ferry

From Cat Ba to Mai Chau

We rode for 8 straight hours through intermittent rain back through the traffic/construction hell that is Hai Phong to stay ahead of the storm. We finally made it to the town of Ninh Binh(famous for its karst formations that you can take a slow boat through) and got a room at Khach San Hoang Hai. That night at around 2am the storm hit with full furry, 70mph winds and heavy heavy rain. The power went out and our room had huge ten foot tall windows on three sides which luckily didn’t break(which was very worrying while trying to sleep) but they did leak like a sieve leaving our floor soaked. When we got up in the morning roughly a quarter of the trees in town had been blown down(including one right across from us that could have hit our hotel, and our windows) and the local Vietnamese were out with their hatchets(hatchets, lol, not even an axe much less chain saws) at 6am trying to clear a path through the roads. We decided to stay another night to give them time to get the roads clear for travel, especially since we were headed for more remote areas.

When we left the next day, the gas gage was reading empty but I just assumed it must have been broken because I knew I had about a half tank when we arrived. However a few hundred feet down the road we ran out of gas. I bought some gas from a repair shop next to where we broke down and drove back to the hotel to inform them that someone had stolen our gas while stored at their hotel. The manager swore up and down this was impossible since they have cameras and refused to reimburse us. When I heard he had cameras I said “great let’s watch it from the time we arrived to the time we left and see what happened”, he of course refused. I called them thieves and stormed out and Victoria left a nice review on Google for them. All that for $2 worth of gas…. If they had half a brain they would have left a bit more so we were much further away rather than taking every last drop.

When we finally got back on the road it went from nice, to beautiful, to just absolutely stunning. The area near the border with Laos is mountainous with some tiered rice paddies, very cool. On the way to Mai Chau you climb and climb on a very well paved road and then when you reach the top you get a beautiful view of the small town below and then begin the long descent into Mai Chau itself, also on excellent road.

Once you get down into the valley it continues to amaze. You are surrounded on all sides by rice paddies which in turn is entirely surrounded by the tall green mountain peaks in every direction. Although there is a hotel and a guesthouse or two available the places to stay here are the homestays. This is where you basically stay at a family’s home which they’ve added a few rooms onto for travelers to stay. We got a room on stilts overlooking the rice paddies and mountains with a fan, an electric outlet, and bug netting for 200k dong ($9). Being at a higher elevation meant that the fan was enough to keep us cool at night for sleeping. In the town there are all kinds of hand made handicrafts for sale. This has been intentionally setup as a way to use tourism as a way to preserve traditional Vietnamese crafts in the area.

All and all the tropical storm added some unnecessary excitement to an already exciting trip and although Mai Chau was stunning we were excited to get to Laos so we just spent the one night.

Next up, our journey to Laos!

Cat Ba Island

After the stunning scenery of Phong Nha National Park we decided to go see the Phong Nha of the sea, Ha Long Bay, another Unesco World Heritage Site. We heard Ha Long City was over touristic so we decided to head to Cat Ba Island via the port city of Hai Phong. This involved a three-day drive. The first day we headed to a small town off the Ho Chi Minh Trail called Bach Dai Dung, this was a pretty nice drive along the scenic and little traveled road. The next day we drove to Thanh Hoa, this was a much less pleasant drive with much more traffic and development. Both days we spent the night in small guesthouses for under $10 a night. The third day we drove to the port city of Hai Phong, the third largest city in Vietnam. This drive was even less pleasant, a ton of traffic, trucks, and construction and then we had a bit of trouble finding a place to stay. We finally found a decent hotel for $15 with a garage to park our bike.

