Vietnam 2023: by night buses and on a scooter

Vietnam for two

Once a year Hanka and I head off somewhere without the kids. Vietnam had been on our list of places we wanted to see for a long time. I like Southeast Asia: good food, nice people and a pleasant climate, at least that's how I knew it from Cambodia, Thailand and Borneo.

So in the summer of 2023 we set off: from Hanoi by boat to Ha Long Bay, to the island of Cat Ba, to the mountains near Sapa, on a scooter around the Hà Giang loop and finally by plane to Da Nang, Hội An and the Mỹ Sơn temples. For the longer legs we took night buses with beds. In the evening you lie down in your cabin and in the morning you're there, that was an experience in itself. In the mountains and later in Da Nang we had a rented scooter.

My ideas about Southeast Asia were only half confirmed in Vietnam. The food was excellent, everything cheap and safe. But the people didn't strike me as nice. Someone was constantly cutting in front of us and there weren't many smiles. I have the feeling, and we met travellers who saw it the same way, that the communist regime left its mark on people's character here. The person who treated us best was our guide Già Mú near Sapa, who isn't ethnically Vietnamese but belongs to an oppressed minority from the mountains by the Chinese border.

What's stayed with me from Vietnam? The scooter in the mountains around Hà Giang, a day and a night with Già Mú, excellent food and insane heat.

Wednesday 26 July 2023, Hanoi

• In the afternoon a taxi to the old town. Even from the window you could see what all can be loaded onto a scooter: crates, sacks, entire households.
• A hotel in the old town, with a lift in the room like a glass cabin. At dusk our first walk to Hoàn Kiếm Lake.
• In the evening the streets were full of little tables and plastic stools, shops with gold and watches, lanterns, the Prague Pub on Tạ Hiện street 😄

Hanoi
The capital of Vietnam. The old town by Hoàn Kiếm Lake grew out of craftsmen's guilds, most streets start with the word Hàng (goods) and the name told you what was sold there: Hàng Bạc silver, Hàng Gai silk, Hàng Muối salt. Today you can buy almost anything anywhere there.

Thursday 27 July 2023, Hanoi – Ha Long Bay

At the hotel they pushed the classic boat trip on us, because there's a super ultra 80% discount and for the price of the cheapest cabin we'd get a VIP one with our own jacuzzi. Well, it's not our style, but we did want to see Ha Long and there's no other way than from a boat.
So in the morning we took a bus from Hanoi all the way to the sea. The cabin had no jacuzzi, but it did have a balcony right above the water with a view of the limestone islands. Nice boat, a hugely varied buffet dinner, quite an experience.

In the afternoon they dropped us off and we headed into the rocks in a bamboo boat with a woman rowing. Caves, floating shops. Hanka borrowed a conical nón lá hat. We spent the night on the boat in the bay. A romantic evening on our own little cabin balcony.

Ha Long Bay
Over 1,600 limestone islands and rocks in the Gulf of Tonkin, on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1994. In 2023 UNESCO added the Cat Ba archipelago to it as well.

Friday 28 July 2023, Ha Long Bay – Cat Ba

In the morning kayaking from the boat, and more of the bay before noon. Around midday they dropped us off on Cat Ba. The other guests were dropped off on the mainland, but we waited for the ordinary scheduled boat for the staff. Then a local bus across the island into town.

In the afternoon, aquariums with lobsters and horseshoe crabs in front of the restaurants and a beach packed to bursting, more people than sand. A coconut on the terrace, a swim in the pool with a view of the bay.

In the evening crab for dinner and the night in the town of Cat Ba.

Saturday 29 July 2023, Cat Ba – Hải Phòng – Hanoi

In the morning across the island to the national park. A path through the jungle, lianas, butterflies, a coconut to cool off.

A climb up to a viewpoint overlooking the green limestone hills. It was so hot that I walked around topless and was soaked in sweat. While I was drinking a life-saving Coke from the fridge, Hanka took a portrait of me in the style of Rambo in the jungle :-D 

In the afternoon a ferry to Hải Phòng and a bus to Hanoi.

