Vietnam: The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

What to say? We should have gone to Vietnam first. It's like eating dessert before dinner, but dinner turns out to be terrible. There were a few good moments, but overall Nath and I were both desperate to get out of the country and left early. The countryside can be absolutely beautiful in places, but the huge majority of people in Vietnam we interacted with were just plain terrible. They lied, cheated, and we were actively told we couldn't enter restaurants because we were white (there were quite a few occurrences along this line). At one museum, some of the few nice locals we met were kicked out by government security for talking to us. We had cigarettes flicked at us, cars and motor bikes swerve at us, and taxi drivers yell at us because we only wanted to pay the agreed amount. The museums were full of anti-American propaganda to the point where I learned nothing and I just laughed at them (as did many other tourists). For the record, we've been traveling for over seven and a half months now, most of that in various South East Asian countries and we've encountered nothing even close to what we've found in Vietnam. Most other travelers we met agreed with our opinion. I would never recommend anyone to travel to Vietnam, unless they wanted to go climbing in Ha Long Bay... there's a very nice American running a climbing company so you don't have to deal with the Vietnamese much. From here on out, I'll try to focus on the positive in this post. I just wanted to make it clear it wasn't all fun and games in Vietnam.

We flew into Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) in southern Vietnam, met some Canadians and Americans along the way, and wandered the streets looking for dinner. We played with a few of the kids in the street who weren't being forced by their parents to sell us stuff. Me and some of the other guys tried some dried squid jerky from a street vendor. We ate our first Pho Bo in Vietnam (a classic soup dish), and tried the only local Communist wine in the country which I can safely say is NOT wine and was undrinkable sludge (no exaggeration).

The next day, Nath and I went for a walk. I've never been anywhere with more motor bikes. It was absolute chaos. It's hard to even explain, and they all honk, all the time. The rules of the road are completely ignored, people driving when a light is red, turning into lanes without looking first, and even driving on the wrong side of the road! To cross the road was a leap of faith as you step out into a phlanax of 400 motor bike whizzing by, and you can't hestitate or stop because they might hit you. You just have to walk. It was all amuzing at first, until after a few hours the honking becomes unbearably annoying. I didn't realize how annoying it was, until we found a park and walked around it for about 10 minutes. When we headed back to the street I realized just how overwhelming the constant noise was. On the plus side, we found some amazingly good street vendors selling fresh spring rolls, fresh squeezed sugar cane with sweetened condensed milk, and the white pork buns found all over SE Asia. Near the end of the day, we visited the stupidest museum I've ever been to (this is the one the locals were kicked out of for talking to us), and then we headed back to our guest house.

We spent two days on a Mekong River tour. There were some cool parts, like seeing floating markets where people literally live on, and do business from, their boats. We wandered down the small back canals in local row boats, and saw many people living off the river in various ways. There was more that we saw, but nothing spectacular.

After this, we happily left Saigon and headed north to Nha Trang on a sleeper bus. The sleeper buses were great! They literally had bunk beds filling the entire bus! They were so comfortable, it was awesome! I don't know why this hasn't caught on in many other countries. There were many long bus rides between bigger or popular cities in Vietnam, which is 1600km long, and you could do essentially all of them overnight while sleeping! The travel was much more pleasant, and we could avoid the cost of paying for a hotel!

Nha Trang is a coastal beach town with scuba diving opportunities. The scuba was the cheapest I've seen it anywhere in the world, at about $50 for two boat dives. The diving was almost bad relative to the places we've been, and we had medium to poor visibility relative to what it can be (up to 30m) so we just dove one day. We spent some time on the beach and then caught another sleeper bus to Hoi An.

Hoi An is known for two things, the food and the tailors. We stayed there for a few days, during which we ate wonderful food and took a cooking class. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very good cooking class, and we didn't learn much in the way of Vietnamese classic dishes. Hoi An specialties included "white rose," a shrimp dumpling shaped like a rose, wontons with meat, which were mouth watering with the sweet and sour sauce, a fried noodle dish which was delicious, and a unique crepe. The food in Hoi An was definitely the best we had in the country and it lived up to its reputation. We biked to the beach one day, which was a beautiful white sand beach, and Nath talked me into getting some clothes at the tailors (she bought two silk dresses) since it was pretty damn cheap.

After Hoi An, we took another sleeper bus which stopped at two cool places on the way to Hanoi, Marble Mountain and some unknown beach. Marble Mountain had an enormous cave/temple carved into it which we explored, and the beach was long and very picturesque with very few people.