The next morning we got up early to make the dusty drive to the ferry terminal. It was 120k($4.5) Dong per person plus an extra 30k($1.5) Dong for the motorbike. The ferries run every hour from 8 to 5 with a lunch break between 11 and 1, luckily we made it just a few minutes before it left, so no waiting. The ride was fairly scenic but even more scenic was the motorbike ride through the island to the town of Cat Ba where the hotels were located. This was high season so despite being less touristy than Ha Long City there were still plenty of people around, mostly people shuttled in from Hanoi. Even being high season we got a bay front room on the main strip up on the 7th floor for $15 a night. The food however was at least 50% more expensive than the mainland, still cheap but not like before.

The first day we just kicked it at the hotel after three days of hard traveling and enjoyed the view. The next day we got up and changed the oil and had our bike rack rewelded and then went and to check out the two public beaches. We decided on the second beach and ended up renting chairs with no mats and an umbrella for 120k dong. That was pretty steep considering we paid 80k in Nha Trang and had access to a resort and pool. However from the first few hours we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The water was also ridiculously warm, I would guess 92 or 93 degrees, not too refreshing! The last day we rented a tandem kayak for 200k($9) for the day. This was probably the highlight of the trip as we paddled through the amazing formations and even through a cave to our own beach, just like the movie. We also paddled to Monkey Island, where we saw no monkeys. We tried to make the climb to the top but it was a difficult hike that required scrambling and the rocks were simply too hot to touch in the middle of the day.

The next day we had to get up early to make sure we caught the ferry. There was a tropical storm coming and it was likely that the ferries would be shut down later in the day. Luckily we made it off the island and then made a mad dash to get as far inland as possible.

Me doing all the work as usual while Victoria takes selfies 😉

The morning of leaving ahead of the storm

Paddling through a cave to a beach, just like the movie!

Mui Ne and My First Bribe

From Vung Tau we had originally wanted to travel to the Con Dao islands, a chain of unspoiled islands with the best diving in Vietnam. There are two ways to get there, the ferry from Vung Tau for $10 or a flight from Ho Chi Minh City for $80, both one way. Of course we decided we’d take the ferry. Unfortunately after roaming around on a tandem bike for a few hours to find the office(GPS coordinates for the ferry office/terminal to save others the hassle 10.413820, 107.128352) to buy tickets we were informed that it was too rough to make the crossing. We called the English-speaking lady at the office the next two days with no luck either(To save you even having to go to the termianl call Ms. Hoa at 0982 890097). Oh well, maybe we’ll get there on the way back.

So we decided to continue onto Mui Ne. There was some debate online about where the bus station was and when or if busses ran to Mui Ne. They do at 5am and 1pm for 100,000 dong ($4.50) and the station was easy to find(10.3502991, 107.0873626). The ride was around four hours on a nice bus with AC, free WiFi, and a place to charge your phone at every seat.

When we arrived we were approached by a lady who offered her guesthouse(Nhat Phuc, I’ll leave the pronunciation up to you lol) to us for the night for $10. It was a nice clean room across the street from the beach but was dark as the only window was covered. We took it and then had dinner at her beach front restaurant, a fantastic meal of spring rolls, fresh salad, sautéed spinach and vegetables, and a whole fire roasted fish smothered in chili and lemon grass, all for about $12 (and only that much because the retaurant was beach front).

The next morning we decided we wanted to move since it was gloomy and if we were going to be trapped indoors we wanted a room with a view. So we moved to Viet’s Hotel, a much nice place, in a better location in town and near the nicer part of the beach(I hear the sand shifts so that may not always be the case), and a killer view from the top of a hill, all for the same price.

Being at the top of a hill offers some advantages... — Being at the top of a hill offers some advantages…

We continued to eat good, more ban mi, more pho, more Chao, but also other random delicious dishes fried pork, sweet and sour pork, noodles and beef, all good, all different. (We also splurged on some American burgers, fries, and wings one night, our most expensive meal so far but at least it was done right.) All of this was available cheap on the same street(tiny alley) that our new hotel was on.

