Hello Hanoi, Vietnam!

On Friday, January 16, we loaded up our stuff and flew from Da Nang to Hanoi, Vietnam.

The Trip

The trip to get to Hanoi was rather uneventful.  The flight left about 10:15 in the morning and arrived in Hanoi just before noon.  We took a Grab (Asia's version of Uber/Lyft) from our AirBnB to the airport in Da Nang.  We got to the airport around 7 AM or so and had to wait until 8 AM to check our bags since check-in was not yet open for our flight.

Even though our luggage is carry-on size, we check it because we are both above the weight limit for carry-on luggage.  The good news is the cost of checking a bag is usually around $15 in this part of the world.

We flew Vietnam Airlines, a first for us.  We were in line to check our bags before they opened for service.  There were many of us already waiting.  When it was time for them to begin service, the airline employees walked in front of the counter and bowed to us simultaneously.  Then they went around the counter and began helping us.  I thought that was a nice touch. It reminded me of when we flew JAL (Japan Airlines) and the ground crew bowed to the plane as we pushed out of the gate to leave.  So polite.  I am a fan of the bowing.

Our Accommodations

Our AirBnB is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, selected specifically to be in the heart of the action.  While the area is touristy, it feels like it has maintained some of its authenticity in that it appears many locals are in this area are simply living their lives. For example, many of the locals come out and buy their meat and produce right on the street.  You can find a touristy restaurant right next to someone selling whole chickens (with the feet on!). Also, there is a small lake in the heart of the Old Quarter and every day we have been there (it is a lovely place to walk), there are locals dressed in traditional clothing taking pictures for Tet, their lunar new year coming up February 17. It is nice that it is not mostly tourists in the old part of town.

The lake in the Old Quarter - if you zoom in, you can see the young girls in traditional clothing preparing to take pictures right next to the lake.

Our AirBnB comes with weekly house cleaning and laundry service at no additional cost.  That is a handy thing to have.  We are not staying in a particularly upscale place.  But it's not a dump either.

Hanoi

We have been in Hanoi ten days now. How do I describe Hanoi? "Frenetic" is the best word I can come up with.  The streets are absolutely the craziest I have seen.  Blaise has heard that Ho Chi Min City (formerly Saigon) is Hanoi on steroids and that is surprising to me.

Crossing the street here is an art in and of itself.  Most of the time, you just have to step out into the street with faith that you will get across safely.  That's a hard place to get to in your head!  There are definitely more motorcycles than cars and no one is really going very fast.  And as the pedestrian, you never look any of the riders/drivers in the eye.  They WILL slow down for you and let you cross but it is a game of Frogger, as it was in Da Nang - only crazier.

Hanoi is also very clearly more French influenced than Da Nang.  There are some parts of Hanoi where you might think you are in Paris and not Vietnam.

Shockingly, it is cleaner than Da Nang.

The people in Hanoi are just as lovely as the people in Da Nang but there is not as much "we are glad you are here" statements.  Actually, we have had none of that.  That is probably because we are in an area where foreigners are plentiful.

If you go to the little lake in the Old Quarter, there are people, mostly children, that ask you to talk to them in English so they can practice.  Last Sunday, we had a father come up with three girls and ask if they could practice their English.  It was 2 sisters and a cousin; the youngest and most animated being 5 years old. Yesterday (also Sunday) we talked to twin boys, age 10.  They were quite the nose pickers and booger eaters. After that, I was not so keen on talking to the children anymore - I really didn't want to watch them pick their noses again.  I am sure I will do it again, once I work past my issues with that.

The lake in the Old Quarter - this is a temple on a little island in the lake.

The Buses

We have taken the buses several times already.  They are clean, although not as spotless as the buses in Da Nang but are much more used than those in Da Nang.  The most we have paid for a one-way trip is 12,000 dong each, which is about 46 cents.

A few days ago, we were on a bus with the craziest bus drive we have experienced anywhere in the world.  I think his goal was to drive his route the fastest he possibly could.  He did not stop at every stop like the other bus drivers we have had in Hanoi.  The doors to the bus would open and close only fast enough to let someone on or off and he would be driving off as the doors were closing.  And he was a horn honker.  I would not have wanted to be a motorcycle in front of him.  He would lay on the horn until whomever was in front of him had moved out of his way. I have never had a more horn-hocking bus driver than this guy.  He kinda scared me.  At one point, the driver turned around and said something to Blaise in me in Vietnamese but we had no idea what he was saying. He was looking right at us so we knew he was talking to us but we had no clue.  If it wasn't "hello" or "thank you" in Vietnamese, we wouldn't know what was said.

