Nilikuta Shani

Cat Ba Island/ The woman who spoke to goats

~Anna — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:09:16 +0000

A stilted hut sits overlooking the crops.

Cat Ba town: where the ridiculously kitsch and every genus of fish comes to die (and I’m not speaking figuratively). It was where I came (though I didn’t yet know it on arrival) to sweat it out on an epic cycle/hike combo that left me hallucinating and talking to goats.

The Island of Cat Ba, part of Ha Long Bay in the Tonkin Gulf, lies a short distance from Haiphong and from Ha Long City, and is a stopping point for every 3 day/2 night Ha Long Bay tour. Cat Ba town itself is a major tourist destination for both Vietnamese and Chinese tourists and the town caters heavily to this latter group. For those of us who had just come from our relaxing cruise through Ha Long Bay, getting dumped in this tasteless town was no picnic. The tourist part of town itself has very little to offer anyone who doesn’t want to get smashed and sing themselves hoarse at one of the hundred karaoke bars. Unless you want to buy toys—imitation AK47s, beaded pandas, toblow up floating water dragons—or watch countless species of fish squirm in buckets outside the restaurants where the feature seems to be, pick your own fish and watch us slaughter and serve it to you. Fresh yes, options yes; but after one of these buckets overturned and sent sea snakes slithering over my feet (and then put back into the bucket) I decided the novelty did not outweigh the filth factor.

Which would you like to eat? None, thanks though...

Our Ha Long Bay tour finished here, but mine would continue one day more—I’d negotiated with ODC Travel one extra day on Cat Ba, to allow me to explore the town and small island on my own.

Most people who stay on the tiny island of Cat Ba do one of two things: they hit the beach, or they hit the hiking trails. I’d heard that Cat Ba National Park was something I couldn’t miss, and I was excited to also hear that I could rent a bike and ride the 10 kilometers out there myself. I packed my water, camera, sunscreen, strapped on my helmet (another chance to use it—yes!) and set off.

There are literally two roads on Cat Ba; one going north/south, and one going east/west. For some reason that morning I had the sense of direction of a gerbil in a wheel and cycled circles around town before finding the right road that would take me north to the national park. I’d picked up a really poor quality map of the island (a 3 year-old with a crayon could have done an identical reproduction) but was assured by multiple parties that there were English signs to follow.

Pretty soon I found myself cycling up some pretty serious hills. Sure, the scenery I was passing was gorgeous, and I was glad the bike I’d rented had a triple chain ring and a number of low gears for me to choose from. When I arrived at the entrance to the National Park my legs were knackered—it was the most exercise my legs had seen in weeks.

Then came the hike. I love hiking, as other posts have shown. I was told the route to the peak and back would take a couple hours, but I’ve also found that the time estimate you’re given is usually for the pokey. What started off as stone steps turned into a mudslide, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since my hike up Mgahinga. I was glad for my trusty trail running shoes and the huge bottle of water I was carrying—the route to the top passes through the thickest, most oppressively hot jungle I’d been in yet. People I saw coming down were soaked through and I soon was no different—sweat dripped from my brow at a pace so rapid that for a while it seemed as if my eyeballs were sweating.

The best sign I saw, anywhere in my travels.

A fork in the trail presents two options: to the right, the circuitous route to the peak. To the left, the shorter, “adventurous” path. Do I even need to tell you which path I chose? It earned its name as well—the mud made every limestone crag and exposed root slippery and I clung to each tree and vine for support. I felt like Tarzan. It. Was. Awesome. I so badly wanted one of those video cameras that attaches to your head. I reached the peak—somehow I was still sweating buckets, was all this fluid coming from my vital organs? There is a rusty, rickety-looking lookout tower and in my dehydrated state I thought I saw it swaying in the breeze. Just a trick of the mist, I said, as I set up the steps. And wow, what a view from the top. The entire jungle in every shade of green known on earth lay outstretched as far as I could see. I saw hills and peaks and a small village enclave with rice paddies. I caught my breath and cooled myself in the breeze, and shot a video as a keepsake.

On the way down I met a pair of Germans who had also chosen the adventurous route and we compared notes. I opted for the wimp path on the way down—I wasn’t about to risk any broken bones. It was only after I reached the bottom of the trail that I realized how tired my legs were. How would I cycle myself back to town? With a steel will of course, and the help of the granny gears.

On the route back—beautiful though it was—I was dog tired. I used the granny gear unashamedly up every hint of an incline. I wondered how fast I was going until I encountered a herd of goats—I was moving exactly at a goat’s pace. We rode together, the unherded pack and myself, for some time up a slight hill. I may have even chatted to one about the pretty coastline we were both enjoying.

