The wheels on the bus...

go bump bump bump...

Xin chao from Muong Lay. It's Sunday evening. My apologies for not updated sooner. I've been moving around quite a bit, and for various reasons (such as poor internet connections, lack of internet cafes, and plain laziness) I haven't gotten around to completing this post. I started it a while ago, and have only been able to do chunks (the town name in the greeting of this post has been changed twice); I hope it doesn't get choppy.

Tracking back to where I left you last, I was still in Hanoi.

Hanoi Opera House

On Thursday morning I went to do a bit of sight seeing. I was able to see a bit before the rain set in. I was, however unable to see Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body. It's not the rain that deterred me. Every year around this time Ho Chi Minh goes on vacation to Russia for a few months for a bit of 'touching up'. I guess anyone of us would need an occasional makeover should we have been dead for 39 years.

Anyways, I started my day with a hearty bowl of rice porridge. After that, I went to Hoa Lo Prison. It originally used by the French to hold Vietnamese anti-colonialists. Later, it was used for American POWs (pilots) during the war. The prison as a whole was quite unsettling. The provided displays and information were definitely written from the Vietnamese point of view.

Perhaps one of the most interesting facts (and particularly applicable today) was that Hoa Lo prison is where John McCain was held. Scattered throughout some of the prison is information on him, including a photo of him of his plane in the lake and him being pulled out (hard to really tell, though, the photo doesn't actually show the pilot, just the crowd around the plane). Also on display was his flight gear, including his suit, that he was wearing when captured.

After the prison, I went to Hoa Kiem Lake. Hanoi, particularly the Old Quarter (where I'm staying, and where a lot of the activity in Hanoi is), seems centered around Hoa Kiem Lake. I browsed Ngoc Son Temple, which in on an island (connected by a bridge). It was alright, nothing too exciting.

I picked up an extraordinarily over-priced magazine nearby. I read by the lake for a while until I was approached by a Vietnamese fellow about my age, wanting to practice his English. He had come from the counjtryside to study in Hanoi. We spoke for a while about various things, particularly Hanoi. Then, the rain came. We parted ways, and I headed off to find lunch in a covered location. I came across Bun Cha on the sidewalk, under a tarp. Bun Cha is a meal more than one dish. The central part is a hot bowlful of a really strongly flavored meaty, slightly sweet, broth (I think there's a good bit of fish sauce in there, too). In the broth is awesome little spiced patties of ground pork and a few littles pieces of whole pork. All the meat had been grilled perfectly. It was smoky with a perfect amount of fat. The smokiness seeped into the broth. A big mound of cold bun noodles (thin, round rice noodles), a plate of a few awesome fried spring rolls cut into pieces, and a plate of bean sprouts and various herbs. All these items get dipped into the hot broth and eaten up. Needless to say, it was specatcular. I think it may be in the top 10 things I've had on this trip.

I didn't accomplish much else during the rest of the day. The rain started to fall pretty hard. I did brave the rain for dinner. It was at a tiny street stall. It was a bowl of rice served with various items that had been stewing away in a pot. There was a fried egg, a piece of meat and some tofu. It was very hearty and good.

The rain continued on Friday (Happy Birthday, Eddie). I met an Australian, Andrew, at the hostel, who was just starting his trip to Southeast Asia. We went out for some breakfast/lunch despite the rain. The meal was at a street-side place, the serving and eating area was inside, but open to the street. I had a hearty meal on rice. There was a fried hard-boiled egg, a small piece of each stewed chicken and some yummy pork, and a pile of really good green beans with garlic.

The day also involved a pleasant phone call home. A lot of the day was taken up by returning my old plane ticket to the airline office and trying to get a plane ticket, from a different airline, to go from Hanoi to Singapore in about 2 weeks. Ugh. After a few phone calls, a number of failed attempts, I found the address of the airline's office in Hanoi. I walked there, taking a bit of a roundabout way (I couldn't find it at first). I got my ticket and headed back. I now knew a much more direct route.

