Last day in Hanoi, end of trip

This was the last day of my trip. The next morning is a flight to Vancouver via Hong Kong.

It was very hot in the morning, but I walked to the area that has the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, the grounds with the house where Ho Chi Minh lived and worked, and the Ho Chi Minh museum.

Not sure what to think, really. The image that is portrayed is that of a father figure with a passion for his country, who is highly revered. It is easy to believe he had a passion for his country, and one way or another he was instrumental in liberating Vietnam from the brutal French control, and he was able to inspire people to fight for his cause. On the other hand it was still a one party totalitarian state with everything that that entails. Complicated.

When I left the museum, it was still very very hot, so when I saw something like a tuk-tuk I got a ride to the hotel. Tuk-tuks are rare here. It's either taxis or people sitting on motorbikes offering a ride. However the internet is full of warnings about taxi scams, so I'm hesitant to take one unless the hotel has called for me.

Back at the hotel they were performing a ritual, to get blessings after a recent rennovation. There was a lot of food as offering, and someone came to do a chant. Afterward they burned the paper offerings outside.

After resting at the hotel for a bit, I ventured out again. I went to Hoan Kiem Lake, which the centre of Hanoi and not far from my hotel. There is a legend that a king from the 1400's pulled a magic sword from the lake that allowed him to vanquish the attackers.

There is a temple on an island close to shore, with a bright red bridge to it. Probably the most visited spot in the city.

After resting at the hotel again, I packed for the airplane and went out for dinner. Then to the craft beer place again (of course) and this night they had live music.

The group was called Extinguisher, and they were very good. I stayed quite late, until there were just 8 or so of us upstairs where the music was. Others would take turns singing, like people who worked there, often very old songs. It was quite special, like a common experience with the Vietnamese, a young couple from China, and others, all sharing in the music. A great way to spend my last night in Hanoi.

Back in Hanoi, temples

My flight arrived in Hanoi in the morning, and I got the ride to the hotel. The hotel is on the other side of the old quarter from where I stayed before, and I spend some time walking around.

I was able to get a picture of something I'd seen before: someone burning paper prayers in a small stove outside, as a kind of offering.

In the evening I went to Denis' place - his wife Van Anh was there - to pick up my bag which I had left there at the start of the motorcycle trip.

Next to my hotel is a craft beer place!! Called Pasteur Street Brewing, it is run by an ex-pat with the goal of combining craft beer techniques with Vietnamese flavours. I had a Jasmine IPA that was awesome. While I sat there I finished a drawing of the Japanese bridge in Hoi An. Drawing is a great way to meet people because everyone wants to see what you are doing. I ended up talking with a couple of people that work there.

The hotel was quite nice and I slept well.

I spent the next day walking around Hanoi, on a mission to visit some Buddhist temples. Perhaps I was inspired by the prayer offerings I saw, but I wanted to see more of the Buddhist side of life in Vietnam. It isn't as obvious as in Laos, but it is still there. I located a few temples on the map and headed out.

I first went to Chua Quan Su, not far from the hotel. Built in the 1400's it serves as a place of worship for residents of the area. There were people making offerings and praying as I was there.

Next I did a long walk north of the old quarter, past some market streets. It was the middle of the day and getting hot. I'd stop for iced coffee to get into a place with a fan or air conditioning. It took over half an hour, but I reached Chua Hoe Nhai temple. It was not open when I arrived, but there were a couple of older ladies waiting outside, who explained through sign language that it was opening soon. This temple is quite old, from about the 1200's, and is one of the first temples of the Soto Zen sect. There is a famous statute of a buddha sitting on the back of a prostrating king (I like that idea).

There also seemed to be monks living there.

There was a special peaceful feeling about the place.

Finally I walked to the famous Tran Quoc Pagoda on West Lake. Another half hour walk in the heat .... (such devotion, I know)

This the oldest pagoda dating from the 500's. It has the ashes of important monks. While small in size it has a special appeal in its design.

There is a temple in the back with statues of important monks. There were people making offerings and worshipping, and there happened to be a monk performing on the gongs while I was there.

Next was a long walk back to the hotel. It was interesting, however, passing through large tree-lined streets with what looked like government buildings, and walking through different parts around the old quarter.

