Whirlwind trip, happy to be back in DaNang

On Sunday, I returned from my whirlwind week trip with my vocational school students to Vinh, Lang Son, Hanoi, HaLong and HaLong Bay, back to Hanoi, Tam Coc, back to Vinh and finally back to DaNang. We traveled well over 2000 km. averaging 60-80 km./hour with 150 second year tourism students and ten teachers. It was quite the experience. I'm glad I went because I got to see many things I probably wouldn't normally see and I was the only foreigner at many of the sights we visited. There were several great highlights of the trip. That being said, I will never do a bus trip of that length again.

The pros of the trip:

1) It was only $100 for seven days and most of the places we stayed were pretty decent, just far away from the city centers.
2) The teachers and the students were gracious hosts and really tried to make sure I was comfortable and enjoying the trip.
3) The places we visited were stunning beautiful, especially Tam Coc and HaLong Bay.
4) I got to see so much of the countryside on the trip: LOTS of rice fields!

5) I was the only foreigner at many of the sights, which means that I got to see so many things that other foreigners don't see!
The cons:
1) It is really hard to moderate how much you drink in a hot country, but when you only stop every four hours, you can't drink very much.

2) I thought my students were quiet, but that's just when they speak English. They can be extremely loud, especially when singing Karaoke on a bus.
3) I thought the students would be doing their tour guiding practice in English, but they were actually doing it in Vietnamese so I learned less than I wanted to. That being said, one of the teachers did an amazing job of being my own "personal tour guide" and summarizing a lot of what the students and tour guide on the bus were saying.
4) It is completely exhausting to travel 2000 km. in 7 days. I will be taking the train or a plane next time!

We left early on Monday for Vinh, wake up time, 4:45 a.m., stopped once for lunch and got into Vinh about 6:00 p.m. The hotel had a pool so I had a wonderful swim. I was instructed that I had to first go into the pool house and change and shower, then go to the pool, then go back to the pool house and shower and change, then back to the room. The teachers were adamant that I must follow this pattern.

The following day, we left for Hanoi at 6:00 a.m. and stopped to visit Uncle Ho's (Chi Minh) homeland. We saw the place he grew up and the houses where he lived in his father's hometown and his mother's hometown (she died when he was 11). We arrived in Hanoi on Tuesday night and tried several of the local foods. On Wednesday, we got up early for the flag raising at Uncle Ho's mausoleum, then visited Uncle Ho's body (which looks like it is made out of wax) in the morning. I'm still doubtful that the body I saw is actually his. I think it's just a wax replica. He died in 1969 and I don't know that 

they had the technology to embalm him for the 1,000 years they say he will be preserved for future generations to see. After the mausoleum, we saw Uncle Ho's "House on Stilts", his cars and the presidential palace, where the president of Vietnam works. In Hanoi we also visited the College of Literature, the oldest university in Vietnam, founded in 1070 and a museum focusing on the ethnic groups in Vietnam. There are a lot of ethnic groups (over 50)! We also visited the oldest pagoda in Hanoi, which is filled with Chinese characters. China ruled Vietnam for many centuries. After that we got back on the buses (which were nice and air conditioned, but it was difficult to sit for so many hours), and drove to Lang Son. In Lang Son, we went to a night market, which just had lots of very cheap, made in China products.

Thursday, we drove from Lang Son to Tam Thanh Cave. One of the rocks that can be seen from Lang Son (near the border of China) looks like a woman carrying her child on her back. The story is, this woman was married to a soldier who went away to war. Every day she carried her child up to the mountains to look for her husband from the highest peak. All of the other men eventually came back and they told her that the husband had been killed. She didn't believe them. She continued to carry her child to the mountain every day until one day she turned into stone. The woman can still be seen looking for her husband from her perch on the mountain top.

After the cave, we drove up to the border of China and the students went to Đông Kinh market, another market that imports from China. I didn't really want anything, so I looked around the town instead. The people looked slightly different than most of the people I encountered in Vietnam, probably because they had a more Chinese/Vietnamese heritage than people from the "central" of Vietnam. The teacher I was with was afraid I would be kidnapped and taken to China because I am beautiful (read: I am beautiful because of my fair skin). No one tried to take me, although there were some pretty persistent moto drivers following me around. That night we went to the city of HaLong, and went out to an island where we watched a dolphin/sea lion/seal show and a water lights show. The dolphin show was a lot of fun, it reminded me of Marine World when it was still fun. The water show was pretty, with lights and a short film about a Vietnamese myth projected on a wall of water, but the dolphin show was better.
 
On Friday we went to HaLong Bay for a cruise and to visit Cat Ba Island. It was incredibly beautiful. I can't wait to return for an overnight cruise. We visited a cave and sailed around the bay for a few hours, had lunch and then went back to HaLong. What an amazing place!


Friday night, we came back to Hanoi and visited some of shops to buy foods, such as fish sauce, dried fruit and preserves from some shops. One section of the city is divided up by street into several sections and shops on each street sell something different. The street names reflect what is sold at each shop. That night I went with the teachers to eat local foods. The teachers here are tiny but they eat a TON of food. We went for dinner, and they all had several bowls of the meat soup (I had noodles) and then went around the corner to another shop to try the "specialty foods of Hanoi". It has got to be genetics because they don't exercise. I'm definitely envious.
 
On Saturday morning, we had the earliest wake up, 3:30 a.m. and left by 4:00. After not getting to bed until 10:30 or 11:00, the 3:30 a.m. alarm was brutal. We drove to the largest pagoda in Vietnam, Bái Đính Pagoda, which is still being built and is MASSIVE, and also visited an ancient temple from approximately 1000. The highlight of the day, and probably of the trip, was visiting Tam Coc, which is considered the HaLong Bay of Ninh Binh province. It is a spectacular 3 km. waterway meandering through rice and lotus fields and surrounded by high mountains, populated by mountain goats (the specialty food of Ninh Binh). My teacher friend, Chi Sang and I had our own boat with a young rower. He rowed with his arms, but some of the other rowers used their feet! 

The waterway has three caves and the rower said something to Chi Sang, who told me to touch a rock hanging down in one of the caves. She laughed with glee and told me that now I will have a boyfriend, because that rock is special and touching it will make me fall in love. The teachers were trying to set me up with the owner of the tour company, Lam, but I am 1) single by choice, because this is my year of self discovery and 2) he can speak only slightly more English than I can speak Vietnamese. He told me I am very beautiful but then said he is very handsome. That made me laugh! My Vietnamese friends find it absolutely crazy that I don't have a boyfriend and do not understand my reasoning. Self discovery just doesn't really happen in this country (they must already have everything figured out) so they don't understand why I don't want to be in a relationship. Relationships make you happy, and marriage and children makes you happier. Oh well.


After the boat ride, we went back to Vinh for the night (and I had another wonderful swim in their pool) and then back to DaNang. To give you an idea of how long it took to drive over 2000 km, the trip from DaNang to Vinh started at 6:30 and ended at 6:00 with about an hour and a half in breaks, or 10 hours to drive 454 km or 282 miles. 

The weekend before I visited Hue with a group of volunteers. I met this great girl from Scotland, Claire, who I will be meeting up with when I go to Europe next year. She was so much fun! We also saw two tombs, several pagodas, and took a boat ride up the river. It was a very nice, relaxing weekend, before the craziness of my 7 day tour. 

I hope you enjoy my post and photos!