There had been a lot of rain in Hanoi that, and the previous day. A lot. Floods are a pain in the butt. As I made my way back I walked through a few flooded areas. The water was coming up into the shops in parts. Cars and motorbikes continued to slowly drive through. I was up to my knees in some parts. In hind sight, I must have looked really silly holding my umbrella in those conditions. It also probably wasn't the best idea to walk through that in the first place; I should have gone around even if it meant a considerably longer walk. My main focuses at the time were not falling over, and not getting my camera or plane ticket wet (I succeeded).

I didn't really do a whole lot else in town that day (for obvious reasons).

The rain continued to Saturday. The water was reported to be a meter deep in some parts of the city (there wasn't any flooding where I was). Andrew and I headed out for lunch again during a slightly less rainy span of time. I had some root vegetables and fantastic pork on rice.

Mmmmm.... Pork....

A post-lunch coffee was in order. A delicious ca phe sua da took care of that. We hit up a market. It turned out to be pretty boring, it was just clothes and a few souvenir shops.

Late that afternoon/early evening, there was finally a good break in the rain. I wandered off to nowhere in particular. I came across a large street market area, buzzing with activity. There were countless produce and meat and fish vendors. Additionally, there was a few places with cooked food. I had dinner at one. There was an enormous selection. I had some tofu, fried fish, and greens over rice. All, once again, delicious.

I still had a bit of room in my stomach and opted for a snack. There was a small stall, really just a grill setup with a mother and son working there. I had some little skewers of meat and 2 tiny whole fried sparrows on sticks.

I hung out at the hostel for a while with some other travelers. I managed to find a late night snack to share with some people. It was the best chicken feet I've ever had. They were grilled on a stick and burshed lightly with a few different sauces. They were spicy and sweet. The sugar from a sauce caramelized lightly on it. The skin was lightly crisped. Excellent. Before heading off to sleep I made my plans to escape Hanoi. Andrew (the Australian) and I had decided to head off together into the Northwest, making a loop back to Hanoi.

On Sunday morning, after a tasty bowl of pho, we caught the city bus out to the long distance bus station. We hopped on a bus out to Hoa Bin, about 2 hours west of Hanoi. After a very uncomfortable bus ride, we arrived.

After checking into the hotel, we hit the town. Hoa Binh isn't very big, there's a bit of activity, but not a lot. It was definetely a change from bustling Hanoi. It was kinda grey and drizzly (rain is becoming a common theme of this blog, isn't it?). For lunch, we found a place with a sign for com rang. I knew com meant rice, but wasn't sure about rang. Nonetheless, we ordered 2. Turns out it simply means fried rice. It was quite good, full of vegetables and bits of meat and perfectly seasoned and piping hot.

After lunch, another coffee was in order. I can't get enough of the Vietnamese coffee with sweetened condensed milk, you ought to try it sometime. We checked out a bit more of the town. It was kinda boring, but ok. The rain was coming in again (it rained during lunch and during coffee as well), so most of the afternoon was spent wasting away in the hotel room watching the news.

Evening came around and it was time for dinner. We found a place which turned out to sell what seemed like snack food rather than a proper dinner, that's ok, we made a dinner out of it. It was a few different fried items, greasy goodness. One was like a turnover stuffed with meat. The other was discs of batter with small whole shrimp (heads, legs, shells and everything else included). As a 'dessert' we had batter fried bananas. Those were really sweet; the encased banana practially melted. I really liked those.

Monday morning, on a search for breakfast, we happened upon the market. It was surpisingly busy, with all sorts of food items and more. They had a special roasted meat there. At first glance I thought it was a the back half of a pig, with the tail. But it didn't quite look like pig. At second glance I realized what it really was. It was Lassie, and it doesn't look like she'll be saving Timmy anymore. There was even a little pile of just the paws on the table. Sorry folks, forgot to get a picture of this one.

Here's a picture of the market

After a bowl of good pho, we made our way to the bus station. We were heading to Moc Chau, a small town up in the mountains. We had to take the bus that was heading to Mai Chau, and at a point in the trip we would meet up with a bus going to Moc Chau that was coming from somewhere else and transfer. We didn't really know how they were working it out or anything, we only found out later as it happened, as we don't speak Vietnamese. I guess they called ahead to the other bus to stop at a certain meeting point. Nonethless, it all worked out well. The first bus was a large bus, withplenty of spare seats, and was relatively comfortable. The road, however, was bumpy in a number of spots. Snaking up the ridge of the mountain, often with no gaurdrail, and maybe just a few inches of gravel between the edge of the road and the drop off from the mountain, is not very reassuring.

