This post is very belated, and I expect future ones will be also, as blogging sans laptop has been trickier than expected. I’m currently in Dresden, two weeks on from Vietnam!

Xin chào from Hà Nội, the capital of Việt Nam! I have spent 5 days exploring rural North Vietnam with my long-time friend from engineering school, Michelle.

After a sedate 1-week stopover in Malaysia with Laura (the post on that will come non-chronologically), I arrived in Hanoi, bike box once again in tow. Michelle and I had initially planned a self-guided version of a popular 5-day loop from Hanoi (like this example), but due to logistics, we had decided instead on just the rural province of Ninh Binh, sometimes called “Ha Long Bay on land”, and for us both to just rent bikes once we got there.

Leaving my bike in airport storage involved a bit of pleading as they didn't want to take my huge bike box. This would have meant biking into Hanoi at night on the motorway, which I confirmed few days later would have been an absolute baptism by fire. I resorted to puppy-eyes-ing (“Oh no… whatever shall I do?”) and eventually the lady took pity on me and called up a friend who said he would take my box in his van, store it at his hotel, then deliver it back to the airport in 5 days’ time for 1.2m Vietnamese đồng, around $80 NZD (a good deal)!

Leaving my long-suffering bike behind, I took the local bus into town. It's my first time in Vietnam and my head was spinning to take in all the eating, buying, sellig, and socialising that poured out onto the streets, overflowing the footpaths into the free-flowing motorcycle traffic.

Michelle and I spotted each other and gave elated shouts, outside our hostel for the night in the Old Quarter. A quick dinner out, next morning buses booked, then we nodded off in our shared queen bed (we were reluctant to share a dorm with the 20-year-old British lads on tour).

Day 1: Weaving through cliffs from Tam Cốc to Tràng An

The walk over to our Ninh Binh bus stop was a vignette of Hanoi morning rush hour. Already, the air was oven-like. Pedestrians, motorcycles, cars, buses, and trucks all flowed together with only the barest suggestion of lanes. Slender old women balanced wide baskets of fruit on their rusty commuter bikes, weaving between them all.

This was our first time in Vietnam, and neither of us knew much of the history. On the way down, we started listening to a podcast on the Vietnam War, which I followed up with a short audiobook. Even these tidbits helped place some of the things we saw in more context. I’ve pondered them in a separate post here.

We got to Ninh Binh province’s tourist hub of Tam Cốc and rented some hard-tail mountain bikes for $6.50 NZD per bike per day. We set off, following a likely route that we’d foraged off the RideGPS app. This took us around a little picturesque town’s little lake, before hitting the rural roads out through Trang An area.

A few kms in, we stopped by Mua Cave. We didn’t go into the cave itself because they insisted we pay for special dinky tour bikes instead of taking our own (we refused). We instead went up popular stone steps of Hang Mua Mountain. There were a lot of tourists here. We hit the summit at golden hour and the view was thus:

With the light fading, we sped away through winding back roads following the Sao Khe River. There was a welcoming breeze and a cooling mist among the mountains. Within minutes, we were surrounded on all sides by the dramatic karst landscape that we had seen from above.

We stayed a hostel and adjacent “homestay” run by a friendly local family on a river bend. They didn’t have any bunks or twins available, so it was a queen bed suite once again. Fortunately, Michelle and I have been roommates before and we have great bed chem. The place also had a pool, which turned out to be very important to us. We soaked for an hour, chit-chatting about all and sundry, and finally stopped sweating for the first time all day.

Day 2: The furnace from Tràng An to Cúc Phương

Having had such a perfect start to our tour the day before, we spent a leisurely morning re-soaking in the pool, enjoying our free breakfast, and generally pottering around in front of the view of lotus ponds and forested hills.

Squandering the cool dawn hours proved to have been a mistake. The route left the embrace of the shaded green valleys into flat rice paddies. Within an hour, we had already sweated off most of our sunblock and drunk most of our water.

Jenny & Michelle’s 4-day skincare routine for irritated skin!

1. Slather yourself in sunblock.

2. Exercise in 40C heat (and >80% humidity) until your face is a glistening sticky donut.

3. Spray your face with a light misting of road dust and extra strength insect repellent.

4. Wipe off any drip on your shirt, rubbing the mixture into your pores, then lock it all in with another layer of sunblock.

5. Repeat steps 2-4 all day, for several days.

Most locals opt for full-body cover-ups, almost like a burqa, for both UV and road-dust protection. I eventually swapped my sleeveless top for my long-sleeve shirt, opting for more sweat over more sunburn.

The many stops we made (out of necessity, as dehydration headaches were beseiging us) ended up being quite delightful. Every 30 minutes or so, we would stagger to a halt by a convenience store or roadside drinks cart. We would buy a bottle of water and a bottle of miscellaneous electrolyte sports drink, scull them both, and eat a salty snack. The owner would invite us to take our time and rest, possibly thinking we’re silly to be cycling in this weather, and we would gratefully collapse in front of a fan.

