We arrived in Hanoi around 6:30am, after another pretty sleepless night bus journey. It had seemed like an extra comfy bus when we’d got on, the floral cushions and blankets adding to the cosiness, but there’s just something about the shape of the seats and having your legs restricted by the frame that makes it hard to sleep.
We put on our backpacks and walked the 20 minutes to our hotel, Hanoi Avatar. The girl on reception was smiley and lovely and suggested some places where we could get some breakfast or coffee while we waited for our room. We left our big bags and headed to a cafe nearby called Xofa (pronounced ‘sofa’) that Nell had found. We wanted somewhere we could sit and while away a few hours rather than somewhere to grab a quick banh mi, and Xofa even allowed people to sleep on the sofas overnight. Sounded like the vibe we were looking for. When we arrived they hadn’t started serving breakfast yet so we sat and had drinks – I had a really good coconut coffee and Nell had a passionfruit juice. A bit later we had some scrambled eggs on toast; in our sleep-deprived states we couldn’t face anything too flavourful or adventurous. It was quiet and comfy, and a nice place to just sit and chat for a bit.
After a couple of hours we settled our bill and headed out to explore Hanoi Old Quarter’s bustling streets and French colonial architecture. Nell had decided a few days before that she was going to get some new glasses made as, like lots of things in South East Asia, it’s ridiculously cheap.
We walked to a road that is ALL glasses shops and browsed the cabinets for a frame Nell liked the look of. She tried lots on and compared a few prices, before settling on a pair she liked. They took her current glasses to check the prescription, tested her eyes using a machine that Nell’s not entirely sure what it did (“I just looked into it”) and told us to come back in half an hour. HALF AN HOUR. To make a pair of prescription glasses. That cost £35! What a time to be alive.
We went for a wander while we waited and had a little look at the nearby lake. A lady, maybe the friendliest lady I’ve ever seen, called to us from outside Note Coffee. “HELLO, HOW ARE YOU? YOU WANT SOMETHING TO DRINK?” We did, and the lady had nailed her meet’n’greet job, so in we went.
Note Coffee is adorable. It’s a coffee shop covered in post-it notes. When you get a drink it comes with a note on it, and there are trays of blank notes and pens so that customers can write their own and stick them on the walls, the tables, the chairs, the ceiling, the doors, the fans… Anywhere you like. They’re mostly motivational quotes or love letters to Hanoi or Vietnam. Some are silly. “Wakanda forever” was a personal fave. We got carried away and wrote about 5. It was fun! The upstairs of the cafe also smelt like freshly-mown grass somehow. Yum.
An iced coconut latte, a pineapple juice and lots of sticky notes later, we headed back to the glasses shop to collect Nell’s snazzy new specs. She tried them on and could see! Amazing. Eat that Specsavers.
It was now late morning and our room would be ready for us (we hoped) so we wandered back to our hotel. We were given some orange squash and a plate of watermelon as a welcome drink, and then went up to our room. I had a quick shower cos spending the night on a bus makes you sticky and gross, and then we had a nice long nap.
Woke up to something scrabbling around in the ceiling. I listened to it for a while while Nell slept some more. It definitely wasn’t going away. When Nell woke we listened to it for a bit more, deciding it definitely sounded like a rat. Cool.
We headed out for another explore before getting some dinner (it had been a long nap). On the way out we told them about the noise, and played them a recording of it that I’d made on my phone. They said they’d check it out.
For dinner we went to a tiny restaurant a few minutes away, down a narrow street in the heart of the Old Quarter, that specialised in banh cuon, a Vietnamese delicacy. Banh cuon are rice rolls, made by spreading the rice mixture onto cloth stretched over a pot of boiling water until it forms a pancake which is filled with, in our case, mushroom and vegetables. Despite feeling like flacid willies – or maybe due to, who knows? – they were really delicious. We had the set menu which mean we had 8 each. Yum. The drink offered was either coke or soya milk so Nell, not being a fan of coke, had a glass of soya milk with hers. It seemed like an odd accompaniment but she enjoyed it.
