Activity level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Modes of transportation: 👟🛶 🚌 🚲
Our hotel concierge, Brian found us a cheaper tour option in case we had to cancel. Luckily, all of the remedies Eric took the previous night seemed to work.
We went downstairs, but the bus wasn’t there on time—we were wondering if we missed it. The bus showed up, and it was a full size tour bus. We have no idea how they fit into the streets of the old quarter, but they somehow got us to the main road.
Our first stop was actually a bamboo shop, and we had to sit through a presentation on bamboo. We thought it would be sort of a tourism board thing (like “this region makes bamboo, it’s cool”) but it was more like a hard-sell presentation (we guess since it was a cheaper tour?). We kind of had to laugh through it since some of the products were just ridiculous. The good news was that we bought a little rice cake thing, since Eric hadn’t eaten in a while (and it was interesting, but good!).
After that, we went to the Mua Cave, which isn’t even really a cave—it’s more of a hike up to a viewpoint. It was about 500 steps up a hill, but it was worth it! The views of the top were spectacular, though the very top was a little too crowded and involved more actual climbing (and only a narrow path up and down). We probably spent a little too long waiting for people to climb, but we still had a good time up there.
We had to rush down to see the lotus lake, and our guide Loi made us pose for some pictures. Eric doesn’t think he’d seen lotus before, but it’s a beautiful flower and looked especially pretty with the rugged backgrounds.
We rushed backed to the bus to get there on time, only to be the first ones back (aside from a German couple). Most people trickled in, but these three girls came pretty late. Late enough that our guide laid into them (they were late from the bamboo shop as well), saying they owe everyone on the bus a beer. It was kind of funny.
Eric was starving at this point, and luckily our next stop was lunch. They drove us over to a nearby shop where the tours came for a buffet. The food was surprisingly good, and we learned that our hotel had bought us a beer to go with lunch. So nice! Sarah sent them a photo of us drinking with the caption “Một – Hai – Ba – dzô,” the Vietnamese saying for “cheers,” and Brian sent us back a message saying his “teeth were falling out from laughing.” He was quite the character. He even sent us another beer. Ha!
After lunch, we took some bikes to the ancient temple built by the first king in 968, which was pretty awesome. Sarah almost took a bike with no brakes—so luckily she checked before we got moving!
This city was the capital for about 50 years before the third king moved it to Hanoi. It’s pretty crazy that these cities have literally existed for a thousand years.
We eventually rode the bikes back and dropped them off before heading out to the boat ride portion of our tour. Honestly, since our hotel had booked, we had no idea what the plan was.
It turned out to be a small bamboo boat with a rower through some very shallow rivers and caves for a couple of hours. It was also pretty spectacular, and we ended up talking to the Austrians in the boat with us. Crazily enough, the guy was a Saints fan (though he hadn’t watched any games this season—that makes two of us), and they were having a great time enjoying Vietnam (they weren’t too excited by the beer, though).
During the row boat tour, we had to cross through the mountains via low-hanging water caves. One was man-made to connect the rivers, but the others were natural.
We also learned from the Austrians that this was the filming location of Kong: Skull Island.
We also met a guy from Delhi who lived in Seattle. Sarah asked him if he worked in tech and he sheepishly said “yes.” We said “us too!” And he seemed a little relieved. Turns out he worked at Amazon, and gave us some good tips for India. After the boat ride, we asked him if he liked the tour and he said “no, it was too long and boring.” Can’t win ‘em all!
From there, we got back onto the bus after a long day and headed back to Hanoi. On the way, we stopped at the center of modern Hoa Lu, where we used the bathroom (which was a little bit of a trek) and saw some beautiful pagodas.
We also tried some street food since we were hungry, but neither of us really liked ours (Sarah’s was sort of a corn dog and Eric’s was essentially a cheese pancake).
We were pretty beat when we made it back to Hanoi, but we figured we had to live it up on our last night. We also desperately needed to do laundry (Eric had been wearing sink-washed clothes the past two days), so we set out into the city with laundry in hand. We also wanted to try to catch the train street market, which people say is cool, and we knew the last train ran at 10–so we had some time.
Turns out, all the places we found are laundry service only instead of a laundromat, and so many of them were closed. We ended up having to just pick one near our hotel and ask them if they could expedite it for 8AM the next morning (it was about 8:30 by this time). We had to be gone by 8:45, so this wouldn’t give us much time to pack, but that’s all we could do.
So we handed our stuff off and went to dinner at a recommended restaurant called Era, where we got Vietnamese BBQ, spring rolls, and frog legs (except the frog legs, while delicious, turned out to be the entire frog). The food was amazing, but we definitely ordered way too much.
We realized after most of the meal that we’d lost track of time, and we had to rush to get to the train market. So we rushed back to our hotel and caught a cab to a coffee shop that our hotel recommended. Well, we made the mistake of going to the address on Google and it was nowhere to be found.
We were kind of frantically looking for it, and locals were pointing in a direction for us, so we followed them. Turns out, they were either messing with us, didn’t know where we were trying to go, or there was a communication issue because they literally guided us in the exact wrong direction. We did get to see some pretty cool back streets and residential areas though.
We decided, even though we missed the train passing through, that we wanted to at least see it. So we walked over to the street. Honestly, it was a little dinkier than we expected (sour grapes in effect). One of the shop workers did take photos of us on the track, though, so we can say we went.
We then tried to get a motor bike to drive us back to our hotel and save us from the 45 minute walk back but couldn’t figure out how to request one for each of us and didn’t have small bills. So we started our walk. That’s when a taxi driver pulled up and offered us a ride. Eric asked how much and the driver said “cheap” so Eric suggest 100,000 dong (~$4 USD). The driver laughed and said no. So we continued walking but he stopped us and said “too much! 50,000 dong”. Which was so nice. (That’s also how we found out we got ripped off on the way to the train tracks). We ended up giving him 100000 anyway.
When we got back, it was about 11pm and we realized we still had a little currency left on our last day here. Coincidentally Sarah had officially run out of her conditioner so we stopped by a hair parlors that advertised shampoo. Eric left her to get her hair washed with about 300,000 dong and a phone. Sarah of course got up-sold to the nicest package at a discount to use up all the money.
The salon owner then led Sarah up 5 windy flights of stairs to a dark room and told her to change into a spa robe. It was at this point Sarah realized she was alone at 11pm in a foreign country, with a phone close to dying, and the equivalent of about $10USD on her. Her worries were short lived once the shampooing started. It was one of the most luxurious experiences so far on the trip. It came with a deep scalp massage, a hair mask, and deep conditioning, plus a blow dry. They even threw in a neck and shoulder massage on top of that—all for about $10.
Free of the stresses of travel and having any money at all, Sarah left the shop. The streets were dead since it was after midnight, and Sarah’s phone was also like the streets—dead. Luckily, Sarah is a master navigator and made it back.
At that point, we called it and night and went back to go to sleep. Another early morning!
Bonus content:
Our guide provided an edited video of our day which features us a lot. You can see the dragon hill where we climbed in the video.
<will upload video when we have better internet in Italy>
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