By this time, we had experienced a big city (Saigon) and enough Vietnamese (lack of) hospitality and we planned to go straight to Cat Ba island in Ha Long Bay. Our time in Hanoi was spent walking to and waiting for a bus. With the level of sheer harassment and lying we experienced from people working for bus companies, I'm glad we bypassed Hanoi almost completely. After over 30 hours of bus - bus - bus - boat - bus we arrived happily on Cat Ba Island and walked into Slopony Adventures for some good old American hospitality!

Actually, the person behind the desk, was Asian, but spoke excellent English. Jessica was extremely patient and helpful while we literally assaulted her with logistics questions. We asked everything from where to stay and eat, to how do we actually get on the rock when it's out in the bay. She smiled, laughed, and was quite refreshing to talk to. I really felt there was something "off" about the interaction. She was just too damn friendly and helpful. Finally, in the end Nath must have felt the same way because she asked her where she was from. "Malaysia," was her reply! Nath and I both started laughing because we were both thinking, "THAT'S why she's so nice!" Remember from our blog that we found Malaysian's were the most friendly of any people we've met on our travels. After checking out a few hotels for prices, we found the one that Jessica recommended was definitely the best since there wasn't mold actively growing on the walls...

The next day found us Deep Water Soloing (DWS). There weren't many DWS trips since there aren't a lot of climbers passing through and hiring a boat was expensive. It just turned out that the tides were good, and there were 4 other climbers already going out so if we went with them it would bring the cost per person down even more. We met Eric, the super friendly co-owner of Slopony Adventures from the US, and he set us up with a guide and a chartered boat in the morning. We headed off to see the wonders of Ha Long Bay!!!

Ha Long Bay is an amazing place. It consists of roughly 3000 limestone "karst" islands roughly vertically from the water. Many of them have that beautiful overhung white to orange limestone with tufas, stalagtites, and pockets making the area a mostly unexplored climber's paradise. We headed over two hours out into the bay in our ancient boat which had engine troubles and travelled roughly walking speed through the beautiful scenery. Not only is the scenery amazing (there's a push for Ha Long Bay to be on the 7 natural wonders of the world) but seeing the floating fishing villages nestled among the islands is really special.

Eventually, we found our way to one of the established climbing walls and pulled out the kayak and "basket boat." Victor, our Vietnamese guide showed us the routes and paddled the basket boat with skill getting us onto the rock with at least dry hands. You stand up off the basket boat or kayak to get on the rock, both to keep your hands hopefully somewhat dry and because the ocean has worn the bottom of the karst formations away so that they are wickedly steep (overhung) and horribly sharp. Once on the rock, the boatman's job is to get out of the way as quick as possible so that you don't land on the boat if you slip off. From there, it's up to you to climb as high as you can/want before falling/jumping off.

We went to three walls throughout the day, and did some very high-quality routes. I hadn't lost too much strength since Chiang Mai (we hadn't climbed on rock since before our massage class) and managed to onsight a possibly soft 7a+ which had an amusing sit start off of the front of the basket boat for added challenge. The 7c was too much though, and spit me off almost instantly after trying the first move. The 2nd wall we went to was very steep, with huge pockets and cracks running about 15m up the wall. The climbing was very high quality to that height, and then we jumped off before the rock quality became worse. We all enjoyed the last all the most, it had the most routes and most variety, and there was even room for at least one new route! Yes, that's right, I have my first documented first ascent!!! I onsighted it (first try) and since it is my first documented FA I decided to call it, "First time's a charm," and rated it around mid 5.11. It's already seen at least two repeats, and it's apparently good quality rock. One person told me it was the best route they did all day! We all climbed until we were exhausted. I was cramping up, and we all had too much sun exposure so we were happy when we started to head back.

That night, we had a unique experience. On the way back to Cat Ba, Victor told us there was a change of plans and that we were going to be dropped off at Tiger Beach, an island 30 minutes from "home." At first we were wary about what was going on, but soon found out that Eric would be joining us and we were invited to a "goat party." It was a birthday party was for Eric's fiancee, who is Vietnamese, and her family and friends slaughtered a goat. We had BBQ goat, vegetables, rice wine, beer, and even goat's blood "pudding." Quite the fun experience! All the climbers were invited to the party so we ended up with people to talk to since we don't speak Vietnamese. Around 10-11pm we all jumped on another boat and headed back to Cat Ba.

The next two days saw us renting a motorbike and climbing at Ninh Binh with two Americans Kris and Jess who live and teach English in Korea. Ninh Binh is a crag located on Cat Ba, so access is easier than hiring a boat. However, since a typhoon had just crossed (and recrossed) the area prior to our arrival, we had to wade through a swamp to get there. Even trying to get to certain parts of the crag involved a tyrolean traverse over water that was tricky to keep the gear out of the water. The climbing was great, and Nath and I were both climbing strong. She was leading pretty well as long as it wasn't too overhung or reachy, and I mananged to onsight up to 7a and redpoint a wickedly overhung 7b+ endurance fest in two tries.

