Our Final Days in Vietnam

Our trip is nearly over. We arrived in Hanoi late in the evening, and looking out of the the van window riding in from the airport, we thought Hanoi was an ugly city. Were we ever wrong.

This is a vibrant city with a lot of old colonial architecture. Yes, the roads are terrible, but the city center is very interesting.

We stayed at the Sofitel Metropole Hanoi. This is one of the best hotels we've stayed at anywhere in the world. It was built back in the French colonial days and restored in the 1990s. During the early 20th century, this was supposedly the best hotel east of Suez. I can believe it.

Of course, the weather didn't disappoint us. We left the heat behind in Hue, but the humidity was touching 100 percent. I took the lens cap off my camera and the lens fogged up in about 2 nanoseconds. Just standing outside for a moment you felt wet even though it wasn't raining. That's Hanoi in March for you. Only a two shower a day town.

Our last day's tour activities began with everyone jumping into their own cyclo and being peddled thru the city streets. One of our group, Ken the Aussie, decided to give his driver a rest and try navigating the streets of Hanoi himself. As long as you head in a straight line, it's not too diffcult. Making a turn when a bus is in the oncoming lane seems to require some experience. Sitting in the passenger seat when the hulk of a bus is heading at you can be a bit of a stressful moment.

We visited Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum and saw the man (embalmed of course). Ho looked a lot better than Mao did when we saw him in Beijing. The lines to view Ho Chi Minh are quite long, but they are efficient at moving people along. We even saw a group of Vietnamese war veterans (former Viet Cong army) that were given preferential treatment to get in.

Next door to the mausoleum is Ho Chi Minh's stilt house residence and the presidential palace (an old colonial building). It's interesting to hear about his life and how he led Vietnam to independence. He lived for many years outside of Vietnam, including time in the U.S., France, U.K., Soviet Union, and Netherlands, before returning to Vietnam to lead the war for independence from colonial rule.

At the end of any tour, we usually find ourselves a little shy of cash. This trip was no exception. Yet we needed money to do last minute shopping and to give a tip to our guides. Fortunately, the Vietnamese are into ATM machines as much as we are in the U.S. They are on every street corner. One member of our group aptly named them "Dong Machines" since they spit out Dong, the Vietnamese currency. We joked with each other about how we needed to go to the Dong machine and withdraw a couple of million Dong.

The final night of our tour we had dinner catered by the hotel at a pagoda in Hanoi. It was goodbye to all our new friends and to our tour guides. The meal was Vietnamese - the best we had experienced the entire trip - and for entertainment there was a Vietnamese "jazz band." This guy played the two string instrument with the proficiency of Eric Clapton.

Then we all said our goodbyes to each other. One couple was heading off to Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Another couple was heading back to Maryland the next morning. Our "class clown", the single guy from Minneapolis with a fondness for Heineken, had a three stop flight home. The Aussies were heading back to their "station" in New South Wales. The couple from Denver was heading down to HCMC and then on to Cambodia. And the remaining six of us were going on a day trip to Halong Bay before heading out.

The toughest goodbyes were to our guides. We left Tam on our last day in Hue. He was heading home to Danang and his recently born twin boys. We also left our cadre of drivers in Hue as they were driving the vans back south. Viet was heading back to Saigon before leading a tour of war orphans next week. And Marco was headed back to Arezzo, Italy for a few days before going to Sicily to plan a future B&R trip.

Six of us went with Viet to visit Halong Bay for a day. Halong Bay is about a three hour drive each way from Hanoi. First you pass mile after mile of rice fields. Then you pass "Black City", a coal strip mining area where all the buildings, roads, vehicles, and even the people look like they are covered with black coal dust. Virtually the entire way we travelled on the same Vietnamese roads we've enjoyed for two weeks - trucks belching diesel exhaust fumes, pavement barely wide enough to pass another vehicle, no shoulders, hoards of motorbikes, and occasional potholes deep enough to swallow a Mini Cooper.

Then suddenly Halong Bay appears. Another UNESCO World Heritage Site, Halong Bay is a wonder. Thousands of small limestone islands rising out of the water. A miracle of nature. It's the marine version of Stone Forest Park outside Kunming, China.

We had hired a junk for the day and the crew took us out to explore the cave on one of the islands, sail around, and serve us another Vietnamese lunch. Once again, the usual fare we've come to know and love - spring rolls, soup, sauteed morning glory leaves, rice, noodles, fruit. This time we had an additional item - a grilled fish in a Vietnamese onion and tomato sauce. After the three hour ride back to Hanoi, we were exhausted. We had a snack in our room, packed, and got some sleep before "travel day."

Now to go thru the 2000+ pictures and edit out the best. It may take a week or two to make a DVD covering the trip. We saw so much and did so many things. Vietnam and Cambodia are fascinating countries.

Now we need to figure out where to go on our next expedition.