Michelle and I would then spend half an hour talking about everything from music to work to baby name ideas (something Michelle and I currently bond over is our shared angst about our biological clocks) while waiting for our headaches to go away. In one case, the shopowner’s family welcomed us to try some of the tropical fruits. We exchanged some jovial conversation about New Zealand and our experience of Vietnam so far via Google Translate, and did lots of high-fives with their cute toddler. These little oases made the gruelling day quite wonderful.

After the many stops, starts, and sights, we got to our stop for the night, the village at the base of Cuc Phuong National Park. There were two options for accommodation. The first had an imposingly high fence and a locked gate, but there were people inside when we peeked through the letterbox hole and we were exhausted.

A guy eventually came to the door, looking perplexed that people were knocking on his establishment. Once he understood what we wanted, he impatiently waved at us to come in, pulled over a worker, discussed briefly, then shoved him back, shouting something. Looking behind him, the other people also seemed to be workers; no one looked like a guest.

So far, all the locals we’d met had been so universally warm and friendly that this behaviour and his cold demeanor were kind of alarming. This might be judgey, but he also had a long, recent cut along his face, and a lot of slightly tasteless tattoos (nothing against tattoos, I just know in East Asia at least, among middle age or older, they can be gang indicators). We gave some weak excuses and zoomed away from the dude and his unhappy workers.

The only other place in the village, Hotel Mebi, involved a very minor backtrack which felt almost intolerable given our state, but alas. The hotel owner had a matriarch vibes and was quick to laugh. There was also a huge boisterous Vietnamese family with lots of kids splashing about in the pool. With this reassuring contrast from the other place, we checked in, showered off our day’s grime, and joined the family in the pool with relief.

Dinner was a short walk to one of those places where you just walk in, a young child tells their mum that customers are here, the mother gets up from her nap, and ten minutes later a dish arrives on your table with no choices involved. The dish was pho with grilled beef mince medallions, around $3 each, and phenomenal.

Day 3: Cúc Phương National Park, then back to Tam Cốc

After a glorious 10 hour sleep and free breakfast (mie goreng, fried egg, watermelon, cucumber, and a strangely sweet soft bread), we left our bags at the hotel and biked up to Cúc Phương National Park, the oldest national park in Vietnam and an important conservation centre.

Since watching a nature doco about this area the night before, Michelle and I had become momentarily obsessed with pangolins and langurs. However, entry was cash only, we didn’t have enough, and we were far from any ATM. We ended up bartering the ticket booth worker, offering all our remaining cash even if it fell short. Fortunately, he seemed to find it amusing and not annoying that two rich-country tourists couldn't afford the cost equivalent of a sandwich, and accepted.

The park itself was a true jungle, with vines and unfamiliar trees draping themselves over each other. The park is also famous for its butterflies; during April-May, over 400 species cloud the forest for their annual gorging of leaf litter and minerals. This is more biodiversity than the entire butterfly fauna of Europe or Australia. I actually have a phobia of butterflies (possibly triggered by this Spongebob scene in my youth), but I found the ride through the forest in their company to be good exposure therapy.

The primates centre was a guided tour, and visitors had to wear masks (I think to prevent the primates from getting our bugs!). This was a very brisk walk past the enclosures with no time to really stop and watch fluffy langurs, but maybe this is in their best interest - since the centre focuses on re-wilding, it can’t be that good for the them to have humans staring at them for hours of their day.

The pangolin rehabilitation centre was up next. Pangolins are such unique creatures, the only mammals covered entirely in scales. Unfortunately they are poached for Chinese traditional medicines and food delicacies, like the other endangered animals in this centre. We spoke to an Australian zookeeper who was doing a working holiday at the centre, and they said the centre is pretty world class in terms of the rehabilitation and release work they do. Michelle, who works at the NZ Department of Conservation, reflected on how New Zealand has such different challenges to countries like Vietnam. On the one hand, we don't have issues with widespread poaching or cultural clashes around traditional medicines and culinary delicacies. On the other, Vietnam can release a healthy animal back into the wild and let nature do its thing, whereas we have to invest in extensive active management (pest trapping, culling, etc.) because of our vulnerable flora and fauna had evolved in archipelagic isolation.

We forgot the memo that pangolins are nocturnal, so we didn't see any. But the centre also had carnivores, and we did see two jungle cats and an Owston’s Palm Civet, both endangered by poaching and being kept as exotic pets.

We continued biking up into the national park, towards a prehistoric cave where ancient humans had once lived. The ride was glorious, with undulating hills the deeper you got into the forest. There was a paved path the entire way, which made it very accessible (even though we weren't stoked that it enabled cars to hoon past us at speed). We turned back after the cave and coasted back to the entrance. The day was heating up, and Michelle described the breeze downhill being like standing in front of a hair dryer.