View from the top of the mountain.

Counting down the kilometers to go was painful but I made every effort to stop and enjoy the views when they were there. I arrived back at the rental shop in a right state—despite the constant re-application of SPF 30 I was noticeably browner than when I’d set off about 5 hours prior, and was filthy. I was soaked. Sweat continued to pour off me at a rate any bikram yoga instructor would have approved of. A group of four western tourists were waiting to rent bikes and saw me arrive, and couldn’t hide their shock at my appearance. The rental agent tried to get me to sign up for one of their tours—“Lady what you doing now? Want to go hiking?” My response was simple: “I’m gonna find some food and pass the F*** out. And then get off this island.”

Cat Ba is very naturally gorgeous, but unless you’re dumb or a masochist (I’m probably a happy combination of the two), I wouldn’t recommend the cycling/hiking combo to be attempted mid-day in the hot season. However, given the choice between spending the day as I’ve just done, or being preyed upon by junk-toting touts on the beach, I’d choose the sweat bath, every time.

Cat Ba Island/ The woman who spoke to goats is a post from: Nilikuta Shani

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Ha Long Bay does not take kindly to pirates

~Anna — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 13:00:28 +0000

Junks are dwarfed by the magnificent limestone islands around Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay is a world heritage site and there aren’t enough words in the English language to justly describe the unique and spectacular beauty of this place. Seeing it for yourself, however, is often the cause of many headaches for tourists, especially budget tourists. This is because there are at least several hundreds of tour options, ranging in price and purported quality, and, as with everything in Vietnam, it can be difficult to tell when you’re getting a good deal or when you’re getting ripped off, until the service is delivered and you’re on board.

I’d read about a do-it-yourself tour of Ha Long Bay from Travelfish, where the guys basically hired someone in a boat to motor them around. But they did this after sampling other cruises and would have known the lay of the land, where to go, what to ask for, and critically, they wouldn’t care if they missed anything because they’d seen it already. Even if you’re pressed for cash, I wouldn’t recommend a DIY tour of Ha Long Bay if you really want to experience the beauty of the place.

Ha Long Bay, after a hike to the top of one island

The only way to see Ha Long Bay is on a guided tour aboard a cruise ship. The more money you pay, the more services you receive, activities you can do, and better comfort you travel in (apparently—and I say apparently because I only did one tour, rather comfortably, so cannot compare it to others). I arrived in Hanoi and immediately set to work finding a tour. Being confronted with so many options and reviews of travel companies was overwhelming, and I finally just had to choose. I landed on a tour run by ODC Travel, which had several smart looking shops around Hanoi and a good looking website. Their prices for tours were higher than the budget range, but this was towards the end of my Vietnam trip and I felt like splashing out. Besides, after sleeping on the floor of a bus, I figured I had earned the privilege.

Most tours of Ha Long Bay are 3 day, 2 night tours departing from Hanoi in the morning. Several hours of driving (and a mandatory layover at some shop selling over-priced goods, all the typical snacks, cold sodas and the like) puts you at the docks and you find yourself, along with hundreds of other tourists all bound for Ha Long Bay aboard their chosen ships, following your guide to your junk. And yes, junk in this context means ship. They’re gorgeous once they have their sails up and some of the larger ones are quite comfortable. The tours include all meals (not tips, or booze), one nights sleeping aboard the junk, and one night on the island of Cat Ba, in a hotel. My ODC tour included entry to the Amazing Cave (other, budget, tours would go to a different cave), plus a guided cycle ride to a village in the Bay and kayak rental.

The Amazing Cave. Pretty amazing, especially with the dramatic lighting.

I had some time to kill in northern Vietnam and asked ODC Travel if they would let me stay on Cat Ba for an extra night, and return on another of their tours. Though they didn’t understand why I’d want to (which became clear to me once I got there), they granted my request, and because they’d made a prior error on my booking I was able to wrangle this extra night for free. Score!