After dinner we walked to a hole-in-the-wall bakery called King Roti, that served… roti – kind of like big doughnuts. They came with a few different fillings but we shared a coffee and chocolate one. It was yummy and still warm.
Then we headed back to our hotel for an early night (despite having slept for a couple of hours during the afternoon). We asked if they’d managed to sort our rat problem but they claimed they hadn’t heard anything. We suspect that they hadn’t been to listen cos as soon as we were back in our room, there it was. We called them up to listen but instead they just offered to change our room, upgrading us to one upstairs with a window. We swapped rooms, and though the upstairs one wasn’t as nice, it didn’t have anything scuttling around in the ceiling, so that was good.
We’d settled into bed and were watching a bit of tele, when there was a knock on the door. I answered it, and one of the hotel staff handed me a seashell-shaped plate with a couple of bags of sweetcorn flavour crisps with a sweet note. A little bedtime snack (that we saved till the next morning as we’d already brushed our teefs).
The next morning, after the standard “meh” hotel breakfast (which included some really gross coffee that tasted kind of like melted plastic), we headed to Cafe Giang for an egg coffee. Cafe Giang is supposedly the place where egg coffee originated due to a shortage of milk at the time. As you’d hope, they do really good egg coffee. Each cup comes in a bowl of hot water to keep it hot. The coffee itself is strong and fruity, and the egg mixture is sweet and sticky. Deeelicious.
The cafe serves egg versions of pretty much every drink cafes normally do, including beer…, so we decided to try the egg hot chocolate. (I’d have had another coffee but they’re strong and I didn’t want my heart to explode.) The hot chocolate was watery and didn’t really taste of much, but the eggy bit was still really yummy.
We sat and chatted and looked through our Lonely Planet book to find something to do that afternoon. Nearby was Hoa Lo Prison, where American POW’s were held during the Vietnam War. They were supposedly so well looked after that the prison was nicknamed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’.
The museum itself wasn’t particularly interesting or informative and, whereas Tuol Sleng in Cambodia (for example) has been left more-or-less as it was, Hoa Lo has been turned into a museum, so doesn’t give you much of a sense of what it would have felt like at the time. Still, it was good to see.
Wandered to a nearby veggie restaurant that it turned out looked a bit gross, so instead we got a taxi back to our hotel (and somehow ended up not eating any lunch – whoopsie).
Chilled in our room for a bit before heading out for an earlyish dinner. We went to a Noodle & Roll and both opted for the tofu in tomato sauce with rice. Contrary to the picture on the menu, it turned out to be tofu in watery soup with chunks of tomato. It was poop. Nell in particular was getting increasingly frustrated with our constant struggle to find decent veggie food in Vietnam. We’d heard so many good things about Vietnamese food and it was not living up to the hype. But that’s what happens I suppose when you don’t eat meat in a country that very much eats meat. If you want to experience their traditional cuisine, for the most part you have to eat it as they would. And that’s fair enough.
*Truth be told we were both tired of travelling at this point. Our desire to get out and explore at every opportunity had been fading for a couple of weeks. Maybe this was due to the speed at which we were moving from place to place in Vietnam in an attempt to visit all the places we wanted to see within our 30 day time limit (it’s also a really big country, so travelling to places takes a long time). But looking back (we’re currently in Indonesia where delicious vegetarian food is pretty much a guarantee – we’ve got very behind with the blog, soz) we think this lull in enthusiasm was probably due in part to our struggle to find food that wasn’t disappointingly pants.*
After dinner we finally got around to trying bia hoi, another Hanoi speciality. Bia hoi is beer, brewed fresh each day. As it’s fresh, and intended to be drunk the same day, it contains no preservatives. It’s lighter than any beer I’ve drunk before and really easy to drink. It’s also ridiculously cheap, costing about 20p a glass.
Got ourselves some pudding from the shop (Oreos and chocolate milk. Classic.) and headed back to our hotel to eat it. There was another knock on the door that evening and we were given some more snacks. Yay!