We still like taking the bus; it gives us a chance to experience the lives of the locals. We are obviously not locals, but we like to live like a local as much as possible.

Activities While Here

We have seen the mausoleum of Ho Chi Min, train street, and wandered extensively in the Old Quarter.

On Thursday, we are going to see a water puppet show.  This is supposed to be a cultural show native to this area.  I am not sure what other parts of the world have water puppets.  I am looking forward to it.

The water puppet theater. This is right next to the lake in the Old Quarter.  On the left is a vertical set of windows with a puppet in each window.  There are a couple water puppet theaters but my research says this is supposed to be the best.

Our other plan (which we have not yet booked) is a 2 night cruise in Lan Ho Bay.  We were originally going to do Halong Bay, but our understanding is that Halong Bay is too overrun by tourist boats. Lan Ho Bay is supposed to be a quieter, more natural experience.

We are tossing around some other ideas.  We will be here until February 16, a rather unfortunate day to leave since Tet is February 17.

Next Locations

On February 16, we leave for Cambodia to check off a bucket list item - Angkor Wat.  We will be there for 2 weeks and until just the other day, that is all we had booked out.

Now we have booked our flight from Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur on March 2.  We will stay in an AirBnB there (already booked) until March 30.

The rest of the trip is not booked so it is subject to change but as of right now the plan is to go to Osaka, Japan to see the cherry blossoms.  We will stay there about a week and then head to South Korea, where we will stay until just a day or two before we catch our cruise to Alaska.

I can't believe we are already looking at nailing down the last month of our trip. It seems like just yesterday we got on Ovation of the Seas to begin this adventure.

Added Benefit of Trip

One of the great benefits of this trip is getting healthier.  We are walking anywhere between 4 and 9 miles a day.  Some days it is a little less than 4 miles but only a handful of days in a month.

We are also eating less (not snacking much at all) and healthier.

I didn't weigh myself until 6 or 7 weeks into this trip but since I have been weighing myself, I have lost 28 pounds.  This is the first time in I don't know how long, I have been able to lose weight without some sort of medical intervention.

I can tell my stamina has increased - I can walk much farther these days without a break.  Since the weather at our last few locations has been rather mild, it will be interesting to see once we hit places like Cambodia and Kuala Lumpur, if I will be able to handle the heat better. Fingers crossed!

Let me know if you have any questions about Vietnam.  I am happy to answer them.

Life in Vietnam

 Happy New Year!

Yes, I am saying it even though we are 11 Days into 2026.

I haven't had much to post about in the past couple of weeks.  We have simply been living, walking a whole lot, seeing sights on foot, and taking the bus from time to time. I've been posting pictures periodically on Facebook to document all that.

We did do a couple of tours in the past few days so I will talk about those first.

Ba Na Hills

We call this banana hills because sometimes you see it as Ba Na and others Ba Na Na.  It is very much a tourist sight with an amusement park.  The smart thing they did with the amusement park is some of it is inside and some is outside.  Since it gets really really hot here, I thought that was smart. But if it were me since I hate the heat so much, I would have shoved the whole thing inside.

What was not smart was choosing to pay for a tour to get there, which we did. The tour gave us 3 hours at the amusement park but the outside part was closed because of the fog.  But even if it was open, I'm not sure we would have spent 3 hours there.

What you really go there to do is to ride the longest cable car system in Asia and to see and walk on the Golden Bridge.  They had a beautiful garden up there too but you didn't really need a tour guide for this.

The Golden Bridge - the main reason we took this tour - it is said these are God's hands lifting us up

If we had to do it again, we would have taken a Grab up there and back for $14ish (one way, so $28 for the round-trip) and done it on our own.

As a result of this revelation, we are testing a new theory from here on out.  If there is no historical significance to the trip or special knowledge needed to either navigate or understand where we are going, we will not buy/do a tour - we will just get there on our own.

The views from the cable car once the fog lifted were stunning, the Golden Bridge was cool, and the garden was beautiful, so I would say the trip was worth it.  It's just that a tour guide can add no value to the trip.

