Vietnam #2: Hanoi, Halong, and Puppets!

After a really nice time in southern Vietnam, we took a 2 hour flight from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to Hanoi, the capitol of Vietnam, in the north. If you haven't looked at a map of Vietnam lately, you should pull it up on Google Maps. I continue to be surprised by it's shape, very long and skinny, with lots of coastline. Because of a flight delay, we arrived in Hanoi at 1:00am on a Friday night/Saturday morning. On our taxi ride into town, we were surprised at how many people were out and about in the middle of the night. We assumed it was young people going home from clubs until we started seeing motos and bicycles carrying huge bundles of flowers and greenery. Soon after, we drove past a HUGE flower market called Quang Ba, buzzing with activity in the middle of the night. Brilliant colors, lots of activity, and tons of people coming and going. It was a fun introduction to Hanoi.

It was too dark to get pictures of our night flower market drive-by, but here are some of the bouquets those flowers ended up in. 

Our first morning in Hanoi, we visited the Confucian Temple of the Jade Mountain. It's on a little island in the center of Hoàn Kiếm Lake (Lake of the Returned Sword), which is in the middle of the Hanoi's Old Quarter, and conveniently close to our hotel. According to legend, in the 1400s, the Emperor was boating on the lake when a golden turtle surfaced and asked that his sword be returned to him. After the Emperor was finished fighting off the Chinese, he returned the sword to the turtle. There is now a Turtle Tower on the lake to commemorate this event.

Lake of the Returned Sword, as seen from the Temple of the Jade Mountain, on the island in the middle. 

A bridge leads over to the island (on the right)

The temple's gift shop sells golden turtles with swords, to go along with the lake's legend.  

Temple of the Jade Mountain.

The roads in Vietnam are infinitely better than in Nepal. In fact the quality of life in general is much better than in Nepal (sorry, Nepal!). There are nice sidewalks in Vietnam, but they are often crowded with parked motos and the seating of mini restaurants. The seating is what we would consider kindergartener-sized tables and chairs, but all sorts of Vietnamese are found sitting at these little tables and chairs to dine. We, as giant Westerners, do not fit in many of the spaces that the smaller Vietnamese do.

We saw Vietnamese dining at these tiny tables and chairs on sidewalks all the time. I guarantee we would have crushed the furniture had we tried to sit in them.  

We visited the Maison Centrale or Hoa Lo Prison, also known as the "Hanoi Hilton", the prison where American POWs, were jailed during the Vietnam War. The prison was actually built in 1896, during the French occupation of Southeast Asia. At that time, it housed male and female Vietnamese prisoners, and was called hell on earth because of the torture and inhumane treatment of those prisoners. The French brought over a guillotine and beheaded some of the prisoners. How nice of them...

Bill in front of Hoa Lo Prison, aka the "Hanoi Hilton" where US POWs were jailed during the Vietnam War. 

The -oh-so-generous French shared their guillotine with the prison when Vietnam was part of French Indochine. 

 The guidebook we received at the prison was noticeably short on details and very one-sided about the time the prison was used to house American POWs, mostly pilots who'd been shot down. According to our guidebook, "captured pilots were given favorable conditions for entertainment, cultural and sports activities, chess playing, listening to Voice of Vietnam radio (English broadcasts), watching films and enjoying music." Hmmm... this makes it sound like a regular week at the spa, when in fact, the prisoners were subjected to really awful conditions and often tortured for information. Just ask John McCain.

Needless to say, during both the French and Vietnamese eras of rule at the prison, it was a significantly unpleasant place to be.

That afternoon, after we had done our always-interesting perusal of a grocery store to get some snacks, we were sitting in a park looking out over the Turtle Lake, when we were approached by a couple 11-year old girls who wanted to talk. Basically, they just wanted to practice their English. This started a series of conversations with locals who kept approaching us asking to talk to us. We had a lovely time interacting with little girls and their parents, university students and other young people. They knew quite a few American references. The two little girls that Bill was talking to said they liked rap music, so Bill asked if they knew Jay-Z. They didn't know of him or Beyoncé, and Bill was thoroughly surprised. We always find it interesting to see and hear what American culture has seeped its way into foreign countries. We've seen plenty of Anna and Elsa from Frozen worldwide, many KFCs, Burger Kings, and Pizza Huts, as well as plenty of Nike and North Face (lots of brand name retail items are knock offs of course). We've also heard LOTS of American music in many countries. For better or worse, American culture can be found everywhere.

The Turtle Temple in the middle of Hoan Kiem Lake. 

Eating snacks and talking to strangers eager to practice their English. 