After breakfast the next day we went for another explore. We paid another visit to Note Coffee to take a break from the sun, and while there discovered that nearby was Always Cafe, a Harry Potter-themed cafe. We’re both big Haz Pots fans (we’ve both been re-reading them while we’ve been away) so we went to check it out.
They’ve really committed to the theme in their definitely-fully-licensed way. The front half of the cafe is wooden-panelled with the 4 Hogwarts house banners hanging on the walls, and the back half is covered with photos of the main characters from the films and Hogwarts robes, more banners, the House Cup and some dressing up stuff, which of course we took full advantage of. There was also a cool Diagon Alley mural on one of the walls. And the toilet was the secret entrance to the Ministry of Magic!
We sat and shared a Butterbeer and a Polyjuice Potion (and some fries heehee). The Butterbeer was like caramelly coke with whipped cream, sounds gross but I liked it. Nell didn’t (coke again) so I had most of it. The Polyjuice Potion was fruity and minty and yummy too.
We even got free Deathly Hallows necklaces for reviewing them on TripAdvisor. Adding them to the one I’d bought on Khao San Road, we’d now gained 3 Deathly Hallows necklaces on our travels. Woo!
We overheard a couple of guys talking about a Mexican restaurantand immediately fancied Mexican food for lunch, so we found it and headed to it.
Ordered quesadillas with tortilla chips and beer, their lunch deal, but the waitress said they didn’t have any tortillas but they could offer us extra salsa. *sigh* To paraphrase Nell, “why can’t places just do the stuff they offer properly?” We turned down the extra salsa and it turned out they were cooking some more tortilla chips and they’d be ready in 10 minutes. That was fine, we told her. A few minutes later she brought us a bowl of tortilla chips. But they were thick and flabby and not crispy like tortillas chips are meant to be. *sigh* To paraphrase Nell… No. But they were rubbish. The beer was good though. And the quesadillas were alright, and filled a hole.
That evening we were getting the night bus to Sapa for a couple of days’ trekking. Though we weren’t very hungry we went for some dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant and had some veggie noodles. A guy – I’m still not sure if he worked there or was just… there – started talking to us. When we told him we were going to Sapa he asked us what company we were going with. “Lily’s,” we told him. “Oh!” he exclaimed, pulling a face that would have been appropriate had we just shat on the floor in front of him. Picture Hector Salamanca’s disgruntled face. That face. “My competetor.” Soz pal… He tried, though to what end I’m not sure, to convince us that Lily’s was bad and his company was good. Eventually he left us alone.
After dinner we headed back to our hotel where we’d arranged to leave our big bags while we were in Sapa, and from where the shuttle bus was going to pick us. At 9:30pm the bus arrived and we were taken to the bus station where we were to transfer to our big bus. The man in the restaurant had tried to convince us that if it was anything but one of the new, green buses it would be awful, and we almost certainly wouldn’t be on one of these green buses. We were on a green bus. Shove it, man in the restaurant.
We boarded the bus and settled into our seats/beds. It was only going to be a 5-6 hour journey so we’d arrive between 3 and 4am, but could stay on the bus till 6am when we’d be met by our trekking guides.
By the time we arrived in Sapa at around 3:30am we’d not slept much due to the usual discomfort of the bed and a man above us snoring like a dad in a cartoon. We did dose off for a bit before 6 o’clock, but when we got off the bus to meet our guide we were not feeling fresh.
We were met by a lady called Mao. “Mao!” Nell said to me smiling. Our friend Mae came to Sapa a couple of years ago; she had recommended Lily’s to us. Mao had been her guide too and Mae had loved her. We recalled a video from Mae at the time of Mao laughing and then saying, “You shit… Shitty bum!” This brightened up our morning, though I still felt like doing nothing less than I felt like trekking for 2 days. It was comforting in a way to discover that everyone else felt more-or-less the same.
“First we get breakfast,” Mao said to us, and took us to a nearby restaurant. “We leave at 8.30,” she said. Ok, so we had time to eat, drink coffee and wake up a bit. Or nap on the cushioned benches as it turned out.