The "road" to our hotel — The “road” to our hotel

The next day we rented a motorbike for the day from our hotel, $3 and went to checkout the sights. Now technically your supposed to get a license to drive a motorbike in Vietnam (an onerous process and an international drivers license does NOT count) but in practice no one cares. We went to see the famous red and white dunes outside of Mui Ne (way overrated but the ride was awesome). We both loved riding the motorbike. In fact I liked it so much I kind of wish we had bought a bike, you can get them for $200 here.

The White Dunes, look at those clouds, time to go!

Unfortunately between the white dunes and the red dunes there were police pulling people over, we had heard that usually they leave the tourists alone. However that wasn’t the case here they were pulling over literally everyone, locals and tourists alike and charging them with real and fictitious infractions alike. I was originally told they were going to impound the bike for a week and then I’d have to pay an 800,000 to 1,200,000 ($35 to $45) dong fine plus the cost of renting the bike during that time not to mention having to stay there for a week. An obvious shakedown. So I said how about I just pay now, he said 1,000,000 dong, I said ok, and he said your good to drive around here for a week.

Our little motorbike journey ended being pretty expensive after that…… Come to find out that it is very uncommon for tourists to be pulled over…. Except in Mui Ne. Apparently the local police are pretty corrupt and this is a common practice for them. In fact they had the same thing going on in the same place when we left. They even pulled over our sleeper bus! We still plan to do more motorbiking.

After that debacle we decided to ride into Mui Ne proper, a small fishing village just north of the tourist areas on the beach. We were foiled again by literal monsoon rains (the reason the boat to Con Dao wasn’t running was because of a tropical depression hanging out in the South China Sea). We waited at a little while for it to die down a bit and then we made the ride home in the rain, it was exciting if not very pleasant.

Victoria posing in the rain on the beach in Mui Ne

The next day Victoria woke up with a cold, she blames the cops, I think maybe the rain did it. Anyways we took it easy after that. The next stop of the journey, the tourist mecca of Nha Trang!

Wow! Our trip to Vung Tau!

Vung Tau is a popular get-a-way from the hustle and bustle of HCMC. To get here from HCMC you take the ferry which costs 200,000 dong, or about $9, per person. The ferry terminal in HCMC is called Ben Tau Canh Ngam. There are two popular locations for lodging while visiting Vung Tau. The front beach, more popular with foreigners because of the closeness to shopping and restaurants, or the back beach where the locals vacation. We chose the back beach because the beach looked nicer but were initially concerned because we weren’t sure if there was going to be restaurants around. It turned out to be a good gamble. The location is great because it’s only a five minute walk to the beach and there’s plenty of cheap-eats type restaurants since the locals frequent the area. We stayed at the Tan Hoang Than hotel for 300,000 dong, $13.50, per night. The hotel was a little on the dirty side but it came with a balcony and the price was awesome for the location. Beware that this area gets hoppin’ on the weekend and the rates triple. At night it’s nice to walk along the waterfront and people watch. The beach was great and very nice for swimming.

We walked to see the giant Jesus of Vung Tau which stands a whopping 32 meters (105 feet). This is free to do if you have to energy to ascend approximately 900 steps. What I really liked was being able to go inside of Jesus, up a narrow spiral staircase of about 130 steps, to take in a spectacular view of the beach.

Nice stopping point to rest on the way to see Jesus.

The food we had here was incredible. We tried various restaurants and street seafood vendors. You can’t go wrong it’s all fantastic and most Vietnamese dishes are less than $2 each. The seafood is more costly and a couple of times we splurged $5 for crab claws or clams. We have become very fond of the coffee. We order the iced coffee with milk like twice a day which are only 50-75 cents each.

Crab claws, pre-cracked and cooked in chili sauce. NOM!

Fried rice with my favorite Vietnamese beer.

It was obvious that most foreigners choose to stay near the front beach. Every time we went out, people stared at us like they never saw a white person before lol. In fact we didn’t see another white person the 4 days we were there. Most people we met were so friendly, especially the children who all say “hello!” when they see us. It melts my heart every time. It’s amazing how easy it is to hang out and laugh with people even though you can’t speak the same language.