The pictures will speak for themselves, but what cannot are the experiences. You motor around aboard your junk and, unless you’re visiting one of the caves, its very solitary—your junk may be the only sign of life for miles. You’ll see floating villages too, which you can visit from a kayak when you stop for this experience. Ladies in large rowboats float between junks when they are stopped, selling everything from candy to chips to alcohol. If you buy any alcohol (the vodka and whiskey are especially lethal—watch out) the ships captain will be told, and you’ll have to pay for corkage. We tried to do this covertly and it didn’t work. Additionally, if you’re in a party mood, go aboard one of the party junks—the after-dinner activities on board the regular junks may be limited to star gazing and sleeping. My junk was one such quiet junk, though when we anchored for the evening we were within hearing distance of a party junk. Some of my cruisemates and I (by luck, all around the same age) wanted to swim out to the party junk, and got as far as constructing a floatation vest life raft before our captain stopped us. Told you the vodka and whiskey were lethal. The lesson seemed to be, Ha Long Bay does not take kindly to pirates or rule breaking. And everyone who makes a living off the tourists to the Bay knows each other and won’t hesitate to rat you out.

One of the many floating villages

The food ODC provided was on the whole good, but every meal was exactly the same. I ate the same dinner of fried calamari and whitefish with bell peppers for every meal besides breakfast. Sleeping aboard the junk was fun as well, and when a storm rolled in the gentle rocking of the boat lulled me into a comfortable sleep. Ha Long Bay is well worth a visit, and I’d definitely recommend ODC Travel as a reputable tour company, with one caveat: I met people on my return trip (aboard a different tour run by the same company) who had been robbed aboard the boat. The sum was small, maybe $300, but to young backpackers, it was all they had. And the red tape and bureaucracy for reporting the crime to either the police or to the ODC headquarters was unnecessarily onerous and enough of a deterrent to prevent them from complaining (they would have had to stay in Ha Long City and wait until all of the employees could be fingerprinted). Do watch out for your belongings aboard the ship. And bring cards to play in the evening, unless you want to go to bed the minute it gets dark.

Ha Long Bay does not take kindly to pirates is a post from: Nilikuta Shani

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Don’t Tread On Me

~Anna — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 21:18:44 +0000

Selling kites in Hue

Travelers coming through Vietnam either love or hate the place. While I was in Cambodia I’d met several people who’d just crossed the border and couldn’t have been more thrilled—“escaped Vietnam” was the term they used. After several weeks here I’ve become completely infatuated with this country—the people, the food, the natural beauty. I’d had too many great experiences in my short time here that it seemed unnatural. Streaks of luck never last long, and at some point I was expecting the other shoe to drop. It happened in the town of Dong Ha, on the route between Hue and Hanoi.

I’d just completed a tour of the DMZ, organized through the Café on Thu Wheels in Hue, and had arranged for my overnight sleeper bus to pick me up in the stopover town of Dong Ha. In the advertisements, these sleeper buses seem to offer luxurious comforts: thick, cushy, flat-laying mattress pads, blankets, even plush Vietnam Airlines pillows. Despite my original inclination to take the overnight train from Hue to Hanoi, I opted for the bus. From what I’d seen and heard, it all seemed quite civilized.

One of the war memorials in the Demilitarized Zone, Vietnam

9 pm: My bus arrives (two hours behind schedule). I load my bags on board with confidence and show the driver my ticket. He smiles initially, before his face changes to one of rage, yells something incomprehensible and throws my bags off the bus. “What the hell is going on!” I shout, but the only word the Trekking Travel driving staff knew was “No.”

9:15 pm: The restaurant proprietor (bless him, whoever he was) comes to my rescue and phones the bus booking office, who had sold my seat to someone else. “I’m getting on the damn bus,” I assert. This was possible, the agent says, but I’d have to ride in the aisle. 12 hours on the hard aisle of a bus. I contemplate this. I really have no options–getting back to Hue is impossible and there are no hotels here. I shoot the driver and his staff the dirtiest look imaginable and say I’d do it.

By this point my plight has gotten the attention of the other English-speaking passengers on board. An Aussie man buys me a couple bottles of the local brew, which I use to wash down some sleeping pills. If I am going to be sleeping in the aisle of a bus, I am damn well going to be unconscious for the experience.

10:30pm: The effects of the Vietnamese Valium I’d taken have kicked in and I’m as high as a hippy. My delirium just about drowns out the terrible TV music that for some inexplicable reason is still playing. I’ve scrounged a few extra Vietnamese Airlines pillows that were lying around the bus and have constructed a makeshift cocoon. Laying flat on my back, my shoulders exceed the width of the aisle (see picture below). It feels like I’m laying in a coffin. I’m determined to rough this one out till morning. Besides, the driving crew keeps looking back at me and laughing, getting a kick out of the white chick squirming in the aisle. I smile back, not giving them the pleasure of letting them know I hate their guts. Besides, I’m too high to care.