The best picture I was able to take on the way down after the fog lifted.  The glare from the glass in the car was too much to get any really good pictures.

I really like this picture of us in the garden

Hue and the Imperial Palace

We took this tour yesterday.

Vietnam's last monarchy ranged from 1802 to 1945.  It was the Nguyen dynasty.  During this time the capital city was Hue (pronounced Way or Hway - with a little hhh at the beginning - I'm not sure which one - it's hard to tell).

The Imperial Castle is in Hue so we took a tour to see it.

Part of the tour was a train ride to Hue.  We chose this tour because we had heard the views from the train are beautiful and that proved to be true.  It was a comfortable train and the ride lasted about two and half hours.

A view from the train ride to Hue

We had a great tour guide who provided historical context for everything we saw.  We visited three sites:  the Imperial Palace, a Buddhist pagoda, and the 12th king's tomb/mausoleum. (There were 13 kings under the Nguyen dynasty.)

We learned about 50% of the people in Vietnam have the last name Nguyen because many people during the Nguyen dynasty took the last name of the king to show their allegiance. That is why it is such a common Vietnamese last name.  I did not know this.

Imperial Palace

The palace was gorgeous.  Every time I look at these palaces, I think of all the money it takes to create such a home and wonder what the living situation was for the common people of the country during that period of time. But it sure was purty.

Outside of the palace

13th Century Buddhist Pagoda

Us outside of the 13th century Buddhist pagoda

Our second visit was to a pagoda build in the 13th century.  It was amazing but the big story for this site was the blue car stored behind the pagoda. In 1963, a Buddhist monk from Hue, drove this blue car from Hue to Saigon and set himself on fire in front of the Cambodian embassy to protest President Ngo Dinh Diem's policies supporting only Catholicism and attempting to shut down Buddhists' ability to worship.  The monk traveled from Hue to Saigon because he believed if he set himself on fire in Hue, no one would report on it thus not bringing world attention to the problem.

I will not post the picture of him on fire - you can Google that and see it. It is fairly gruesome and maybe you have already seen the picture.  The house the actual car the monk drove from Hue to Saigon behind the pagoda for all to see and to remember his sacrifice for religious freedom in Vietnam.

The name of the monk was Thich Quang Duc.

The car driven from Hue to Saigon

King #12's Burial Site

Our last visit of the day was to King #12's mausoleum.  I say King #12 because that is what our tour guide called him.  It is a rather grand mausoleum built by the King who increased taxes by 30% just to pay for it.

It was most certainly grand - and this from a King who admitted he was a bad king.

Other things of note about this King:  He became a drug addict and died in 1926 of tuberculosis at a rather young age. While he preferred the company of men, he did have a wife with which he slept with only once solely to produce a male heir.

Overall, this was a great trip filled with Vietnam history pre-independence AND pre- what we call the Vietnam War.

There were multiple levels to this burial site.  This is from the bottom looking up to the first level.  The actual burial is at the top level.

Entrance at the top to where King #12 is buried

Finally! After all those steps and all those edifices, here is where he is buried.  Our tour guide is to the right in the picture.

Life in Vietnam

Here are some new observations of Vietnamese life and culture . . .

1.    We still find the people here so very welcoming.  We have had multiple people thank us for visiting their country.  The kids are the best!  The kids will come up to you, ask you your name and where you are from - all in English.  We have found if people speak English, they want to talk to you in English.  If they don't speak English, they never seem put out at all by your inability to speak their language.  Many will pull out their phones and Google translate.  They WANT to interact with us and really go out of their way to make us feel welcome here.  Sometimes it feels like we are kind of a show because we look so different  - being white, Western, and tall.  There is some staring that happens. But it doesn't bother me. They are in no way rude about it. To be fair, I am tall at home.  I can only imagine how I must look to them - most Vietnamese are fairly short compared to me.

2.    We have taken the bus many times and they are always clean and not nearly as crowded as buses in Italy.  In Italy, buses are often crowded and you have to stand.  We have never had to stand on a bus here.  Sometimes the buses have just a bus driver but other times, they have a bus driver and a conductor.  If there is a conductor, he or she takes your money and if there isn't one, the bus driver has to take your money.  In any case, the bus driver, conductor, AND the passengers are so very friendly and helpful.  I really can't say enough about how welcoming the Vietnamese are.

