After arriving in Hue, we geared up for our tour around the city. As we had one day to visit, we only had time for the highlights. We first visited a temple on top of a mountain on the outskirts of the city. It was built to honor one of the former kings in the early 1900s. It took over 10,000 men to built the temple and 1,000 of them died during the construction. All so one man’s body could be comfortable after death. What a waste. Our next stop involved taking a boat ride down the river to the oldest Pagoda in the city.
To end the tour, we visited the Forbidden City. Our tour guide had told us a much larger and famous Forbidden City exists in Beijing, but it was uncovered only recently that the architect was Vietnamese. He was a prisoner of the Chinese and they stole his plans. The Forbidden City was quite remarkable. The city was used by the royal family and the vast amount of wives that would keep the king occupied. We finished our night with a rickshaw ride around the fortress and a walk along the Boardwalk.
All of my time thus far has been spent in South Vietnam. After Hue, it would be the first time which I would travel from the south to the north. Arriving in Hanoi had a similar vibe to Saigon in terms of the chaotic traffic. However, the roads seem more narrow and there are a few big lakes in the city. I am quite grateful there are no lakes in Saigon; I could only imagine the flooding would be even worse in the city.
Before our city tour, we strolled around the lake in the Old Quarter. The Vietnamese also flocked to this lake to take their New Years pictures. They were dressed up in their best traditional clothing to capture their family photos for the biggest holiday of the year.
During our tour, we visited a pagoda over a thousand years old. On the way, we passed the lake which John McCain landed in after he was shot down during the war. The Vietnamese who were not at the lake taking pictures seemed to all be at this pagoda. It was so busy with the prayers for the New Year that it was difficult to move from point A to point B with any haste.
Our next stop was to Ho Chi Minh’s Temple. Such a large area of land and massive building was built to honor a man who lived in a house with only a few rooms and wore very modest clothing. He did not want to have anything fancy as president while his countrymen and women were poor and at war. It seems that if he saw the temple before his passing, he would have vehemently disapproved.
To go along with the theme of visiting places in Hanoi over 1,000 years old, our next stop was the university built in the 11th century. After the capital was moved to Hue when South Vietnam transferred from Cambodia to Vietnam, the university shut down. Now, the grounds are used to pray for children to receive a good education and be successful in life.
We ended the night walking around the Old Quarter and having some dinner on the roof of a Vietnamese restaurant. I guess it would be appropriate to just call it a restaurant here. We went to bed early to prepare for the drive to Halong Bay in the morning.
After driving a few hours, we arrived at the real life version of Jurassic Park. Halong Bay is a UNESCO site with large cliffs jetting out of the ocean. The geology is quite similar to the islands surrounding Koh Phi Phi in Krabi, Thailand. To spend some adequate time exploring the area, we booked an overnight cruise. After navigating the waters for a few hours, we arrived at our first stop. We visited a floating village protected by surrounding cliffs. The 140 people in the village live primarily off of fishing and tourist as of recent. The government has helped them build the village after they realized that many people were living in isolation throughout the bay in boats. By creating this community, the people are much safer and can share resources. It also ensures that the children in the community have proper schooling and the citizens have western medicine. In the past, they used the foliage on the rock to medicate themselves.
Once we visited the floating village, we ventured into a nearby cave. There are twenty discovered caves in Halong Bay, but half of them are not open to the public. If the local people need to shelter from a storm, they use the nearby caves to protect themselves. The cave has some impressive stalactites and stalagmites. Researchers also found evidence of human life in the caves dating to 10,000 B.C. They also found tons (literally tons in weight) of freshwater mollusks, which is strange because the cave was surrounded by salt water. How did they get there?
After a nice dinner and drinks on the boat, we drifted off to sleep in our cabins. The next morning, we climbed to the top of one of the cliffs to get 360 views of the bay. The humidity was reading 97%, which I have never seen before. No, it was not raining. However, it was so humid that the lens of my camera would be immediately fogged up right after wiping it.
It took a few more hours of sailing before arriving at the dock. For our last day in Hanoi, we learned about the history of the Imperial Citadel. The grounds have been used for the past thousand years, but recently it was the location of the celebration of independence from the French in 1954. In only a few years, the Imperial City was used as the headquarters of the North Vietnamese Army. It was eerie being in the same meeting room in which the generals made many crucial decisions to ultimately win the war against the United States. Right outside the generals’ headquarters, an entrance to an underground tunnel stuck out of the ground. In just a few seconds, they could vanish in case of an impending bomb.
In the center of the city, the same traditional water puppet show has been shown for decades. For our last night in Hanoi, we watched eighteen different numbers performed by ten different puppeteers and nine musicians. Although the songs and dialogue were all in Vietnamese, the story could be followed by the puppets in a big pool of water on the stage.
Hanoi is quite different from Saigon. The city closes down much earlier and the streets are much narrower. Lakes populate the city, unlike the rivers that run through HCMC. Many of our tour guides shared that the people in the north are very serious and do not have too much fun. I get the opposite feeling from the Vietnamese people in the south. Apparently in the north, they work very hard to buy a house and fill it with material items. It was shared that many of the people do not see the point of traveling and would rather have a new couch than a trip to gain a new cultural perspective.
During my last day before going back to work, we took a boat from Saigon to the Chu Chi Tunnels. These tunnels are just one of many examples that the Vietcong used during the war.