. We really needed a nap, we were fluffed. Nearly everywhere was still closed. We ended up finding a pretty dodgy place on the back streets. Good enough for a couple of hours power nap but not really somewhere we wanted to stay. We got some sleep, paid for a full night’s accommodation (a few dollars) then went looking for somewhere better.
We really like Luang Namtha. It’s quite far north, near China, and elevated, which provides some relief from the sweltering conditions that southern Laos experiences at this time of the year. The market had heaps of good cheap food. Stuff is around half the price of what it is in Luang Prabang. The people were super friendly. Even the old hill tribe lady trying to sell us ganga and opium was pleasant to deal with. Sharni got a rip in her pants which she got stitched up at the markets. They charged the equivalent of about 25 cents for the repair.
We did a one night / two day trekking trip through some hill villages and jungle. At the first village we arrived at we saw some children grooming their pets – picking fleas out of the fur. The trek guide did the old making cups out of bamboo trick. We passed through some beautiful jungle scenery and views of villages with their rice fields or other crop of choice. In the photo below it’s rubber saplings. At the village where we stayed overnight, Sharni bought the entire shop’s stock of lollies for a few dollars and gave them out to the very friendly children. At dinner the village elders gave us some wrist bands and wished us good luck for the new year. Then some youngsters did a traditional dance, we had some Beerlao and hit the hay.
We hired a scooter in Luang Namtha and rode to Muang Sing – a small town right near the China border. The ride was excellent – sweeping corners through villages and the Laos highlands. On the way we got a flat tyre. We stopped off at a village to get it fixed at a small shop on the side of the road. It needed a new tube. Being the back wheel, it’s a bit more labour intensive than the front so was quite expensive. The cost of supplying and installing the new tube was about AUD$4 and included a free rear brake adjustment. We had lunch at Muang Sing, visited the markets, then headed back to Luang Namtha, checking out a small water falls on the way. When we got back to Luang Namtha we got our first taste of Laos new year. New year in Laos (as well as Thailand, Burma and Cambodia) involves everyone throwing water at eachother and getting wet. New year was still a few days away but we got some early action when some kids threw water at us as we rode by on the scooter.
The bus back to Luang Prabang was made interesting by more early Laos new year celebrations. Kids would shoot / throw water at the bus. Sometimes the bus driver would slow down whilst his mate chucked water out the window at some people on the side of the road. Sharni opened the bus window to have a look and quickly became a target.
We left Vientiane and headed for Vang Vieng – a town renowned for it’s right-of-passage tubing down the Nam Song River. The tubing route was once lined with many bars, platforms, zip lines and rope swings, but after many fatalities most of this has been demolished with only a couple of bars remaining. So the tubing isn’t what it used to be. For our demographic I think it’s now better. Not so many drunk teenagers, more relaxing and enjoying of the scenery as you float down the river. A few Beerlaos are of course still part of the deal. The water level was a bit low in some places as it was the middle of the dry season. Often we had to tuck our bums up to avoid copping a rock in the ass.
We went hot air ballooning – the first time either of us have done it and it was tremendous. Silently floating above Vang Vieng with the view to the karst hills was spectacular. The people operating the hot air balloon could do a bit better. There’s no communication, no safety briefing, no explanation about hot air ballooning or the actual flight we were about to undertake. They just usher you into the basket and off you go. The excitement of almost skimming the tops of trees and powerlines made up for the ordinary service from the tour operators. Not sure if it was the expert skills of the balloon pilot that allowed us to descend into fields between trees and powerlines or whether it was an accident waiting to happen. Exciting nonetheless.
We hired a scooter and rode out to Blue Lagoon and Tham Phu Kham Cave. The walk up to the cave is steep and difficult in the heat but there’s relief with a swim in the lagoon. After a swim we hopped back on the scooter and rode around the countryside trying to find some famous mountains and walking trails. We got lost and ended up just riding around for a few hours, but it was still fun to ride through villages and explore the region.
The evenings we spent chilling out in a few of the many bars and restaurants in Vang Vieng. Many play Family Guy and Friends episodes continuously. It’s quite a tradition in Vang Vieng. On our last night we went out for dinner with some friends we had met in the previous days. Next on the schedule was to head north, check out the Laos northern highlands and hopefully escape the extreme heat and humidity of southern Laos during the build up to the wet.
We can see a pattern forming after traveling Laos for a while. Compared to many other places in South East Asia, it’s clean, laid back, uncrowded and with fewer young drunken tourists away from their parents for the first time. The ripping off of tourists occurs to a much lesser extent than many other countries in South East Asia. You can walk through markets and shops and no one will hassle you. When asking for a price, often straight away you’ll get the local price without any bartering. The sidewalks are clean and clear of obstacles. The streets and markets are really a pleasure to walk around. Laos is shaping up to be our favourite country we’ve visited.
Vientiane may not be the most exciting city for tourists but it’s a city we thought we could actually live in. It’s clean, attractive and a really nice place to relax, walk around and get some good food and drink. Mostly that is what we did in our few days stay. Patuxai, the Laos version of the Arc de Triomphe, is a popular attraction in the city. It was built with concrete donated by USA intended for the construction of a new airport. We also went to the Lao National Museum which has lots of information on the country’s struggle to free the itself from foreign occupiers and imperialist forces.
We hired some pushbikes and rode around the city, to Pha That Luang temple and to the Vietnamese embassy to organize our visas. The embassy was closed when we arrived and ended up opening a few hours late, seemingly for no reason other than to have a sleep in. We also rode to the Chinese embassy with the idea of heading north into China before looping back down into Vietnam. No luck – the requirements are too strict regarding pre-organized accommodation and entry / exit transport. We gave up on the China idea – will have to wait until next time.
