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Vietnam & Surrounds Day 09

Day 9, Friday, 3/21/25, Hoi An

After another delicious buffet breakfast, I get some more shots in and around the hotel after a morning rain.

Today we will tour Hoi An, formerly known as Faifo, back in its early days. It was also an important port for the Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and other merchant vessels from the Far East. I call Hoi An the city of mannequins. As you will see in the photos, there is no shortage of tailors with dozens of mannequins each! Our first stop is the Chaya Merchant House.

The guide today is a gentleman named Ti. Very funny guy. We go to Hoi An Ancient Town, as it is called. We visit stores and temples, all to our camera’s liking! A lot of Chinese and Japanese influence here. From that stinky fruit, Durian, to colorful store displays and more mannequins, even child size mannequins with adult faces! An origami wall catches my camera’s attention and views of the streets below from an upstairs museum room. And, as usual, there is another photo shoot with a model, this time with a pink umbrella!

We even see the Sa Huynh Museum, which is located near the iconic Japanese Covered Bridge. The museum contains exhibitions from the earliest period of Hoi An’s history. This city has a rich and fascinating past. The Japanese Covered Bridge is so famous they put it’s picture on their 20,000 Dong note (equivalent of our one dollar bill).

We visit 41LeLoi, a silk fabric factory where they breed and raise silkworms. They weave cloth and sew silk designs into them.

We visit the Phuoc Kien Hoi Quan, also known as the Fukian Chinese Assembly Hall. The architecture of the temple is filled with intricate details and vibrant decorations.  The hall is known for its association with the six families that came to Hoi An in the 17th century.  The large courtyard with koi ponds add to the overall peaceful atmosphere. 

Walking by the markets, one of our group is handed a pair of baskets attached to a cross bar to pose for photos with! Looking good Leo!

Then we board a small boat on the Thu Bon River to the island of Cam Kim. Here we visit Kim Bong Village, a carpentry village officially recognized by Vietnam . We watch skilled woodworkers and shipbuilders that have been practicing their craft for generations.

Most of the group engages in a carving activity where they carve their name into a piece of wood using the rustic tools that the native woodcarvers use. Many of them get to see how difficult this is!

I don’t choose to do this, I prefer to walk around the village with my camera. Fun place according to my camera. In a crude shipyard, they were even rebuilding a boats damaged timbers.

After the group finishes carving their names, the entire group takes a brief tour and the village block and we all marvel at the quality and enormity of some of the wood carving skills of these people! There are weavers here also. Elee checks out a one piece rocking chair!

We then return across the river to Ancient Town for a traditional Vietnam lunch. Yes, it seems, we have done all this before lunch! I order Vietnamese Soup and a form of Bruschetta on Wontons.

We walk around for another half hour or so. I see some street food that looks delicious but I just finished lunch! Ti Then bids the group goodbye. He takes a couple of us back to the hotel. It’s a leisurely afternoon. Elee chooses to walk around town for a while longer. I kick back at the hotel and take a few more garden shots.

At 5, we go to the garden bar and have a glass of wine and a mojito. John and Dusty from the group join us. Some of the group are getting massages.

Later we take a walk for dinner and find a restaurant, Orivy, that serves local Hoi An food and enjoy a delicious meal with dumplings and pork dishes.

After dinner, we walk back to the hotel, but decide to stop for a glass of wine at a French Bistro on the way! And of course there are more mannequins on the way!

The walk back to the hotel is pleasant. One note about sidewalks in Vietnam, they are clearly not for walking on. They are for parking your motorcycle and placing your business signs. Additionally, they are used for stacking your wares and doing business from your street cart!

So we have to walk in the streets very often amid the zooming motorists and vehicles. Fun stuff! Livin’ large!

See you all tomorrow!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 08

Day 8, Thursday, 3/20/25, Ha Long to Hoi An

We arise at 6:30 and have a buffet breakfast on the boat. Very good Vietnamese food. The boat has pulled it’s anchor and is under way. There is an early morning Thai Chi class on deck that Elee joins. The bay is very calm as we start to move.