The next morning, we boarded a bus for a 5-hour drive from Hanoi to Halong Bay. A cruise of Halong Bay is a very common tourist activity in northern Vietnam, and it's easy to see why. Halong Bay is littered with massive limestone rock formations (aka karsts). It's very dramatic and very cool to see. We boarded a boat for a 2-day, 1-night cruise in Halong Bay.

Our boat, the "Scorpion", for cruising Halong Bay. 

It was a bit cheesy, with planned activities and some "forced fun" as we like to call it, but it ended up being a big highlight in large part because of the great group of fellow cruisers on our bus and boat. Some incredibly friendly and interesting fellow travelers. Here's a quick summary of them:

• A young British couple taking a gap year, but not traveling the whole time. They'll head to the Alps to work during the ski season for fun.
• A retired couple from New Zealand, who are currently bicycling around Southeast Asia (!). They've also cycled across America (!) and all through Eastern Europe (!).
• An Armenian couple who only spoke Russian but came with a translator and lots of vibrant body language. The wife was celebrating her 50th birthday, so we got to sing her Happy Birthday twice and see them do a celebratory Armenian dance.
• A Vietnamese-American couple from Orange County whose families fled Vietnam after the war. They return every other year to Vietnam even though they have no family here, just to maintain a connection with their other home country.
• A young couple living in London. She's from Brazil, he's from the Netherlands.
• 4 young guys from Italy, but the northern part of Italy, where they speak German (what??).
• A semi-retired couple from Johannesburg, South Africa. They were both born and raised there, but they are ethnically Indian, although now 2nd and 3rd generation South Africans.
• A KLM flight attendant from the Netherlands who travels all over the world.

While on the boat, we did some excursions like kayaking to get a closer look at the rocks. We also stopped at one of the rock islands, Titop Island, in order to climb to the top and catch an incredible sunset. We took another outing from the boat to see a large cave system in the middle of one of the karsts. And finally, there was a little cooking class where we learned how to make fried spring rolls, which were delicious by the way. And all of this was while getting to know some very interesting fellow travelers. It was definitely a highlight for us.

So very many rocks coming in Halong Bay

Kayaking

It was bright!

This is the boat that took us from the Scorpion to all our other excursions. 

Titop Island, which we climbed in order to see the sunset. 

Titop Island in Halong Bay

Looking east at sunset over a small section of Halong Bay. 

Looking west at sunset over Halong Bay

Amazing rays of light at sunset in Halong Bay

Part of a giant cave we visited in one of the giant rocks in Halong Bay

More of the giant cave. 

Bill and our friend from New Zealand learning to make spring rolls. 

Then we took another long bus ride back to Hanoi. On our last day in Hanoi, we went to see the famous Water Puppet show. It was bizarre, funny, and loud. It was basically a pool with a set, where water puppets danced. They were controlled by puppeteers hidden behind the set backdrops. All the speaking/singing was in Vietnamese, so we didn't completely follow, but it was basically several short stories, including the golden turtle story from above. It was kind of a quirky, fun thing to do.

The musicians at the puppet show. 

Some of the many water puppets. 

The puppeteers, who apparently stand in the water behind the stage, and the musicians thanking the crowd after the water puppet show. 

As for Vietnamese food, we tried new and different things, although once again, our embarrassing lack of tolerance for spicy food surfaced a few times. Bill got addicted to milk tea (we call it bubble tea at home). I discovered bun cha, which is basically pork with rice noodles, greens, and a light sauce - yum!

Some other observations:

Dermatologists would love the Vietnamese, they are covered from head to toe when out in the sunshine. Seriously, I wonder if they have lower rates of skin cancer.

Thanks to the French influence, the Vietnamese use the same letters we do. I never saw a word longer than 5 letters. For example, Vietnam is usually spelled Viet Nam, and Halong is usually spelled Ha Long. How can they have so many short words? Well, all the vowels have multiple modifiers. In English an 'a' can have many sounds, right? It can be a long 'a' like in BAKE, or a short 'a' like in 'PAN'. But in Vietnamese, each of those sounds has a different modifier, like an apostrophe over the a. These are all the different a's in Vietnamese:
aâăáấắàầằãẫẵảẩẳạậặ

Wow, right? And it's a tonal language, which means that it's even more complicated to learn. Needless to say, we only learned how to say Thank you, and even that was a bit of a stretch.

Up next, Cambodia!

Well Hello Vietnam!

My dad spent some time in Vietnam working on helicopters while he was with Boeing. Throughout my childhood I (Bill) heard stories of what he saw while he was there. It wasn't all good but it wasn't all bad. He went back about 3 years ago and had a good experience as a tourist and I was looking forward to getting a first hand look at what Vietnam had become.

Big, modern Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon)

We flew in to Saigon, or Ho Chi Minh City. Most people still call it Saigon, and they are technically correct, but the central part of the city is still officially named Saigon. Either way I was a bit nervous about coming to a place that my own country bombed extensively in the not so distant past but I was pleasantly surprised both by the welcoming nature of the people and the modernity of the city.