It rained the next day, which luckily coincided with our need for a rest day and we wandered around Cat Ba a little. The day after was more good weather so we took a boat out to Tiger Beach again, where Eric takes groups of backpackers out top roping, and Nath and I did some wonderful routes. Nath managed to redpoint a 7a on her second try and was climbing very well, and I somehow managed to onsight a pair of amazing 7b routes, both of which were seeping water but were still of amazing quality. The 2nd was a multipitch out of the water. Nath lead the slabby first pitch, and I did the 2nd pitch which started about 20 degrees overhung on gorgeous stalagtites and tufas and ended on more near-vertical crack and flake climbing. We rappelled back into the basket boat two hours later when Eric returned to pick us up and we headed back to Cat Ba again.

Our last day on the island, we rented a motorbike again and did some hiking in a national park. The highlight was scaling an old rusted lookout tower about 25m tall for great views of the surrounding landscape.

Next stop was Ninh Binh, the supposed "Ha Long Bay on land." Kris, Jess, Nath and I caught a bus - boat - bus - taxi (that turned around and ended with the driver having a screaming match with the bus company we booked with and we had to get out) - new taxi - bus and we rolled in about 5 hours later.

Eric had given us some information on some climbing in the area that had rather vague directions along the lines of (go west 20 minutes out of town and turn on the dike). There were a lot of dikes... it was located in the middle of rice paddies! After spending about 30 minutes lost in beautiful scenery, we asked a local where Nui Vang (Golden Mountain) was and he pointed us in the right direction. We pulled out the climbing gear, I scraped my way up a few climbs from 10b to 11d of mostly vary poor dirty quality before trying the "king line" of the area. Unfortunately, I popped a tendon in my left elbow finishing the 11d, but since it didn't hurt too much I still had to have a go at "Gangalicious" (7b). It was a slightly overhung almost 30m line of clean immaculate beautiful grey limestone with pockets and cracks forever rated 7b. I managed to onsight it, which made me immensely happy since it was some of the best climbing I'd done in a while, and Nath and Kris top roped it before we headed back to town. We took a "short cut" trying to get back, got lost and Ninh Binh turned out to bigger than we expected. Luckily, after turning around only twice and having a crazy lady in the street point us in the wrong direction when we didn't even ask for directions, we recognized the BP where we'd put gas in the bikes at and found our way home. It was wickedly hot in Ninh Binh, and Kris and Jess wanted to get back to Cat Ba for some DWS (they hadn't had the chance yet since Jess had a 3rd degree burn on her leg from the motorbike exhaust a few weeks earlier). They took off in the morning, and Nath and I got on a motorbike again to head to Tam Coc where you can take a boat ride through the karst formations and go through caves. We were lost for about 2 hours, but saw some spectacular views of the surrounding country side before we found Tam Coc. We got there at the perfect time since most of the hundreds of tourists were finishing up their boat rides and we had most of the area to ourselves for the 2 hour trip out and back through caves that pass through the huge karst formations.

When we got back to the hotel, we prepared for the potentially disasterous next leg of our journey. We were going to take a bus to Vientiane, in Laos. We were done with Vietnam on so many levels that we decided to skip some of the sights and just leave early. We booked the 18+ hour bus ride through the hotel and it picked us up at 9pm that night.

We'd heard MANY horror stories of this trip from Lonely Planet and internet posts where the bus just kicks you out along side the road in the country side at 2am in the morning. If you're lucky, they let you back on the bus for exhorbitant fees and your bag isn't stolen. If you're unlucky, things can get much worse... At 9pm, some motor bikes showed up to whisk us off to the bus and off we went. Once we hit the first dinner break, I actually felt better about the bus in general. The sign in the window said the correct destination AND we were the only westerners on the bus. That meant it was at least going to our destination. Now we just had to make it to the border and get back on after obtaining our visa. Amazingly, everything went smoothly. There were few people on the bus, so many people had two seats to sleep across, including us. At the border, the bus driver took our passports and helped us with the process, and we only lost about $4 USD to bribes to the Vietnamese and in Laos. We even beat a lot of the Vietnamese getting back to the bus before it took for Vientiane on the Laos side! We slept quite comfortably most of the trip, and the farther we got from Vietnam, the more our spirits went up. We laughed with the locals when the bus broke down twice and the did some quick fixes to get us going. I think one of the quick fixed was just cutting the belts that ran the air conditioning since there was some sort of problem but it never got unbearably hot (possibly since we'd experienced the SE Asia heat in buses many times already). Eventually, around 3pm our bus rolled into the bus station roughly right on time!

Now we're sitting in Vientiane eating good food, surrounded by much more friendly people, our stress levels have dropped significantly, and life is good.