In the evening in Hanoi we found the legendary lane full of little shops and restaurants where once an hour they have to clear away all the tables and shoo the guests inside, because a train is coming. The tracks run between the houses, the cafés have their tables almost on the sleepers and at 21:24 the train went past a few centimetres from us. Then we had an argument and each of us walked home by a different route. Well, living together after twenty years isn't exactly a stroll through a rose garden...

Cat Ba
The largest island of the Cat Ba archipelago. About half the island is taken up by a national park founded in 1986, the first in Vietnam to protect both forest and sea.

The train street in Hanoi
A stretch of railway in the old town where the track runs tightly between houses and cafés with their tables almost on the rails.

Sunday 30 July 2023, Hanoi – Sapa – Tả Van

Early in the morning we left for Hanoi and carried on by sleeper bus into the mountains. Phở-style breakfast at a stop by the road.

When we got off the bus in Sapa, heaps of locals touting their services pounced on us straight away. Hotel, food, guide, hat, they were really annoying. Hanka's the weaker character and still can't ignore them that well, so in the end she got talking to one of them. And it was a good thing she did. She turned out to be a guide, Già Mú, a very kind lady from a village in the mountains. She spoke excellent English, even though she'd never had English at school. She was very intelligent and she led us from Sapa up into the hills through the Mường Hoa valley. She showed us all the traditional crafts, making thread from flax, weaving fabric, harvesting and processing indigo for dyeing cloth.  We walked the whole area with her: villages, pigs and buffalo on the road, children, women in embroidery. In the evening she let us sleep at her place, in a poor little house in the mountains. She cooked over a fire in the kitchen and in the evening the table was full of home-made dishes, with her whole family and the kids with us. The day with Già Mú is probably my best experience from the whole of Vietnam.

Sapa and the Mường Hoa valley
A mountain town in northwest Vietnam. Treks lead through the Mường Hoa valley past rice terraces and Hmong and Dzao villages, among them Lao Chải and Tả Van.

Monday 31 July 2023, Tả Van – Sapa

In the morning we woke up in a poor little shack in the village of Tả Van, got a breakfast with pancakes and enjoyed both the primitive bathroom and the views of the little rice, indigo and palm fields. On the way down we came across little girls and boys riding around on buffalo.

Già Mú showed us how cloth is made from flax and how it's dyed with indigo. The blue fabrics dry on fences all over the valley. In the end, at our request, she showed us a few hand-made purses and bags and sold us some at an unbelievably low price. After we'd seen that incredibly laborious process from harvesting the flax, through weaving and dyeing to hand sewing, the price seemed disproportionately low to us. Finally a trek among the rice terraces, rain and an umbrella, bamboo, ducklings and lunch in a local restaurant. Indigo cloth drying on the fences. In the afternoon we were back in Sapa, a beer with a view and a massage. In the evening, a night bus with cabins to Hà Giang.

We should have stayed there longer. 

Tuesday 1 August 2023, Hà Giang – Quản Bạ – Yên Minh

In the morning we got off the night bus in Hà Giang. It's a brilliant invention. We each had our own cabin with a bed, for a couple of hundred we teleported across half of Vietnam overnight and were nicely rested on top of that. At the market, Buddha's hand (a citrus that looks like fingers), bubble tea, a propaganda mural with a hammer and sickle on the wall.
The plan was to rent a motorbike and ride the famous loop through the mountains. Unfortunately, thanks to irresponsible tourists who rode scooters without the proper licence, the rules have been tightened a lot and rental places are banned from renting to anyone without a valid international driving permit. That's a little paper booklet the office in Prague will issue you for a few crowns while you wait. And which we don't have. The alternative was to hire a Vietnamese guy with a scooter to drive us around. My biker's heart wouldn't have survived that, plus I've already experienced flapping around with a backpack behind a little person 40 cm shorter than me in Cambodia and I don't want to go through it again. At maybe the tenth rental place they finally lent us a scooter for the whole loop. I was riding, my small backpack between my legs, Hanka behind me with hers on her back.

Off we went, lunch at a roadside place, coffee in Quản Bạ.