Lively night on the Promenade that runs through the central district of Saigon

Vietnam was devastated the war but now they have a vibrant, modern country that, while communist in title, looks more capitalist than some places I've been in the west. Everywhere you look there is something going on.

Sugary sesame donut like thing anyone?

Markets with things that probably don't even have names in English...

Markets with beautiful things too

Cooked banana thingys too!

Locals milling around selling homemade donuts, street vendors shining shoes, and of course motorbikes outnumber cars by at least three to one, which is evident right away:

Crazy controlled chaos... They do drive a bit slower than Americans are accustomed to and so accidents are more rare than you would think, and less devastating, but they do still happen. We saw one happen, but unlike Nepal the overwhelming majority of people wear helmets, so it seems that life has a higher value in Vietnam.

Saigon is host to some spectacular architecture from the old colonial days. There is a Notre Dame Cathedral that is built only out of stone from France. From the modern era there are a plethora of skyscrapers.

We went up the Bitexco tower which was literally across the street from our hotel and had spectacular views.

The French Notre Dame Cathedral made of imported French stone. Note: riders in the foreground have helmets on.

Right away you realize that everyone in Vietnam is a millionaire... Exchange was ~22,000:1 USD

If you know anything about Vietnam today you know things are cheap, beer costs around the same as water. You can get by on a lot less than you would in Europe but at the same time the basics of existence still work pretty well. There are no rolling blackouts like Nepal, internet works pretty well and mobile phone service seems decent. There is a ride share business called "Grab" that we first used in Kuala Lumpur and it works very well and cheerfully takes all the painful negotiation out of getting a taxi somewhere. Funny little thing about Grab, you can request a motorbike just as easily as requesting a car, the driver even shows up with a helmet for you to wear.

On the darker side we went to several sites that showed "history" including the Vietnam war which they called something like the "War of American Aggression" where the liberation forces rescued the people of the South. This sounds a lot like the Southerners of the US talking of the American Civil War. The War Remnants Museum is chock full of this sort of propaganda. The museum has extensive pictures and descriptions of atrocious things from the Vietnam War, including lots of photos of the effects of Agent Orange. Embarrassing doesn't even begin to describe how this sort of thing makes you feel as an American but in a war of that scale enough ugly things are going to happen to fill 10 museums and it's their country, they can fill the history books with whatever they like.

A Chinook helicopter left behind by the US, probably one my dad laid hands on

Nearby is the "Independence Palace" where the last hold outs of the South's government were located. In the final throws of the war, a spy from the North that infiltrated the South's military dropped two bombs on the palace with a stolen F-5 fighter aircraft, a pretty clear signal that things weren't going well for the South. Shortly after, tanks from the North bulldozed through the palace fence and "liberated" the South.

The Independence Palace, with what I like to call "70s fabulous" architecture

Roof of the palace where bombs were dropped by a spy

On the lighter side, after so much walking in Nepal, Kenzi was ready for a rest on the beach and I was ready for a bit of Kitesurfing. Through friends of friends of friends we ended up at the Coco Beach Camp in La Gi (pronounced something like lah zshee or la g) about four hours outside of Saigon. We scored a great little bungalow about 100 feet from the South China Sea.

Our home for three nights on the South China Sea

While the beach club has a very western name, the clientele are nearly all are Vietnamese people from Saigon escaping from the city.  The owner was a kitesurfer also and seemed to be happy to have someone to kite with. He loaned me gear and we got several fantastic sessions in. It is more than a week later and my body still hurts but it's a good hurt.

Some of the really small, colorful beach huts at the Coco Beach Camp.

We rented a scooter from the camp and took a ride into the town to pick up some snacks and hit an ATM. It's great fun riding around a place that has basically no westerners and seeing the people look at us with dumbfounded looks. We stand out like sore thumbs!

La Gi was really a fun place to check out and lay low for a while but eventually you've got to move on... so we're off to check out Hanoi.

Malaysia: Sweet, Sweet Civilization

When we were trying to figure out where to go after Nepal, it basically came down to where we could find the cheapest flight, which landed us in Kuala Lumpur (KL), Malaysia. We only stayed there for three nights, since we kind of saw it as a stopping over point on the way to Southeast Asia, but we wish we had spent longer there. What a nice city!

The Petronas Twin Towers at night

I'm not sure what I (Kenzi) was expecting, given that I was woefully ignorant of Malaysia (that's why we travel, to learn about other places, right?). KL was a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively. It is a big, modern city, with some of the swankiest shopping you can imagine. It was warm and humid, but not unbearable. Coming from Nepal, we were bewildered by the smoothness of all the highways, the well functioning plumbing, and the lack of air pollution.