Along the way, the bus stopped while it was looking over Mai Chau (where the bus was eventually headed, but where we weren't). The woman who worked on the bus called us out to show us the view and get a good photo.

We hopped back on the bus, and a not long after, we changed buses on the road (there was a mini-bus waiting for us). The mini-bus flew down the narrow twisty roads, very uncomfortable when one has a very full bladder (quite challenging, too). We were dropped outside Moc Chau (the minbus was continuing on to another town) at what serves as a bus stop. It was just 2 little shops and a few motorbike taxi drivers waiting to take people into town. The bus trips had taken about 3 hours or so in total (2 hours for the first, and 1 hour for the second). We got motorbikes to take us into town and we checked into our hotel. It was early afternoon by this point.

We headed out in search of lunch and checked out the town. Moc Chau is a really nice little town, nestled high in the mountains. It's famous for its tea and milk. It was quite cool up there, I even wore a light jacket.

We found lunch at a simple restaurant which we found specialized in roast duck. We went up the the work area to order our food, not really sure of what. The guy showed us a whole roasted duck on a rotisserie-like skewer. We wound up getting half a duck, a big pile of steamed grean beans, some vegetable soup, and steamed rice. It came with what is becoming a favorite sauce of mine. It's served as a little pile of salt, some sliced chilis, and a wedge of lime. One squeezes the lime into the dish and mixes it up with the chili and salt, making a thin paste. It's great for dipping meat. The whole meal was really good. The duck was really flavorful and dark. Soon after we were served our food the guy working there came over excitedly with three little shot glasses and a plastic bottle with some clear liquid in it. Uh oh. He poured us a round (including one for himself), gave a toast, and we drank em down. It was pretty strong stuff, but went down smoothly. I have no idea what the heck it was (the bottle looked a bit suspect).

We had heard there's not much to do in Moc Chau. What a bunch of crap. We were walking down the street and some some stairs leading up the side of a hill. There were some flags nearby, it looked important. We went up quite a few stairs, maybe 200 in total. At the top was the entrance to a cave. There was a fellow sitting outside at a desk (he passed us on our way up, we assume he went up b/c he saw us going up). Along the way we met two Vietnamese guys, around my age, also heading up. They spoke a little bit of English. Anyways, as we entered the cave, the 2 Vietnamese guys insisted on paying for our sticks of incense (kind of a entrance fee, I guess). The cave was massive. It was dimly lit by lights that ad been strung up. There were a few altars inside where we were supposed to put the incense. We did as we were supposed to, and walked around with the Vietnamese guys, checking out the cave. It was really spectacular inside, lots of stalagmites and stalactites. We were probably in there for an hour.

After checking out the cave, we all headed down. The guys (I wish I could remember their names), called us to a little stand nearby and sat down with us at a table for tea. It was just an old lady working there, selling snacks and pots of tea. We sat for a while sipping tea and talked to the best of our abilities. We all took photos on each of our cameras.

After we parted ways I went in search of some tea from the area. I got a big bag of Moc Chau tea from a store. I also got some banh sua, a local treat. The area, being famous for its dairy, produces these little candies. It's basically super-sweetened-condensed milk. It's solid pieces that lightly crumble when you eat them. It's just a really sweet, intense milk flavor. They're calorific.

It was getting to be evening and I chilled out in the hotel for a bit. Later we had dinner, which I can't really remember, I'm sure it was good though.

The following morning, Tuesday, we had bowls of pho for breakfast again. The place was quite popular, lots of people there. We hung out outside for a while, too, at the tea table with a bunch of older guys. A lot of relaxing around here is done while sipping tea.

