Au Revoir

Thursday, January 7 – Today we head for home, and with mixed emotions. Yes, it will be nice to sleep in our own bed. Yes, it will be nice not to have to pack luggage again 3 days from now. Yes, it will be nice to get back on a regular diet and workout regimen. But there are drawbacks too.

Obviously we’re going to miss the sunshine and warm temperatures. Obviously we’re going to miss the delicious food (even if we are both a bit “riced out”.) But more than any of that, we’ll miss the family and friends that we’re leaving behind.

Over the past two days, we made time to say goodbye to everyone. We got to have two meals with Junkii’s parents in Ipoh, including both a big “friends-included” dinner and a nice intimate family-only breakfast. Needless to say, there were watery eyes as we struck out from Ipoh to KL for the last time on Wedneday morning.

But KL promised its own dinner – this time with just the siblings and their significant others - at a western-fusion restaurant with some very tasty food. And, afterwards, another fond farewell with hugs all around, and a promise to come back more often.

And lastly, while our friend Meei couldn’t make it to our hotel for a goodbye drink, the two old friends did get to spend a couple of hours catching up by phone while I packed our luggage. (I didn’t mind. It kept Junkii out of my hair while I organized our stuff. Thanks, Meei!)

So all in all, a perfect way to spend our last two days in Malaysia: with family.

And that promise to come back isn’t an empty one. At the very least, Junkii needs to get home for a few weeks every two years or so. (And if I can make it too, all the better). As it stands, we’ve only been getting back every 4 or 5 years. So more effort needed on our part.

As I type this, we’re sitting at Hong Kong airport waiting for our connection to Vancouver. So that pretty much concludes this blog. Hope you enjoyed it. We’ll be going back to our usual blog on Vox once we get home. (The faster we kick blogspot to the curb, the better). For those who didn’t feel like reading it all, it’s most likely we’ll produce a slideshow. We’ll torment you with that as soon as we can!

Oh, and lastly, here are a few pictures from our last dinner in KL, as well as a shot of the Petronas towers we took en route to the restaurant. Enjoy!

Travelling with a Cold

Tuesday, January 5 – I developed a sneezy, runny nose upon landing in Hanoi, and it’s getting frustrating. Every time I blow my nose, I sneeze again and the cycle starts over. It makes me grumpy and that doesn’t make for a good travel companion.

I try to stay upbeat, but thankfully Junkii has seen me sick often enough to know what to expect. The silver lining? The cold should be on its way out before I get on the long plane ride home on Thursday.

Oh my god? Is it time to go home already? Today we’re heading back to Malaysia for two nights before the long haul. These last two days will be packed. The plan is to get to Ipoh for dinner tonight and stay overnight there so we can say a proper farewell to Junkii’s parents. Then we head back to KL tomorrow and have dinner with Junkii’s siblings, who have bent over backwards to help make our visit one to remember.

If we’re lucky, we’ll also get in one last visit with Junkii’s best friend from high school – a drink or two to say “so long.”

So we leave this leg of the tour – Vietnam – having seen a good portion of the country. The big metropolises of Ho Chi Minh City (A bustling modern landscape) and Hanoi (A charming and old-fashioned Asian city with winding, narrow streets crammed with cyclos and motos), as well as the coastal areas of Nha Trang (A beach Paradise) and Ha long Bay (An otherworldly oasis). It’s good we’ve seen as much as we have though, because as much as we liked it, we probably won’t be back to Vietnam. There are too many other countries to see and we both feel that we know this country well enough now. Although we will miss the fantastic food culture here, and the bia hoi.

Bia Hoi

Monday, January 4 – On every street corner on any evening in Hanoi, you’ll find little restaurants crammed with tiny stools where you can pull up a seat next to the locals and order a bia hoi. Bia hoi is draught beer – or at least it’s near enough to beer not to make a difference. Yes, it’s a bit flatter than North American beer, and it’s slightly more watery, but overall, it’s lovely. And the best part is, a pint costs all of $0.12!

Yes, you heard correctly. Less than a quarter for a pint of beer!