We go to Dao Titop Island with a beach! (see pics) to hike. The small tenders that our boat tows along take us in. Some people climb to the top. I choose to go about halfway. Fun place. There aren’t many islands with beaches in Ha Long Bay. This one even has a couple of bars. It is too early to drink but it sure is tempting!

We hang out on Titop for a couple hours, then get back on the Junk for the ride back to Ha Long City and have brunch on the Junk. I try a Ha Long Classic Beer that is a typical Pilsner but it is cold. On the way back to Ha Long, we hang out on deck for the most part and watch Junks and other ships traveling and working. There is a large freighter unloading cargo barges in the middle of the bay!

It’s time to check out and leave the Junk boat. We board the bus for the 3 hour ride back to Hanoi (sometimes spelled Ha Noi). At a rest stop, I find some Lays Pringles cans called “Stax” with interesting flavors! I also spy a tour company’s van that my Brit friends will find interesting! And back in Hanoi, I spot a sign on the first restaurant we ate at announcing it is a Michelin Selected location!

We pick up our luggage and wait at the TK123 hotel for an hour and a half for our ride to the airport. We check in our luggage and get a meal. We get 2 entrees and 2 drinks (in an airport) and it costs us less than $12 USD! We are traveling to Da Nang with a group of 9 people who we have been getting to know for the last few days. It’s a great group!

We land in Da Nang and there is a van waiting for us. The guide tells us he is just with us to the hotel. We are actually traveling to Hoi An which is next to Da Nang. There will be a lady guide tomorrow. An hour ride in light traffic to the hotel. Nothing like the traffic in Hanoi. We will be staying at the Garden Palace Hotel & Spa. This is, by far, the best hotel yet!

We arrive at the hotel after 9:30 PM. Restaurants here are closed. A fellow traveler says he found a small store a hundred yards away that has snacks. Okay so it’s prawn flavored potato chips and dried fruit that includes durian!

Good night all!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 07

Day 7, Wednesday, 3/19/25, Ha Long Bay

The Breakfast Buffet today is very good again. After we eat, we go up to our room and pack up our bags. We also pack a day bag for our next adventure. The hotel will store our bags for us. We board the bus at 9:00 AM and drive off towards the next part of the tour. It will be a 3 hour bus ride. The sights are interesting on the drive through rice paddies with sights of what appears to be antennas that crudely look like fake trees and graveyards and memorials in the rice paddies!

Duon keeps us informed as we drive along towards Ha Long Bay. For example, Hanoi has 7 million motorcycles! 8.6 million people live here, including children. Police sometimes ‘make noise on street’ (sirens). There are a lot of houses built in Ha Long that are empty.

On the highway to Ha Long Bay. Motorcycles are not allowed on the highway! At a rest stop in Hai Phong, I buy Jackfruit to share on the bus. Very banana and mango flavor. Everyone likes it. Esther shares Pumelo with Chili Powder.

We make a stop to visit a pearl factory where pearls are harvested from oysters and sorted for size and color. Then they are made into jewelry of all kinds. We get to watch workers removing the pearls and sort them.

We board a small boat that takes us to an authentic Chinese Junk (boat) that will be our home for the next 24 hours, the “Mila Cruises”. We have an orientation meeting and then have a fabulous buffet lunch on board. After, we go up to the top of the boat and entertain our cameras with the marvels of Ha Long Bay.

Our cabin is comfortable. More comfortable that the hotel room in Hanoi!

I meet Constantino, a pediatrician on board from Romania and chat with him about his Sony camera. There are hundreds of islands and the same amount of boats cruising through them! We spot some interesting architecture but never find out what it is.

Now it’s time to get on the small boat again and go kayaking through an oyster farm! Both Elee and I want our own kayak, but there are limited numbers so we share one. We kayak around the farm and over to the shore. There are many ‘caves’ that we attempt to explore but most are illusionary or filled with floating debris.

The plastic pollution is disheartening to say the least. The thoughtlessness of humans is evident everywhere.

The kayak excursion is short and we are the last to return. We get back on the ship just in time for the next activity, hiking up one of the islands to a cave. I am feeling quite mellow and decide not to go. Elee does not go either and chooses to get a massage on board instead. A fuel tanker sidles up to us and hooks up.