After breakfast, we checked out of the hotel and found out which side of the road to stand on to wait for the bus to Son La. We stood there with our bags waiting. After about half an hour a bus came by, going in that direction. The driver stopped in front of us and he confirmed he was heading through Son La. All one really needs to say is the town name, which is fortunate since I don't speak Vietnamese. The bus was a bit crowded, and fast. I fortunately got a window seat, though. There were a lot of bumps along the way. On some parts of the road, one side was covered in a landslide. Once or twice one hlaf of the road had fallen of the side of the mountain in a landslide, which is very concerning. Along the way I was able to snap a few photos.

About two or three hours after we left, we arrived in Son La in the early afternoon. After checking into a hotel, we searched for lunch. We came across a small rice restaurant that looked very lively inside. There was a big table of people having some sort of celebration, they were all dressed up. Andrew and I ordered our food, some bits of pork ribs, slices of pork, tofuin tomato, steamed greens, and rice. It was all quite good, of course. The pork was particularly tasty and tender.

The highlight of the meal was the party. Before we had been served our food, the partiers were calling us over to the table. They poured us shots of the local brew (like we had in Moc Chau) and toasted. They were asking in bits of borken English about where we were from and so on. After we sat back down, members of the party came over to our table, one or two or three at a time, to do a shot. Jeez... Fortunately, a lot of them poured pretty small shots. Some of them were pretty far gone by that point already. The cameras came out and lots of photos were taken in all sorts of arrangements.

there's another one of the infamous plastic bottles

Whilst they were sitll eating, they departed and went across the street. We finished our meal and were led outside in front of the restaurant by the owner where he sat with us and drank tea. We could see the party across the street calling us over. After a while drinking tea, we said goodbye to the owner and joined the party again. They brought us glasses of really sweet iced tea and shared snacks with us. There was this one root vegetable that was slightly sweet and crispy and watery that was ok. Sometimes they gave a piece of the vegetable with a a different little green vegetable slice and dipped in in this chili-salt mixture. That tasted awful. The little green vegetable, not sure what it was, had an unpleasant sourness and just didn't taste good at all. The tea was good though, as were the shrimp chips they had. A while later we said goodbye again and headed into town.

Son La doesn't offer a lot in the terms of excitement, though it is a relatively larger town (the provincial capital). There is a little market. Throughout the town one sees members of the hill tribe minority groups. They have very intricate and bright clothing. A lot of the women in the market are from these groups, selling the produce from their farms. We spent the afternoon checking out the town.

Later, for dinner, we wound up at thje same restaurant. The owner saw us outside and called us inside, he was a very friendly guy. We had a good spread for dinner, though I can't remember everything we had. I know there was some cucumber salad, pork, chicken and rice. It was a good meal by what I can remember. After the meal, the owner sat us down t the table outside againa nd poured us tea and hung out with us. I gotta say, I'm really loving the friendliness and hospitality around here. We hung out there for a while, just chillin.

We saw some type of grilling going ondown the street (we had noticed it before dinner); there was a big plume of smoke. We had to check it out. It was a little place that seemed to specialize in beer, and grilled chicken wings and feet on skewers. We really wanted to try, so we ordered beers and some feet and wings. They were very tasty, perfectly grilled They were smoky and came with some really good chili sauce.

The next morning, Wednesday, the market, near the hotel, was in full swing. There were lots of people from the hill tribes who came into town, selling their various produce. I was talked into buying a couple of little fried doughnuts with a sweet thick filling by a woman there. She was frying them right there, so how could I resist? I just had 2 (not much bgger than a doughnut hole), so I still needed a proper breakfast. Once again, the owner of the same restaurant we were at for lunch and dinner, saw us and called us into his restaurant, I guess he likes us. The family obviously works longs hours, too. We had anopther rice meal (no complaints here). There was pork ribs again, little bits of super-tender stewed pork in aspicy sauce, steamed greens, and vegetable soup. I could get used to this. Also, like all both other meals, he had us come outside after the meal to drink tea with him. Life is good.

After checking out of the hotel, we headed by motorbike taxi to the bus station. The next bus leaving to Dien Bien Phu, the next destination, wasn't going to be leaving for a while. So instead, we waited outside by the side of the road for a bus to come rumbling through from somwhere else. Sure enough, in about half an hour one was passing by and stopped to pick us up.