I rested and got cleaned up and then went for craft beer!

Hue

I did a day tour of Hue, about 100km north of Hoi An. Hue was the capital of Vietnam and the home of the emperors until the country was taken over by the French, and it known for the buildings from that time.

The tour was in a van that held about a dozen people. I met a nice older couple from Malaysia. There was also a Vietnamese family and a couple of girls from China. Most of them were staying in Danang, so I was the first to get picked up in Hoi An, and it took over an hour and a half before we were really on our way. I had views of the big port city of Danang.

After leaving Danang we took the winding road up the neighbouring mountain. (On the way back we took the long tunnel that goes right through the whole mountain.) This gave us great views. At the top of the pass we stopped at the Hai Van gate, which was built by the Americans during the war to separate North from South.

A couple of more hours of driving and we reached Hue. After lunch we visited our first site. This was the tomb of the last emperor of Vietnam. It is amazingly elaborate, both iside and out.

At the first level outside, there are rows of statues of soldiers and scholars, as symbols of following the emperor into the beyond.

The next stop was the Thien Mu Pagoda, which was an important religious site at the time of the emperors. There is a beautiful garden behind the pagoda, and an active temple with many people worshiping.

Our last stop was the biggest one: the imperial palace of the emperor. The grounds are huge and it is still being restored. The design is very elaborate in the classical Chinese way.

We learned some things like: buildings with yellow-tiled rooms were for the emperor, while buildings with green-tiled rooms were for the queen and concubines, etc. 

The emperor had his own study room:

Afterwards we went back to the van, tired from the walking and the heat. Long drive back to Hoi An.

Hoi An

We arrived in Hoi An about 4:00. Hoi
An is in a corner of an area that is essentially surrounded by the greater area of Danang, and we had to ride through the industrial area of Danang to get there.

We found a hotel, and I walked around for a bit. The old part of Hoi An is a World Heritage Site. It was a very important trading port from the 1400's to the 1800's, and was home to Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Portuguese traders. It is famous for the preserved streets and houses from that time, and is a huge tourist spot. Sometimes you could barely move through the streets it was so crowded.

Later, Luc and I found a place for dinner, and nearby was a big night market.

The next day we road to the Flamingo Travel office and dropped off the motorbikes. The end of a chapter. Luc left for Danang, and I spent the rest of the day walking around. I found a travel agency to book a day tour of Hue and my flight to Hanoi.

All the streets in the old part are lined with the characteristic yellow houses. You buy a pass to go into the old quarter and it comes with 5 tickets for entry into certain houses, assembly halls, and museums. From the upper floor of a museum I had another good view.

I went into the houses of some prominent people of the time and an assembly hall. The architecture and decoration was classically Chinese.

One of the most famous spots is a bridge that connected the Japanese part of town with the rest.

There is also a walkway by the river, which is all lit up at night.

Back to Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh Road

It was a fast and easy ride to the Vietnamese border. The line-up of trucks waiting to clear customs was huge, but we went straight to the gate. The process for crossing the border was quite streamlined: the person who did the exit procedure for Laos and the person who did the entry procedure for Vietnam sat at the same desk, and there was only one form to fill out. In each case it was mainly a matter of checking the stamps in the passport. We were on our way quite quickly.

The contrast when entering Vietnam, and the border city Lao Bao, was immediately apparent and overwhelming: cars pushing past and everyone honking. I missed Laos already.

Fortunately we soon turned off the main highway and onto the Ho Chi Minh Road. This is a road built over what was the Ho Chi Minh Trail: a trail cut through the mountains to carry supplies to the south during the Vietnam War. It is a very winding road through the mountains but most of it is well paved. It still has the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. There are very few villages and only a couple of towns along the way. You can go almost 100 km without seeing anything but forest. In a couple of places there were abandoned government stations that were being overgrown with vegetation.

A couple of times there was a group of tourists on motorcycles going the other way, with a Vietnamese guide in front and at the back. Apparently there are several-day motorcycle tours of the Ho Chi Minh Road that are offered out of Hoi An.