Unfortunately, the way things worked out, we didn’t take advantage of this drink until our final night in Hanoi. But we did make certain to taste it before we left – and it’s good. Very refreshing. It would be wonderful to come back to Vietnam in the summer and sit on a street corner on a hot Hanoi evening enjoying a local brewski or two.

Water puppets

Monday, January 4 – One of the cultural must-sees in Vietnam is water-puppet theatre. And the best theatre is in Hanoi. We were lucky enough to get tickets to the show on the evening we arrived back from our Halong Bay tour.

Basically, in water puppet theatre, you have about 8 puppeteers working behind screens and standing waist-deep in murky water. The mechanisms for the puppets remain underwater where you can’t see them, and the puppets themselves carouse to the sounds of the traditional Vietnamese music being played by a live band nearby.

it’s colourful, light-hearted, and fun – not to mention impressive what the puppeteers are able to accomplish with what are essentially wooden dolls.

Unfortunately, we didn’t take photos or video during the performance, but there must be some video on youtube. The connection here is too slow for us to find a suitable one, but search for "Hanoi Water Puppets" and you'll see loads of videos.

Our tour guide

Monday, January 4 – Our tour guide was cute. Let’s get that out there right away. His name was Tommy and he was adorably cute. And because he spent his time talking to us about Vietnam, we were free to stare at him as long as we liked. After all, it would be impolite not to pay attention, right?

We didn’t take a lot of photos of him, but here’s a shot of him performing Karaoke on the cruise ship.

A Tour of Halong Bay

Sunday, January 3 – There are so many tour companies operating 2day/1night tours of Halong bay that it’s intimidating. Travel brochures can make anything look nice, but how can you really tell if you’re buying a quality tour?

We visited a couple of the tour companies recommended in the Lonely planet guidebook, but in the end, we booked our tour through our hotel.

The clincher was our hotel salesperson. He was very helpful with outlining the various options they could provide, but he never pressured us to buy. And that made a huge difference. It at least made him seem an honest fellow.

In the end we were very happy with our tour company

The itinerary ran something like this:

• Get up and catch a bus at 8am to head to Halong Bay (About 3.5 hours East of Hanoi).
  
• Board the boat and check into our room
  
• Head out into the bay while we eat lunch.
  
• Stop at one of the 2000 islands and explore a ginormous cave
  
• Back to the boat and head to a small fishing village where we boarded some two-person kayaks to paddle around the bay. This turned out to be the highlight of the trip. We explored on our own for the better part of two hours, paddling through a limestone cave as well as discovering a quiet and secluded bay. We got to see all sorts of coral and marine life at the bases of these limestone pillars. And this was also one of the few times the sun came out, shining on the sails of the junk boats in the harbour. But we didn’t bring our camera on the kayak. :(
  
• Dinner and squid fishing on the boat (No, we didn’t catch any, but the captain did) followed by Karaoke and bed.
  
• Next day, up for breakfast, followed by a hike up to the top of one of the islands that had a great view of the bay.
  
• Back for a lunch and then grab a bus back into the city.
  

It sounds like a packed little adventure with little down time, but even though we were busy, we had some time to just relax and soak in the surroundings.

Our impression? Halong bay is beautiful, and certainly worth the visit and a night on the water, but as far as natural wonders go it falls a bit short. It could very well be because the weather was somewhat foggy and that we didn’t get an unobstructed view of the vastness of the bay, but it’s hard to put it up there with something like the Grand Canyon, which is just breathtaking.

Junkii took hundreds of photos of Halong Bay, and as always, you can check them out on his Flickr account – but here are a dozen or so of our favourite shots from the bay.

Banh Mi

Saturday, January 2 – We already mentioned the fresh baguette sandwiches you can get on any street corner in Vietnam, but we’ve both become huge fans of this light lunch. In the south, the Banh Mi tends to be stuffed with a few pieces of cold meat (pork or chicken) along with tomatoes and cucumber. And in the north, the more prominent style uses a hot kebab-style marinated pork. But they all have a yummy spicy sauce and some mayonnaise, and they’re always served warm on a crusty baguette.

Back in Canada, we’ve only had Banh Mi once, and it wasn’t good. The bread wasn’t fresh. So we figured we just didn’t like it. But once we get home, we’re definitely gonna have to find ourselves a favourite Banh Mi shop to frequent.