In the evening we got caught in a downpour, riding in the dark in rain ponchos. We slept at a guesthouse in Yên Minh, where the motorbikes are parked right in the living room and the family has dinner on the floor next to them. Towards the end we were in quite a hurry, I had an important work call coming up and my soaked phone was about to die any minute. So as soon as I got to the room I plugged it straight into the charger and ignored its warning that the connector was wet. At first that looked like a big mistake, because the phone could never be charged with a cable again, but in the end it was an advantage. I had peace from work for the whole mountain loop, since I was without a phone. Only after the loop did I manage to find a power bank for 200 crowns that charged via MagSafe.

The Hà Giang loop
Mountain roads in the northernmost tip of Vietnam across karst plateaus, today one of the most popular routes by motorbike or scooter.

Wednesday 2 August 2023, Yên Minh – Lũng Cú – Đồng Văn

• Switchbacks through the mountains, Hanka in her helmet in a mirror by the road.
• Lũng Cú, the flag tower at the northernmost point of Vietnam, border guards at the viewpoint.
• In the evening a downpour came. On the way to Đồng Văn we met locals in the rain pushing a motorbike. I arrived at the hotel in a poncho and shoe covers.

Lũng Cú
The northernmost point of Vietnam. On Rồng (Dragon) mountain stands a 33 m high flag tower, its current form dating from 2010.

Thursday 3 August 2023, Đồng Văn – Sủng Máng – Du Già – Hà Giang

• A selfie on the scooter above the valley near Sủng Máng.
• Hmong villages and children by stone houses, corn drying on the road, views into green valleys.
• A swim under the waterfall near Du Già with local boys, then lunch in a wooden little pub above the water.
• In the evening a rainbow and mist over the mountains. We returned the scooter in Hà Giang where we'd rented it, and took the night bus with cabins to Hanoi.

Friday 4 Aug 2023, Da Nang – Hội An

• In the morning straight from the bus to the airport, we flew from Hanoi to Da Nang. Here we rented our second scooter. A hotel by the beach, a rooftop pool, round fishing coracles on the sand.
• Evening in Hội An: the river full of little boats with lanterns, lanterns in every street, a drink by the water.

Hội An
An old trading town on the Thu Bồn river, on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1999. In the evening thousands of lanterns light up.

Saturday 5 Aug 2023, Hội An – Da Nang

We rented the scooter in Da Nang right at the hotel. We rode it to  Hội An. There Hanka  spotted some paintings and wanted to go back for them so badly that the next day she bravely got on the scooter by herself. And that's someone who had never even ridden a motorbike, let alone driven one, and doesn't have a licence either. For over an hour she weaved through the heavy traffic, bought the paintings, and today they hang on the wall in our living room 😄

• In the evening a restaurant with aquariums, crabs and lobsters you pick out and they cook them for you.

Sunday 6 Aug 2023, Da Nang – Marble Mountains – Mỹ Sơn

• The Marble Mountains: stairs, caves with shrines and Buddha statues, a view over the city and the sea.
• In the afternoon by scooter to the south, the bike's shadow on the road, fishermen on the river, lunch at a roadside eatery.
• In the evening a hotel near Mỹ Sơn and a swim in the pool after dark.

The Marble Mountains
Five limestone and marble hills south of Da Nang, named after the five elements: metal, water, wood, fire and earth. The caves hold Buddhist shrines and pagodas.

Monday 7 Aug 2023, Mỹ Sơn – Da Nang

In the morning the Mỹ Sơn temples, an electric buggy out to the excavations, brick towers in the jungle.

In the afternoon the market in Da Nang: durian, dried seahorses and piles of tea, which we bought to take home as presents. The mango and passion fruit fresh juice there was so fantastic that I had two. One on the way into the market, the other on the way out :-) 

On the way back from the market, just before our flight, the cops stopped us and I got a fine for not having an international driving licence. A pretty hefty one too: a meal in a restaurant normally cost around 40 CZK and the fine was over 2 thousand. Didn't exactly make my day.

In the evening a view over Da Nang by night and the flight home.

Mỹ Sơn
A complex of Hindu temple towers of the Champa kingdom, which flourished on the coast of today's Vietnam from the 4th to the 13th century. On the UNESCO list since 1999.