– Tom
We were taken to a restaurant and offerered a breakfast menu that was included in our trek package. We opted for eggs and coffee. Neither of us really felt like eating but we needed the energy to keep us going until lunch. The coffee was brought to us on a tea light holder to keep it warm. Cute. We put way too much condensed milk in and made it disgustingly sweet.
Once we’d eaten we found some benches with cushions on and lay down to get some shut eye until we had to leave at 8:30am. That time rolled around far too quickly and at half 8 Mao was rounding us up ready to set off.
We would be walking with a different guide for the morning, Mama Che, before we met up for lunch.
We set off through Sapa town and arrived at a hill on the edge and started to walk up it. The climb was fairly steep to begin with and soon we could see beautiful views of the surrounding countryside. This continued for much of the morning. Sapa is very beautiful. The walk wasn’t too strenuous and it was so nice to be away from polluted cities and out in the fresh air. We saw plenty of animals including the biggest floof dog ever in one of the villages, and also got a glimpse of the daily life of the H’Mong people.
We chatted to a few members of our group and it was great getting to know them all and hearing their stories.
At lunch time we were taken to a local restaurant where we were offered fried rice or fried noodles. I seem to have developed an aversion to vegetable fried rice and noodles. I like both of them normally! But no matter how hungry I am, when they’re put down in front of me, I take about 6 mouthfuls and can’t bring myself to eat anymore. Not ideal when these are generally the foods you’re offered.
We walked on some more after lunch. It was mostly on a road and downhill so was actually quite tough going, but lots more beautiful countryside and we also saw lots of rice terraces.
Papp
We arrived at our homestay for the evening and were pretty pooped but we all sat around and chatted before we were shown to our rooms. The homestay basically consisted of a barn-like structure with two storeys that had rooms around the edge and a common area in the middle. The bathrooms were outside and there were 2 showers between around 30 people but it all ran smoothly. The ladies from the village came and sold their very beautiful wares to us. Well, not us; we managed to resist, but some people spent lots and came away with all kinds of goodies which is great for the locals.
Once we’d showered we were quite hungry so were pleased when it was dinner time. We sat around the dining room in our new friendship groups and it gave me serious flashbacks to being on school trips.
We sat down and were bought plate after plate of food. There were all types of veggie food and I could’ve cried into my rice at the thought of being full up from delicious food.
We stuffed our faces until we couldn’t eat anymore and then it was time for rice wine. Oh god. We’d had a couple of beers with dinner and some people had had more than a couple and the atmosphere in the room was very happy. Mao and a couple of the ladies from the homestay came around with plastic jugs with what could be mistaken for water, but this was Happy Water. Alcohol made from fermented rice. It was truly vile. But our disgust didn’t stop Mao filling our glasses and watching us like a hawk until we’d finished every drop!
It was such a good night. People resorted to hiding their glasses from Mao or replacing their rice wine with water but we were nearly always found out. Mao is a professional. She can’t be fooled by tricks. We also ended up trying the fermented rice that the drink is made from. It was even more vile than the wine. It tasted like mouldy sandwiches. Wuh. By this point we were all very merry and very knackered. Most people were in bed and fast asleep by about 10pm.
In the night there was a monster thunderstorm that woke everyone up. Rain thumped on to the tin roof non-stop and huge flashes of lightning illuminated the sky. This went on for a while but we managed to doze off again as we were so tired.
We actually got a really good night’s sleep and we didn’t have to be up too early which was appreciated by the people with rice-flavoured hangovers. We were served a mammoth breakfast which included a MASSIVE stack of pancakes and a huge bottle of chocolate sauce. Amazing.
We set off on our way by about 10am. The walk got pretty exciting as we trekked across the edges of rice terraces, alongside a sneaky marijuana field, by the river, across some dodgy-looking suspension bridges and finally up the steepest hill EVER. It probably wasn’t that steep but we’d been walking for almost 4 hours without a break and without any food. We were starvs marvs. Even with 100 pancakes in us. When we reached a junction in the path the group divided in 2 as some people were staying another night, so we said goodbye to some of our new friends.