Before our arrival, I knew of at least one thing I really wanted to see there: the Petronas Towers (ala the 1999 movie "Entrapment"). Completed in 1996, the twin towers were the tallest buildings in the world from 1998 to 2004, when they were surpassed by the Taipei 101 tower. They have 88 floors, and a sky bridge half way up connecting them. The tour took us to the sky bridge first, which had great views of the city, but especially the grounds immediately surrounding the towers where they are building many other new skyscrapers. KL seems to be a booming city.

An adorable group of children getting ready to up the Petronas Towers

Inside the sky bridge, 1/2 way up the Petronas Towers

Looking down from the sky bridge

Looking down the other direction from the sky bridge

Selfie from the sky bridge

Then we got into the elevator again, and headed up to the viewing level near the top. The views were indeed spectacular although we went on a cloudy day.

The view from one tower to the other, with the TV tower in the background

A vertical panorama showing the height a little better

A view of Kuala Lumpur from the top of the Petronas Towers

KL is diverse culturally and religiously, but seems to manage it really well (or at least it seemed that way in our brief time there). We've been out of Muslim territory for awhile, but Malaysia is majority Muslim, but also has Buddhists, Christians, and Hindus. Culturally, it is majority Malay, but also has Chinese, Indigenous people, Indians, etc. It really felt like a successful melting pot.

Lest you think Malaysia is perfect based on our report here, we did talk to a Grab (Grab is the cheaper version of Uber here) driver who in his limited English was expressing some frustration with the corrupt Government. However, that's been a theme across our travels; Taxi drivers like to talk about Government corruption, no matter what country you're in.

Aside from the Petronas Towers, we also visited a good aquarium called Aquaria KLCC, a bird park (we've never seen SO MANY peacocks!), and made a couple trips to the Vietnamese embassy to get our visa for Vietnam figured out.

The underside of a large ray as seen walking through the tunnel at Aquaria 

Octopus!

The large tanks at Aquaria. This was right before the scuba divers came and fed all the sea creatures. 

Bill eyeing one of a bazillion peacocks at the KL bird park. 

Eye to eye with an ostrich, whose eyelids, by the way, close from bottom to top rather than top to bottom. 

Not very well camouflaged, right? 

Flamingos!

Hello, stork!

We tried the infamous durian fruit via some durian macaroons. As with many durian foods, they smelled funky, but tasted pretty decent. Bill definitely liked them more than me though. It's difficult to get past the smell of durian.

An all-durian shop at one of the MANY malls in KL

This is what an actual cut open Durian fruit looks like, about the size of a watermelon

A durian macaroon

Another really cool highlight of our time in KL was experiencing "Dining in the Dark", something that Bill has wanted to do for a very long time (and it was much cheaper here!). In case you're not familiar, a Dining in the Dark experience is just that, eating in complete darkness. You are served by folks that are blind or visually impaired. Our friendly and very competent waiter's name was Yus. Apparently he was not always blind, but lost his sight over time. To get you accustomed to tasting things and trying to figure out the flavor components, they start by serving you a drink in the lighted bar area and having you guess the three flavors of the drink. We didn't do very well. Our three flavors were green apple, lemongrass, and lychee. Then, you do another exercise with a blindfold, where you try to find four paperclips in a container full of rice - it's harder than you think.

Then, you are led into the dark dining room. Bill held on to Yus's shoulders, and I held onto Bill's shoulders, and we trailed along behind Yus as he led us to our table. It is definitely a weird experience to be in pitch black. As you would expect, your other senses go into overdrive. We heard quite a bit of mouth clicking, which is how the waiters use echolocation and also signal to each other so that they don't run into each other.

Before walking into the Dining in the Dark restaurant

Yus oriented us with our silverware and drinks, then brought us our appetizers. They easily accommodated Bill's vegetarianism and my gluten intolerance. It was a set menu with lots of items for you to practice tasting all the flavors without your eyes to help you. There were five appetizers, two soups, four main dishes, and four desserts, all in smaller portions of course. Everything was very tasty. We really struggled to identify some things and easily identified others. We spilled things and used our hands more than you would normally. And even occasionally had a bite of air, those times when we didn't actually get any food on our spoons. Yus was very attentive and explained things very well. And when we were all done, he managed to corral us and lead us out into the bright light in the same way we'd followed him into the dark. Once we were back in the light, our hostess showed us descriptions and pictures of everything we had eaten, so we could see how much we guessed correctly. We probably got about 25% of it right. We need more practice! All in all, it was a very pleasant and eye opening experience. If you get a chance to do something similar, we suggest you take it.

After dinner, looking at the menu of what we ate, and realizing that we only got about 25% of it correct. 

Thanks Malaysia for pampering us!

Next up: Vietnam!