The only downside about the buses is sometimes you may have to wait a while for the bus to show up. Today we waited 30 minutes for bus #16. Finally bus #13 stopped and we were told to get on when we told them we were waiting for #16.  I'm not sure what that was about but the bus took us right to where we wanted to be dropped off.

3.    We have found that many services of the same variety congregate on the same street.  We have what I call the produce street.  Then there is the laundry street, the barber street, and the pig street - where you see whole pigs roasting.

Here is one of the pigs on pig street.  I think part of him is already missing.

4.    Crossing any street here when there is no traffic light is a whole thing.  You can't do like you do at home and wait for a break in the traffic.  You have to Frogger across. Rush and stop. Rush and stop.  Sometimes a car or motorcycle will yield to you. Eventually you will get across unscathed.  The more you do it, the easier it is.  I think one of the big differences here is people are not driving distracted like they are at home. I certainly wouldn't try this in the U.S.  I don't think drivers pay enough attention to the road for you not to get hit.

5.    The words in Vietnamese are short.  I am not sure I have seen a word more than 5 or 6 letters long.  Six letters would be a really long word here.  I think they can have such short words because they have lots of symbols that go above letters.  Compare this to Thailand, where the words are SOOOOO long.  And someone told us they don't have breaks between words and sentences in Thai.

6.    I am not impressed with the cleanliness of the streets in Da Nang.  Especially after seeing Hue yesterday.  Hue was so very clean but Da Nang needs to do something about their trash pickup.  People litter here and the trash on the sides of the road pile up.  The trash is grouped up together like it is waiting to be picked up.  Some people are really good about sweeping and cleaning up in front of their establishments and others are not.  Contrast the streets of Da Nang with the beach here. The beach is very clean.

7.    Even the people from the U.S. here will start talking to you.  We met a woman who looked like she was in here 20's from California who had been living here for several years.  Her parents were immigrants from Vietnam so she was of Vietnamese heritage.  We were just sitting on a bench resting before our walk home.  She was walking her dog and stopped to ask us where we were from, in perfect Americanized English.  Her dog was a husky, Nala, and was 12 years old. Yep, we got to pet Nala! We got the impression she was here with her parents although she never said.  She works for an American company who has an office here in Da Nang.

The other day at our usual morning coffee shop, we met a man from Abilene, Texas. He and his wife own a salon in Abilene but are from here.  He was here because his father passed away so he came back to pay his respects.  You could tell the death was weighing on him but he really wanted to talk to us.

We also met a guy from Detroit and Houston.  He claimed them both.  He is living here with his Vietnamese wife that he met here.

All of these conversations were initiated by the other person, not us.  It is not like we are unfriendly but we just don't go around talking to everyone.

8.    They are really stingy here with their napkins.  We have found this to be the case almost everywhere since we landed in Tokyo.  When they do have napkins, you are lucky if they are as big as a cocktail napkin.  Conversely, they are quite generous with plastic bags.  Americans are not going to save the world from the woes of plastic and styrofoam so long as this part of the world uses and discards as much as they do.

Stomach Problems

On New Year's Day, I got sick again.  I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible stomach cramps and was sick for about 2 days.  The only thing Blaise and I can come up with is that the night before, when we shared a dish at a restaurant, I had ice for my drink and he did not.  I'm thinking the restaurant used tap water for their ice.  If that is the case, I don't think that is a common practice here since we get ice in our coffee drinks all the time and nothing happens.

Weather

The weather here continues to be wonderful.  We have had some rainy days here and there but nothing too bad.  The day we went to Ba Na Hills was one of the yucky days and the first time I really felt chilly here. The low temps are normally in the mid 60's and the highs are anywhere from 70-75.  Absolutely lovely!

Next Steps

Friday we leave Da Nang and fly to Hanoi.  We are staying at another AirBnB there.  We will be there for a month after which we head to Cambodia for 2 weeks solely to see Angkor Wat. Yes, I know it won't take us 2 weeks to see Angkor Wat but we do want to get a feel for the culture there before we leave.

We have nothing booked beyond there but we think we will spend a month after that in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, heading on after that to Japan for the cherry blossoms, then to South Korea.  Our cruise back to the states is our hard out - it leaves May 9 from Tokyo.