We reached the top of a big hill and suddenly it was lunch time. Hooray! And it wasn’t just fried rice. HOORAY!! We had another delicious feast. There was an extremely persistent lady selling stuff who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not the best sales technique.
Once we’d finished our lunch we set off again thinking we had another few kilometers to cover in a very short space of time so we wouldn’t miss our bus back to Hanoi. Mao was having us on though and after about 10 steps we reached a minibus that we all piled in to.
The journey back to Sapa town was VERY bumpy and at times we thought we might fall off the edge, but having been on buses in Nepal we were at peace with the prospect of death on these rural bus journeys. Some of the other passengers, not so much. There were some audible shrieks and very white knuckles. But we made it. Yay! And we didn’t miss our bus. YAY!
We parted ways with our new pals, having swapped Facebooks and Instagrams, and headed back to Hanoi. We stopped off at a services and had Pringles and Cornettos. Standard.
We arrived back in Hanoi very sleepy and ready for a big squishy hotel room bed, although we were already missing the clean mountain air. We wouldn’t get to enjoy the squishy bed for too long as the following morning we were up early to head to Cat Ba island.
-Nell
Had a leisurely breakfast the next morning and checked out of our hotel, this time taking our big bags with us. At around 9:30am we were picked up by the bus that took us to Hai Phong Port, where we got the ferry across to Cat Ba Island, and then got on another bus to our hotel. It was another pleasantly painless journey and we checked into Le Pont Hotel at around 2pm. Budget accommodation in Cat Ba Town is all a little bit grungy so we knew we weren’t going to be in for a treat. We had a nice big room though and then bed was comfy enough, the room just smelt a bit damp and wee-y.
Had a little lie down and caught up on Drag Race (cos priorities) and later headed down our road to the harbour which is lined with restaurants. We ate at a lovely little restaurant called My Way, which did Italian food but was run by a Vietnamese couple (at least I think they were a couple). We had a spicy veggie pizza, some fries and a plate of THE MOST DELICIOUS SPAGHETTI IN THE WHOLE WORLD EVER. Honestly, it was so good. Creamy and garlicky and mushroomy, it was EVERYTHING.
After dinner we wandered back to our hotel for a good night’s sleep.
The next day we were up early for breakfast as we were going on a boat to trip Lan Ha Bay and Ha Long Bay. Most trips to Ha Long Bay – the more famous of the 2 bays, and a Unesco World Heritage Site – leave from Hanoi and just go to Ha Long Bay, but Cat Ba Ventures leaves from Cat Ba and goes to Lan Ha Bay in the morning, arriving at Ha Long Bay later. This means you get a much quieter trip and aren’t surrounded by other boats and other people the whole time.
We met at the company’s office at 7:45am, and they took us on a bus to our boat. (As in they drove us to a different bit of the island, not across the sea.)
The boat was 2 storeys – is that the terminology for boats? I dunno. It was a double-decker boat – the top deck being partially covered but open-air. Ideal for sunbathing and admiring the scenery but not coming back looking like a lobster.
There were about 30 of us on the boat so it wasn’t cramped either.
We set up camp on a sunbed at the edge of the top deck, and the boat pulled away from the harbour.
After a few minutes we passed a little floating village and a fish farm, and it wasn’t long till we were out amongst the limestone karsts of Lan Ha Bay. It was beautiful. Pictures don’t do it justice, even if they look cool and pretty. It was very serene – we only maybe 3 or 4 other boats all morning.
After a little while we stopped at a another fish farm, this time disembarking (through the boat window) and wandering around it. There was one enormous fish – a 62kg greyboi. Our guide told us it was lucky so they weren’t going to sell it.
We got back onto the boat and sailed on (again, I dunno what the boat terminology is when you’re using a motor) through Lan Ha Bay.
A bit later we came to a stop. It was swimming time. Yay! And the best part of swimming on boat trips – jumping off the boat! Nell didn’t fancy jumping off the top, so when I had I joined her on the lower deck, which she also wasn’t particularly keen on jumping off. Eventually she plucked up the courage and sploshed into the water. Splosh! I followed her and we had a little swim, slowly making our way to a little beach where we sat in the shallow water looking for pretty sea shells and coral, before having another swim.