2:30am: I’m abruptly awoken by someone stepping on my face. “What the fuck man!” I thrash instinctively and kick the perpetrator a few times in the process. He disembarks and I maneuver into his vacant sleeper bed. I’m surprised at the lack of leg room—at 5’7” I’m by no means a giant (by American standards anyway), but I don’t fit into this either. I sleep the rest of the night with my legs curled up and over the leg compartment. I can’t imagine what this would be like for someone taller than me—and if you are, don’t take the damn sleeper bus. Ironically, I was more comfortable in the aisle with my legs fully stretched than in the cramped bed I was supposed to have paid for.

9:30am: I awake from a marvelous, lucid dream. We’re in Hanoi, and half of the bus is empty. I look toward the front of the bus to see one of the driver’s mates sleeping in the aisle–my aisle–on a thick foam mat. Bastard. Some English girls nearby inform me we’re approaching our stop but no one has told any of us where that will be. I scan the street names and determine we’re in the Old Quarter, where we’d all planned on staying. I charge up front and tell the driver that we wish to get off now. For the first time in 12 hours, I get my way. I think my roughing it had earned their respect.

Rather enjoying my bus aisle bed!

All told, the journey was a character building experience. It was one of those moments where I thought about all the people who’d told me I wasn’t tough enough to survive a month backpacking through Vietnam on my own. The picture of me high and smiling on the floor of a bus sums it all up. The lesson also was, when Vietnam gives you lemons, as it undoubtedly will, drink a beer and chill out. That’ll do you more good than any amount of yelling will, and you’ll earn more respect in the process.

Don’t Tread On Me is a post from: Nilikuta Shani

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The Prettiest Train Ride I Slept Through

~Anna — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 20:21:55 +0000

Before passing out myself, I snapped this photo--train rides just seem to lull people to sleep.

Vietnam is a bigger country than most people expect, and backpackers will at some point find themselves traversing from one length to the other on some form of time-quickening transport—plane (for those who didn’t go bust in Hoi An), or overnight train or bus. By the time I left Hoi An heading north I was running out of time—I still had nearly two weeks remaining in the country, but I wanted to be sure that I maximized relaxation and minimized needless hurrying along. The next big stage of the journey was from Hue to Hanoi, but the distance is vast and the roads slow going (it takes between 12 and 16 hours). Still, I couldn’t fathom wasting a day by sitting on a bus with cabin fever as I longed to be outside stretching my legs and exploring. This meant I’d need to sign up for some sort of overnight journey.

If at all possible I don’t regularly choose the overnight journey option—I’m always skeptical of a driver falling asleep, or of having a replica situation occur as what myself and some friends experienced when driving between Livingston and Lusaka (Zambia) on an overnight bus in 2007. Never mind that our driver fell asleep at the wheel; at a random checkpoint several of our bags went missing, permanently. It was at the end of our trip, but being robbed while you’re “sleeping” in your upright seat, three-abreast along a bumpy African road just sucks.

So which would it be, train or bus? I still haven’t chosen. I’m on a train right now, on the stretch between Da Nang and Hue, said to be the most gorgeous railroad stretch in the country. And it just might be—we’re passing mile after mile of white sand beach and evergreen jungle, gazing at deserted islands just off the coastline.

Despite the beauty just on the other side of the glass, I can’t help but feel drowsy. I recall an event of my childhood—15 years ago, perhaps, on a train ride through Russia, just after the collapse of the Soviet Union. I cannot recall where we—my mother and I—were going (she was there conducting doctoral research, I was her small child along for the adventure), but at some point we took an overnight train to get somewhere. Though I must have been 8 at the time I remember very clearly that train journey, since it was my first. Trains in California had long since been replaced by cheap airfares and car travel, and I can count the number of times I’ve ridden a train in California on one finger. Besides the elegant red carpeting and décor of the compartments, I remember falling asleep on the top bunk of a padded sleeper bunk, only to wake up on the bottom. My mother informed me that in the middle of the night, I rolled off, and somehow managed to stay asleep despite the fall. I’m no longer such a heavy sleeper, but maybe there was something about the gentle rocking along the tracks that lulled me into an almost hypnotic sleep.

So maybe I’ll choose the overnight train. Were it not for the multiple Vietnamese coffees I’ve ordered since getting on this train I’m sure I’d be dozing, like the rest of the passengers. Perhaps they’ve seen this stretch of coastline before. I, however, am not going to miss it… to miss it… missing it… zzzzzzz.

The Prettiest Train Ride I Slept Through is a post from: Nilikuta Shani

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