Fran & Rich's Big Happy Trip: Nanning to Nam…

Our boat and sleeper coach extravaganza brought us from the island of Hainan back onto mainland China to the city of Nanning. Though we were eager to press on into Vietnam, we opted to stay in Nanning for a night and explore before the next leg of our journey. As it’s a bit off the normal ‘tourist trail’ it was excellent to see a proper Chinese working city, without all the touts offering you things you don’t need! As with quite a few Chinese cities, there were a number of shops with less-than-authentic branded goods – I think Nanning has to take the crown for the most rip-offs though! Along with the standard sports brand t-shirts, we found Niek branded trainers, Addidadas jogging bottoms and Deisel t-shirts – either these spelling errors were done on purpose to avoid law suits or the manufacturers haven’t got a spellchecker on their PC! Anyway, that aside, Nanning was a pleasant, friendly town – though we had even more eyes watching us than normal due to being off the beaten track most people were very friendly indeed. I went for a run down by the river and saw the usual groups of people doing their Tai Chi, playing badminton and the odd few running too (you usually don’t see any fellow runners in Chinese cities as there’s nowhere to run that doesn’t involve running stopping every 100m to negotiate a road the equivalent of the M4). I ended up chatting to a nice chap from Nanning who was overjoyed to meet someone from England visiting his town. It turned out he ran every morning for an hour to keep fit – he must have been in his mid sixties which was pretty inspiring!

Not sure what the Highway Code would make of this palaver!

Watchtower by the river

Chinese junk-style Houseboats

Smiley runner chap!

Morning Tai Chi

We left Nanning on an evening soft sleeper train which turned out to be one of the cleanest trains we’d been on. We settled in and chatted with our Japanese cabin mate before trying to grab as much sleep as we could. Our attempts proved futile however as the border crossing was at 11pm so we only really got to sleep at about 1am – not great when we were getting off at 5am!!!

Upon arriving at Hanoi station, we had to barter the taxi drivers down from their astronomical ‘tired tourist’ fare to a more reasonable amount – not easy when the first taxi driver is following you around telling the others to rip you off as well! We checked into our guesthouse, grabbed a few much-needed hours of shut-eye, then fuelled up on coffee and got exploring! Hanoi has a lot of pretty French colonial architecture – the crumbling facades and overgrown trees lining the streets only adding to the atmosphere! We were staying in the Old Quarter, just a few blocks away from the Hoan Kiem lake. This lake is the focal point of Hanoi, with joggers and Tai Chi enthusiasts getting their exercise fix in the mornings and evenings (any other time of the day is just too hot) and others just cruising round, soaking up the vibe.

Hoan Kiem Lake, complete with strange floating orbs!

Exploring cities is always interesting as every one has a different feel, however in Hanoi it was quite a challenge exploring when it was 40 degrees C and incredibly humid! Quite a lot of time was spent diving in and out of air-conditioned cafes as 5 minutes in that heat meant a very soggy T-shirt – nice!! Anyway, we managed to explore much of the city on foot, cramming in a somewhat warm run around the lake to boot. After the carnage that was China’s crazy traffic, Vietnam took the carnage up to fever pitch – crossing a road is made even more perilous by the fact that the majority of people are on mopeds which it seems can drive on whatever side of the road they see fit! We soon adopted the locals’ strategy of ‘just walk’ which seems to work, though it never got any less scary!

Downpour in Hanoi

Exploring the Old Quarter

Moody-looking sunset

Breakfast, Viet Nam-style (Pho Bo – Beef Noodle Soup)

On what seemed like the hottest day in the world, we managed to cover a number of Hanoi’s historical sites, including the B52 Memorial (the remains of a downed US Bomber from the American War half-submerged in a lake), Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum and Hoa Lo prison. The prison museum primarily focussed on its pre-1954 use by the French colonialists to detain (and in some cases behead – there was a haunting-looking guillotine there) rebellious Vietnamese revolutionaries, however there was a small section dedicated to its most recent use during the American War to detain Prisoners of War. The museum was keen to display images of Americans happily playing basketball and having a good time whilst incarcerated – John McCain the US presidential candidate was detained here and I think he has something different to say about his time at the ‘Hanoi Hilton’. The wonders of propaganda!

Charismatic crumbling cafes!

A typical Vietnamese mobile market stall!

Vietnamese missile proudly downing the American B52

Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum, overlooking Hanoi’s equivalent of Tiananmen Square

The Vietnamese trains are pretty slow on the whole, but when you’ve got to negotiate track like this it’s understandable!!!

Bun Bo Nam Bo – awesome Vietnamese Beef, Noodles and Minty Greens restaurant!

Hanoi’s buzzing streets by night

Enjoying some of the local ale

Hoa Lo Prison

Another cracking colonial-style building in Hanoi is the Opera House. We decided to sit on the steps and watch the world go by – as we did a wedding party arrived for their photos! They obviously had excellent taste as their wedding car was a convertible New Beetle – like the one we had in September!

Hanoi Opera House in all its grandeur

Beetle wedding = awesome!

Next on the agenda was a trip to the coast to the UNESCO Heritage site Ha Long Bay. This stunning collection of 1,969 islands (quite exact – coincidentally 1969 also happens to be the year Ho Chi Minh passed away…) is impressive to behold, especially from an old Chinese junk. We went kayaking around one of the islands and tried to circumnavigate it, though we found out about an hour in that it was one of the bigger islands so had to turn back and give it some gas so we didn’t miss the boat! The peace and tranquillity of these islands is pretty special – hardly a sound could be heard apart from the odd fish leaping out of the water beside our canoe! Other than tourism, the main source of income on these islands is fishing. As the islands are steep limestone karsts (like Yangshuo in China), it’s pretty hard to build any houses. As such, the locals have made whole floating villages, moored permanently in the calm waters in the bays and coves. These are now joined by numerous floating bars, one of these being the bar the Top Gear guys had to make it to on their DIY amphibious motorbikes they had ridden all the way up from Ho Chi Minh City – awesome!!! The cruise was pretty chilled out, with the exception of hurling ourselves off the boat from the top deck (Fran was a little more sensible, opting for the bottom deck!) – unfortunately I wrote off Fran’s digital camera as the waterproof case leaked after hitting the water at quite a speed! Hopefully it was a good photo – sorry Fran! Thanks to my bro for buying us the boat cruise as a wedding present – we had a sweet time!