I go up on top and get started with Happy Hour early. A glass of wine in hand, my camera in the other, I watch the world go by! At least I watch Ha Long Bay go by. I even spot a large cruise ship in the distance.

A small boat vendor rows up but rows away when there isn’t a crowd to greet him. Another vendor comes along in a motor powered boat but also goes away when there is no crowd to greet him. But he is an entrepreneur and comes around again. He spots me and my camera and heads for me. I step back out of sight and he floats around looking for me or anyone else. I don’t want to lead him on as I don’t want to buy his trinkets.

So I walk around and meet a new friend Nathan (with wife Faye) from the UK and we chat amicably for a while.

Elee’s massage is over and the hikers have returned. It’s Happy Hour. Turns out wine is not on Happy Hour unless you buy a bottle. So beer nuts and chicharones are all we get free. Sai la vie!

Waiting for a little more darkness for photos of boats lighting up for the night. My camera has fun shooting after dark.

Night photos are fun. Dinnertime comes around and the waiters put on a little candlelit show of their own!

Even though being tired, my camera drags me back up on deck for some more night photo fun. A couple of the boats in the bay put on light shows for all to enjoy!

Finally it’s time for bed. See you all in the morning!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 06

Day 6, Tuesday 3/18/25, Hanoi, Vietnam

Today Hanoi will be 64 F with almost no humidity. A welcome relief from Bangkok heat. Overcast skies in the morning. One note, we hope that beds in Vietnam get more comfortable than this one. The bed is like a rock and it slopes toward the center! We arise at 6:30 and have a delicious buffet breakfast in the hotel. I could get used to all the different food in this part of the world! A few shots out of our hotel window and we grab our hats and and start the tour by 8:15.

Our guide today is Duon. The streets bustle with activity and we get our first views of life in Hanoi.

We visit the oldest pagoda in Vietnam, Tran Quoc Pagoda. It is located on Golden Fish Island in West Lake. It was built in the 6th century and is the oldest Pagoda in Vietnam. Symbolism and stunning architecture is everywhere and lucky yellow colors abound.

We pass a Statue of John McCain, who was a resident of the “Hanoi Hilton” from 1967-1973. We will visit this later today. Next we drive by the Parliament and see how large it is. Our core group of travelers today are 12 people. We will grow to 14 some days with others that join us for random day tours and will shrink near the end. At one point, we come across some vendors that, for a nominal fee of 25,000 Dong ($1 USD), you can buy a bird and free it, symbolizing the freeing of the Vietnamese people. (if you can consider people in a Communist country as free)

Across from Parliament is the Ho Chi Minh Complex where we go inside the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. The Mausoleum has very strict rules. 1.) No photos. This was so strictly enforced. There were guards every 3-4 meters throughout the building and there was simply no chance to sneak off a photo. Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed body was on display in a glass case and you could clearly see him. It was amazing. Probably the best (if not the only) embalmed person on display in the world. His body is maintained twice every week! 2.) No hats. 3.) Hands must be at your side and not in pockets. 4.) No talking and no noise. Anyone breaking these rules would be ordered to correct their action and removed if necessary! So I have seen him but can’t prove it! I was chastised twice before we ever got inside, once for speaking and the other for having my hands in my pockets while waiting in the very long line. And of course I was chastised in Vietnamese so it took help to understand what rules I was breaking!

We then take a leisurely walk around the garden to see the two houses where he lived and worked from 1954 to 1969. Gardens are meticulous and there are guards everywhere you look. Even the cars he rode in are on display! So please remember Uncle Ho in Spring!

The red background of the Vietnamese flag symbolizes revolution and bloodshed. The golden star symbolizes the soul of the nation and the five points of the star represents the five main classes in Vietnamese society—intellectuals, farmers, workers, entrepreneurs, and soldiers.

Other things we see include the Gate of the Crystallization of Letters.

And the Temple of Confucius!

Lunch is had at Hoang’s Restaurant. Good Vietnamese food but I was having so much fun getting to know my new travel mates that I didn’t write down what we ate. There were many dishes sent around family style and I remember the beer was cold! Our group of 12 hammed it up outside the Restaurant!