This was not a pleasant ride. The first few hours were very bumpy. The government is obviously doing a lot of work on the road, but there's still a lot of odd detours around construction . The road seemed to unexpectedly change between pavement and dirt and gravel. There were a few landslides to pass. At one point thebus had to stop for about an hour, waiting along with a bunch of other vehicales. We were able to get out and stretch our legs. I wasn't able to find out for sure what had happened, but I have a good idea that the road had gotten blocked, maybe a fresh landslide.

The bus eventually continued on. As it dropped passengers off along the way, I was able to get a window seat. The quality of the road also improved; it was smooth pavement for the most part. I tried to snap a few photos from the window.

That evening we arrived in Dien Bien Phu. We hired 2 motorbikes to take us to a hotel we had picked out. To make a long story short, they were scammers who took us to the wrong place. After much arguing we walked off in search of another bike. That second ride turned out bad, too. We decided just to walk and find whatever hotel we could, except for the ones they 'suggested' (suggested=they get a commission).

To cool off from all the crap that just happened, Andrew and I stopped for dinner and plan our next move. We got a general idea from someone working in the restaurant which way the center of town and hotels were. We continued walking on, then it started pouring rain.

It was then that we met some of the friendliest people. About 6 fellows were hanging out in the front room of their house (I think it might have just been a 2 or maybe 3 room place) with the door open. They saw us just as the rain began, and called us inside from the street to stay dry. They were sitting around chilling, drinking tea and smoking their pipe of tobacco. They poured tea for us and asked us the requisite "Where are you from?" and such. We were able to do some more communicating using my little phrasebook/Vietnamese-English dictionary. We hung out there for about half an hour. Once the rain subsided we said goodbye and they pointed us to where we could find hotels. These guys definetely made the nigght a lot better after dealing withthose darn taxi motorbike drivers. Not too long after, we found a hotel. It was a decent, state-run place. It was gettting late by that point and I hit the hay not much later.

The next day, Thursday, Andrew and I went to check out Dien Bien Phu. It's biggest claim to fame is being where the French forces fell to the Viet Minh in 1954, ending French colonial rule in Indochina. There were only a few tourists in the town, but not many. Up to this point we had seen probably less than 5 Westerners since leaving Hanoi.

There's a few reminders of the battle in the town, but not many. I saw the sight of the bunker of General Pirot, the French Artillery Commander, where he committed suicide. Now, it's really just a crater in the ground with a stone plaque in Vietnamese. There was also A1 Hill, an important spot in the battle. The museum was closed when we got there, so that was skipped.

Dinner that night was really good. It was a rice meal, again. The best part was the crispy pork belly. There was also some vegetables, some chicken, and dipping sauces.

The next morning, Friday, after checking out of the hotel, we headed toward the bus station. First, we had brunch nearby. This time we got rice, again, some more pork, steamed greens (they're really popular around here) and some really fatty boiled chicken. The chicken was tender and excellent. There was little meat on the bones, it was practically all fat and skin.

We got on the bus in the early afternoon. We were heading towards Muong Lay, formally known as Lai Chau. Before I go any further, I should explain the town names, as they get confusing. Muong Lay used to be the capital of Lai Chau Province, and had the name Lai Chau. However, the valley it is in will be flooded in the next few years to make a reservoir as a result of a hydro-electric dam being built. Therefore, it will cease to exist. The town formerly known as Tam Duong is the new capital of Lai Chau Province and is now called Lai Chau. To make things even more confusing, another town which used to be called Binh Lu is now called Tam Duong. Confusing, huh? So basically...

The old Lai Chau is now Muong Lay

The old Tam Duong is now the new Lai Chau

The old Binh Lu is now the new Tam Duong

Anyways, we got the bus to Muong Lay. We arrived two and a half hours later. It's a really cool, small town. It's a shame it'll be submerged; I really hope everyone who lives here will be able to have a smooth transition to their new homes (I don't know where they'll go). There's a handful of tourists here, who use it as a stopover point. Just about everyone in the town is really welcoming (lots of "hello"s). The area it's in, nestled in a valley amongst the mountains, if inhabited primarily by a few hill tribes, including the Red H'Mong who are only found in this small area.