Back on the road, we soon realised that we now had no cash, there were no ATMs, and nowhere - no convenience store, cafe, or restaurant - seemed to take card. We were low on water on another blistering day, unwilling to risk diarrhoea with tap water, and unable to afford a 30 cent bottle.

Eventually we found a random electronics store on the side of a dusty thoroughfare that did cash out for a “very high fee” of $2 NZD. We sat in a nearby air-conditioned convenience store for half an hour, consuming copious snacks and drinks (I sat by the refrigerated section with my head inside). After this, we finally got our lunch, at 4pm, at a beautiful open air restaurant that served a mean Cơm Rang Dưa Bò (crispy fried rice with marinated beef and pickled veges). With only one accommodation option in the area (sad/dingy/possibly closed), we made the call to go all the way back to Tam Coc, even if it would later mean ~20 km in the dark on a main highway.

For the first 10 kms after the late lunch, Michelle's route-finding took us through some gorgeous back roads parallel to the motorway. Here, flat rice paddies made way for rolling hills covered in spiky little ground-level bushes, planted in neat rows as far as the eye could see. We exclaimed when we realised it was a pineapple plantation, with a tiny green fruit forming at the centre of each bush!

After this dazzling golden hour, we had to leave the farm tracks and join back to the big arterial route. The next two hours was gritted teeth on a highway. A lasting image in my mind is Michelle cycling on the shoulder next to a huge truck piled high with ripe pineapples, wafting diesel fumes with notes of tropicana. With only one front light between us, we stuck on each other's tail in the dark, among weaving motorcyclists and honking cars. We agreed afterwards that we both found it quite exhilarating and were very well matched in terms of both speed and risk tolerance!

We sped downhill through the bright lights of Tam Diep, and made it to one of the many accommodation options in Tam Coc, a place called Moon An Bungalow. We were hysterical with joy to have made it, trudging past amused guests covered in mud. Again, the only option available was apparently the honeymoon suite, complete with heart-shaped photo spot, bathtub, and fluffy white bathrobe (singular, for some reason). Perhaps an upsell, but we didn't care (it was only ~$25 NZD per person) and couldn't have been more ecstatic.

Day 4: Tam Coc back to Hanoi

Having had a good sleep and hand-washed all the mud and sweat out of our clothes, we spent the day on a small farewell lap around Tam Coc before returning our bikes.

As we picked out random small roads on the map to explore, we came across a family-owned silk factory, a farm with water buffalo, and goats grazing at the base of one the cliffs.

Soon it was time to return our bikes and get back on the bus to Hanoi. According to Michelle's Ride with GPS, we'd covered around 150 km over the four days, with around 1250m elevation. We celebrated back in town with some pampering including a massage.

Day 5: City sights & leaving

On our last day in Vietnam, we visited the Ho Chi Minh Museum. At the entrance, there was airport-style security and a production line of visitors being herded through a one-way path through the grounds. When we got to attraction number 1, the imposing mausoleum of revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh, our tourist curse struck again. We didn’t have enough cash for the entrance fee (the price was double what we’d read online). Rather than re-doing the path and security screening to an ATM in the oppressive heat, we begged the American tourists behind us in line for the NZ$2 that we were short (they were very nice).

What we certainly were not expecting of the mausoleum was a solemn single-file walk through a silent building. At the heart of the dark corridors in a still, large room, was the literal embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh, gently suffused with light in a glass box (do you call it a box?). There were four armed soldiers at each corner. The line was required to keep moving and whole process took about 5 minutes. Many Vietnamese people including schoolchildren were there to pay their respects.

The next stops on our involuntary one-way tour was the modest former residence of Ho Chi Minh, then the museum proper. A separate entrance ticket required, and of course we still didn’t have the cash, so we gave up on trying to be good tourists and left to go to a hipster cafe ft. oat matcha and Vietnamese egg coffee.

Michelle left for her earlier flight to Brisbane 🥹. My flight out to Frankfurt was at 1:30am. I spent the rest of the day wandering around Hoàn Kiếm Lake and writing down my thoguhts about this trip at an internet cafe, surrounded by 17 year old boys shouting at their screens (ft. air conditioning).

The way to the internet cafe was via a Green SM moped taxi, like an Uber or Grab, but all electric vehicles and highly vetted drivers. It was very fun - all the street-level interactions and refreshing wind chill of cycling, none of the sweaty exertion, and the silent smoothness of an electric moped. I enjoyed it so much that briefly considered catching another to the airport which would have been a 40 minute ride on the motorway. But then I looked up the road casualty rate in Vietnam which put me off (17.7 fatalities per 100,000; NZ has 5.1, Germany 3.3, UK 2.6, and countries that prioritise good public & active transport infrastructure like Japan, Singapore, and Sweden are on 2.1). I took the local bus instead.