After boarding the bus again, we see parking lots of motorcycles, scooters & buses. We then visit Hoa Lo Prison, nicknamed “Hanoi Hilton” in the Xuong District. This visit was very moving even from the North Vietnamese perspective. The torture described in several of the images that follow describe in some detail the horrors of the war! Even inside thick concrete walls with steel gates and locks, prisoners were shackled to the floor. The floors sloped away from the foot shackles so even lying down was virtually impossible!

Then we venture out and back on the bus to the Ethnicities Museum, which is a much lighter and pleasant experience. We learn a bit about the 54 different ethnic groups that live in Vietnam. They even depict in wood statues the sexuality of the people.

The tour today was long and tiring. But it is over for the day. We get back to the hotel by 5:30 PM, tired and hungry. We are told that Hanoi has an attraction similar to the train street we visited in Bangkok. So on tired feet we seek out this street which we are told is only a few blocks from our hotel. We get our first experience crossing a street in Vietnam. There are few to no controlled intersections, so you wait for a lull in traffic (I use that term loosely), put your hand up in a halting gesture and start walking. Do. Not. Stop. Traffic will go around you! We make it to the train restaurant street and have a glass of wine with our new travel friend, Hannah at Cafe Da Dong Duong (The Train Cafe). Fun conversations ensued. Glasses of wine here costs 180,000 Dong ($7.20 USD), which is not cheap compared to other things here. This street is a known tourist spot! Hannah takes her leave to go see a couple places she wants to see. We walk around train street and decide to have dinner here. We both have Pho with chicken and it is good!

We see a lot of amateur photographers photographing attractive young ladies modeling for them. One can only believe they are trying to get their big break! A train came through, but unlike Bangkok’s train at 2 mph, this one came through around 25-30 mph! Fun stuff! We limp on back to the hotel for bed.

See you tomorrow!

Vietnam & Surrounds Day 05

Day 5 Monday, 3/17/25, Fly to Hanoi

Up at 8 AM. We have breakfast in the hotel and we have Pad Thai, Larb Na, Bacon & Eggs and Tom Ka Gai Soup! Then it’s up to the room to pack up for we will leave Bangkok today.

We check out at noon and hire a Bolt to BKK airport. It takes a whole 2 minutes for the ride to arrive! Then it takes most of an hour to weave through traffic to the airport. We tip our driver and take our luggage into the airport and check it in. We have to go through passport control as we are flying to a different country.

The airport in Bangkok is interesting. Suvarnabhumi Airport. The decorations and displays are colorful and elaborate. This is Thailand’s biggest airport and is one of the coolest transportation hubs in the world. The facilities are excellent and there are daily flights to every continent. Around 58 million passengers travel through Suvarnabhumi Airport every year. We walk quite a ways and then have to ride a tram bus.

Our plane flight is delayed almost 2 hours. We don’t find out why. So we spend some money in the airport and eat random food.

Once on the plane, I order a glass of wine and you can see how they serve it! We are flying on Vietjet Airlines. The plane lands at 6:00 PM at Noi Bai International Airport, Sóc Sơn, Huyện Sóc Sơn, Hanoi. Hanoi, North Vietnam. It was supposed to land before 4:30 PM. But our ride to TK123 hotel is waiting for us along with other people that we will get to know as we travel with them for the next 10-12 days. We do have enough time to buy Sim Cards for our phones. It costs us 350,000 Vietnamese Dong ($14 USD) for unlimited use for a month. The conversion is 25,000 Dong equals $1.00 US.

The ride to our next hotel, TK123, takes approximately one hour. We see many colorful buildings along the way as dusk turns to night. We arrive at the hotel at 7:30 PM. Tour operator Danny is waiting for us. He will coordinate our trip for the next 12 days. We won’t see him until near the end of our trip as he is only coordinating our itinerary. We will have different Guides in each city.

We get oriented and in our room on the 10th floor. We walk a half block to a recommended restaurant, Quan An Ngon, for dinner. We have Bun cha Ha Noi and Nem cua be and I have a Bia Ha Noi. Anthony Bourdain recommended these dishes and they are very tasty!

After dinner we go back to the hotel for the night. Bangkok was 35C (95F), Hanoi is 20C (68F). The humidity is much lower also! A very pleasant change in the weather.