The hotel we're in, the Lan Anh Hotel, is really cool. It's in a few buildings in the style of Thai (a hill tribe group) stilt houses. They're one floor, but about 20 feet off the ground on stilts. It's one of the best places I've stayed, and it's at a good price, too.

I spent a little while wandering through the town, which doesn't take long given its size.

Here's a bit of dark humor... Thit Cho means 'dog meat'

The local badmitton club plays at the court at the hotel, and that was fun to watch for a while in the late afternoon/evening. I don't really remember what we had for dinner.

The next day, Saturday, we went into town for breakfast. It was at a rice place. We basically wanted whatever the guy wanted to serve us, which we were able to communicate. This ended in good results. He made a stir-fry with pork, bean sprouts, tomatoes, scallions and other veggies. It was tasty.

After breakfast we decided on renting two motorbikes to see the countryside. The hotel itself doesn't have motorbikes, but the staff called some local motorbike taxi drivers who would rent them to us.

We drove around the outskirts of town, and kept on hitting dead ends. We eventually decided to go down the "highway", which was really just a main country road. As I've mentioned, Northwest Vietnam is very mountainous. This makes for exciting riding and excellent views. Like with all pictures of scenery, the pictures can't do it justice. Nonetheless here they are...

In the valley

Here's me on my ride ( yes, Mom, I had a helmet :-) just posing here)

We were pretty high up there

The facing back in the direction of Muong Lay

A little village

We wound up heading going about 45 km out of Muong Lay. At the point where we turned around, there was a small town called Muong Cha. It was pretty much one street with a few shops and a couple basic restaurants and what appeared to be a morning market. Lunch was good. We had rice, tofu, greens, soup, and a meat. We're not sure what the meat was for sure, but it was probably pork (but maybe it was something else...).

After lunch we headed back towards Muong Lay, arriving a couple hours later. All in all we probably did at least 100 km (about 62 miles, It was 90 km round trip to Muong Cha, plus the bit of driving we did before around town).

Dinner wasn't too exciting, some fried shrimp, some beef, assorted veggies and rice. We deciding on staying through the following day and night as well, 3 in total. Before we arrived in Muong Lay, we thought it would just be a one night stop. Oh well, I don't have anywhere to be in a hurry.

This morning, Sunday, I didn't enjoy a mediocre breakfast at the hotel, but that's ok. Andrew and I decided on renting motorbikes again for the day.

We were told about a road, going off from the 'highway', near town that is supposed to have some good views and riding. It sure did. It got pretty steep in parts. There were a lot of hairpin turns and other fun stuff. A lot of the trip was spen either coasting in neutral downhill, or in low gear going up hill. As the road continued farther out, there were some challenging obstacles in the way. It changed to dirt in places and back to pavement. One small stretch was covered in fist-sized rocks. Just go slowly and in first gear. It was all so worth it. The vistas were even better than the previous day.

This was one of two streams that ran over the road

Check out the terraced mountainside.

See if you can make out the road coming up the side of the mountain in the background

We covered about 30 km (18 miles) and then decided to turned back the same way. It seemed like quite a long distance, it was slow-going in places, but lots of fun. We took our time, about 5 hours for the round trip, including a lot of stops for checking out the views. There weren't any towns along the way; but there were houses, some in small settlements, mostly people from the hill tribes. There were plenty of kids waving and shouting hello. So in total, we did about 100 miles in 2 days. It was well worth it.

That just about does it. I just finished dinner and am finally (after many attempts) finishing the post.

Tommorow we take the bus to Lai Chau (the old Tam Duong), which I think is around 100 km away, probably 2 or so hours. After a night there, we should continue to Sapa, another few hours away. Sapa is a verypopular mountain town with plenty to do. I'm really looking forward to it. After a few days in Sapa, I'll be able to catch an overnight train, that runs from a town nearby, to Hanoi. I'll be flying out of Hanoi back to Singapore on Nov 16; Singapore is where I get my flight back home. I WILL post again before I leave Vietnam, at least once.

I know that was a really long post, I hope you all enjoyed reading.

Take care,

Mike