We kept going until it got late, and spent the night in the town of Aluoi. The next day, Luc and I stayed on the Ho Chi Minh Road as far as the town of Thanh My, and then turned off toward Hoi An, while Denis and Claude continued south on the Ho Chi Minh Road.

Luc had always planned to only go this far and return the motorbike in Hoi An. Originally I was going to do the whole trip with Denis and Claude, going as far south as Da Lat and the up the coast back to Hanoi. This would have been another 3 weeks on the motorbike. But after a couple of weeks I was done. Overall I'd been travelling for over 6 weeks by this time, and I was ready to go home. So, I decided to join Luc and return the motorbike at Hoi An. Then I could sightsee in Hoi An and Hue, and then fly to Hanoi, and change my flight to return home earlier.

Thakhek - Savannakhet - Phin

Another long day on the motorbike. From Thakhek we took a secondary road to Savannaket. The road was rougher, but went closer to the river. It turned to be a good choice as it past some interesting things.

During first part of the day we had many views of the wide Mekong River and the life of people beside it.

There were many small ethnic villages similar to what we saw in the mountains: some seemed ok while some were very poor. It seemed to depend on the land they were on and what they could grow. The better-off villages had rice fields while the poor ones seemed to be trying to survive on a small plot of banana trees in the forest.

Being a secondary road, it got very rough in places.

At one point we passed a complex that turned out to be an important site. It was the Sikhittabong Stupa, originally built in the 1500's. Inside a temple a Lao woman offered to take a pcture of me.

The location was once a populated area, and it is now callled the Ancient City site with a few replicas of old style Lao houses.

We stopped briefly in Savannakhet and then continued on. This is a large city on the Thai border. The highway from Savannakhet to the Vietnamese border is fast and very well paved but full of trucks.

We kept going until it got too late and stopped in the small town of Phin for the night. Next to our hotel was a restaurant and bar with pool tables, and all the youth of the town spent their evenings there.

In the morning we found a place that was open early and had our usual breakfast of Pho. While we were there the monks came by in their daily collection of food donations.

Vientiane to Thakkhek

This was a long day on the motorbike, 11 hours and over 320 km. The road was straight and flat and only a bit rough, with a speed limit of 80 km/hr. On a little Honda 125cc, even going 70 km/hr makes you feel like you are really flying. The goal was to make a lot of progress toward the border crossing to Vietnam.

The landscape was the large flat river plain around the Mekong, filled with large rice fields, and hills in the background. The road only came close to the river a couple of times.

Along the way there several Buddhist temples and monasteries, usually fairly large. There are always quite a few monks there, and it seems like the number of boys who are monks in Laos is quite high.

Vientiane

We had a day off in Vientiane to look around. Compared to other capital cities in Asia, Vientiane is smaller and although there is still a lot of traffic it is not too crazy. This could also be due to the Lao character. I find the people here very gentle and patient. For example, it is rare to honk your horn, and a driver will wait behind someone for a while without trying to push past.

The day we arrived we had a snack at a restaurant run by a guy from Montreal, and we were joined by a Canadian friend of Denis' who lives here. I saw a fair number of tourists on the streets, and I get the impression there are quite a few ex-pats.

Vientiane is on the shore of the Mekong river, with Thailand on the other side.

There is a large night market beside the river, with food stalls and small restaurants offering grilled fish from the Mekong.

The morning of our day off we did a tuk-tuk tour of the major sights. The first stop was Patuxai, a monument built in the style of the Arc de Triumph to commemorate their independence from France.

Next was Pha That Luang, the most important Buddhist site in Laos. It was built in the 1500's, destroyed during a Thai invasion, the rebuilt. It is a large stupa surounded by temple buildings, one of which houses a research center on early Buddhist writings.

Next was Wat Si Muong, a smaller temple but very active with a constant stream of people coming to worship.

Wat Si Saket is a beautifal wooden temple in a unique style. While it was built in the 1800's, it is the only temple that has not needed to be rebuilt so it is in it's original form. It is also the oldest monastery.

Haw Phra Kaew used to be a temple that housed the Emerald Buddha before it was moved to Thailand. It is now a museum.

Finally, Chao Anouvong Park is a large park by the river, named after the last king of Laos before being taken over by the French. Behind the park is the presedential palace.