10 Dollar Jackets

Saturday, January 2 – We already mentioned that the weather in Hanoi was quite a bit cooler and wetter than anywhere else we’ve been in Asia. And we were concerned that the weather was only going to get worse when we struck out on a two day sailing trip (including an overnight aboard ship) to Halong Bay on the east coast of northern Vietnam.

Rather than freeze for two days, we agreed to splurge and buy a couple of windbreakers – just in case it got rainy.

But in walking around town, we weren’t having a lot of luck finding a cheap jacket that didn’t also come with track pants. We checked the local market to no end, and countless stores, until we finally came across a used clothing store right as we were about to finish our walking tour.

We were able to get two light nylon jackets for only $20. Perfect.

Of course, then the weather warmed up and we had no use for them, but that’s beside the point.

No Chi Minh

Saturday, January 2 – Drat. Drat. Drat. One thing we really wanted to do in Hanoi was to visit the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and see his embalmed body.

Yeah, it’s macabre and honestly, who really knows if it’s actually him or just some wax replica, but it would have been a good memory to have.

Unfortunately, I didn’t read the guidebook closely enough. It turns out the Mausoleum is only open for a couple of hours in the morning. So by the time we got there, the tomb was closed. We did get photos from outside the mausoleum, but that’s probably the biggest regret of the trip.

Still, if that’s the biggest regret, we’re not doing too bad.

You Give me Money for Photo

Saturday, January 2 – As we were winding our way through the walking tour, we happened upon one intersection occupied by a gaggle of pushy fruit sellers. They had a scheme to sell their fruit. Once they found me – an unsuspecting foreigner – they insisted that I carry a couple of fruit baskets on my shoulder, and pointed at Junkii to take photos of me. All of this was great fun until they removed the basket and handed me a bag of pineapple and insisted that I buy it.

No, thanks. Don’t want any. They gave some to Junkii too, but we both stood our ground and refused the fruit. Then they started to get upset and insisted that we should, at the very least, pay them for the photo-op.

Neither of us was inclined to give in since they hadn’t really asked us first – they had just approached us and plunked their baskets on my shoulders.

Still, the Vietnamese are very nice, and while they may act offended, they quickly saw we weren’t going to pay and moved on to other prey.

Walking tour of Hanoi

Saturday, January 2 – The walking tour went well. Lonely Planet Tour books always have great walking tours outlined for major cities, and Hanoi is just so much fun to walk around – at least in the Old Quarter, where we were.

The Old Quarter is the heart of Hanoi and it’s chock-a-block with little shops and vendors on winding streets packed with two-wheeled vehicles. And the walking tour took us through the majority of the quarter. Here are some of the cool things we saw:

• Hoan Kiem Lake: If Old Quarter is the heart of Hanoi, the lake is the heart of the quarter. Everything spreads out from here. It’s a lovely, if crowded, spot in the middle of the city.
  
• Ngoc Son Temple: Located on an island in the lake (connected by a small bridge), this place was packed with people. It’s the first temple we’ve ever visited that had an admission fee (other than the temples at Angkor Wat, of course). And the only real draw here was the location. Not much to see inside the temple.
  
• Mixed Bag: We then wound our way up one side of the quarter, passing various tradespeople (gravestone sculptors, tinsmiths, tailors) and up to the old Eastern stone gate of the city – which is still standing. From there we took a walk down a very narrow street where locals were selling all sorts of butchered creatures, from pork and beef, to fish, to frogs, to baby eels and insect larvae. It kind of creeped us out.
  
• We then hit the local market – a huge affair, similar to the one we saw in Cholon (Ho Chi Minh City). Not much new here though.
  
• The Temple of Literature – the first university established in Vietnam – was next on the list. That turned out to be a lovely spot – smack in the middle of town, but walled and therefore removed from the noise of the city streets. It was a refuge. Plus we got to hear a performance of traditional Vietnamese music, which was lovely.
  
• 
  Last but not least was the Ho Chi Minh Complex where we saw the Ho Chi Minh Museum (we didn’t go in), The mausoleum and royal palace (we couldn’t go in), and the One Pillar Pagoda (a small and delicate temple, and Hanoi landmark).