Refreshed, we got back onto the boat. More boating along (definitely the right word) before lunch, which we had on the boat. Then we pootled along some more to a little dock where we climbed off the boat again. Time to go kayaking. Last time we’d been kayaking was in the lake in Pokhara, Nepal, and we’d spent most of our time spinning around unintentionally. We were more successful this time though; must have had a dodgy kayak before. Probably.
We paddled along among our group. We went through a few cool caves where bats flew above our heads, and emerged in a cove where the sea was full of jellyfish, which we were careful not to fish our with our paddles.
It was time to make our way back to the harbour, where we returned our kayaks and got back onto the boat.
We were heading back towards Cat Ba now. (At some point earlier, a point which had been pointed out to us by one of our guides, Lan Ha Bay had become Ha Long Bay. )
We stopped again on the way back for more swimming. And more jumping off the boat. Yay!
When we got out, a big plate of pineapple and cakey balls (which were super dense, it was like chewing on glue) was put on the top deck and we helped ourselves. Pineapple is always a winner.
Then we carried on back towards Cat Ba. It had been cloudy in the morning but it was beautifully sunny now so the scenery looked even better.
After a long day of relaxing in the fresh air, swimming and kayaking, we arrived back at our hotel. We showered and headed out for dinner, back to My Way, where this time we had a plate of the delicious spaghetti each. Yass.
The next morning we woke up to find there was no power. I’d woken up earlier and thought, “It’s hot.” Now I knew why. When we went down for breakfast we asked the receptionist about it. She said sometimes the island turns off the electricity to save it, but actually it was off cos they were repairing something. It would likely be back on around 5pm. “Does that mean no food all day?” we thought? It didn’t, fortunately, as all of the cafes and restaurants seemed to have generators.
We decided to spend the day at the beach. We went to a nice little beach in front of Cat Ba Sunset, where we paid a few pounds for a sun lounger each for the day, and we had a lovely day doing not very much.
At around 4 o’clock the beach suddenly started to fill up rapidly. Soon the sea was full of people. We decided it was time to head back.
There was still no power so we went out for an early dinner at a restaurant called Mona which had a rooftop terrace. The view of the harbour was great though the service was pretty poo. (It was run by Westerners, that’s why.)
Back at our hotel we lay in our sweltering room -no power, no A/C – and watched some Netflix shows we had downloaded, waiting for the power to come back. I think it was about 6.15 when it eventually did – the A/C kicked in and the neon light on the karaoke bar outside illuminated the street. We showered and relaxed in our now cooling room. But a couple of hours later the power went off again. Wuuuut. Everything went dark, the A/C went off, and there were groans from the people in the street below. Half an hour or so later, the lights flicked on for a few seconds, people cheered, then they went off again. Then there was a sound like a load of saucepans falling on the floor, followed by some shouting. I looked down from our window and saw a man hurriedly carrying a girl, maybe 6 years old, down the road. And in the entrance to our hotel, between two tables, was a motorbike lying on it’s side. A man was surrounded by lots of angry people and he didn’t look very popular. With the driving in South East Asia as unsafe as it is, I’m amazed we hadn’t seen an accident before now. The commotion continued for at least an hour, and the motorbike was still on it’s side outside the hotel the last time I checked before we went to bed. At some point the power came back on so we had A/jC again. Phew.
The next day we headed back to Hanoi, making the same journey as we’d made to get to Cat Ba but in reverse.
We spent our next couple of days in Hanoi, and our last couple of days in Vietnam, doing very little. We were staying in a nice hotel, and we knew the next few weeks in Borneo were going to be pretty full on, so we spent a lot of time just relaxing in our room. We watched all of ‘Safe’ on Netflix, and I also completed the eLearning for my PADI Open Water course. The breakfast in our hotel was nice – they even had a Milo (chocolate milk) machine. Yum.
Nell got a pedicure on our last night there, but most importantly, we got tiny little nonlas for Wodgie and Beep, which they were very pleased with 🙂
Next stop, Kuala Lumpur.
– Tom
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