March 9-12
Beautiful Halong Bay
On the morning of March 9th, we boarded a private bus for our trip out to Halong Bay. Before we even left the city though, we made one of the most meaningful stops on our journey; the Blue Dragon Children's foundation. Blue Dragon was founded by an Australian school teacher named Michael Brosowski back in 2002 after he came to teach English in Hanoi and befriended some street kids. He soon realized that these kids were smart and hard working but had no way to break out of the system that kept them on the streets. With another school teacher friend he started tutoring these boys in English. The boys were so eager to learn that they expanded the lessons to things like Art and Math as well. That was ten years ago. Today, Blue Dragon has a residence, a school and a staff of 44 people. The foundation has now expanded to the point that they have:
Sent 2,360 kids back to school and training
Provided accommodation to 114 girls and boys
Served 251,729 meals
Built or repaired 51 homes for families
Distributed 33,466 litres of milk
Handed out 29,814 kilos of rice
Reunited 99 runaway children with their families
Taken 878 kids to a doctor or hospital
Put 5 teens through drug rehab
Obtained legal registration papers for 781 children
Rescued 160 trafficked children
Placed 72 teens in jobs
Played 1063 games of soccer!
The most poignant stories we heard were those of the kids who had been trafficked. In many cases these young boys and girls were taken to a city where they didn't speak the local language so they could not ask for help. There they were beaten and forced to work all night either in factories or on the streets. In 2005 Michael and the Blue Dragon team staged their first raid to save a boy who had been trafficked to Ho Chi Minh City. Now, with the help of lawyers and police, Blue Dragon's team regularly stages raids on these trafficker's businesses and brings the kids back to their family or to the Blue Dragon Residence. There they go to school and learn trades and skills that will allow them to lead productive lives in a safe environment.
Our visit was wonderful. We got a tour of the facilities from James, a Londoner who is now the communications director for Blue Dragon. Then we sat down and had breakfast with a group of the kids who live at the facility. Each of the kids introduced themselves and told us their age and then helped us out with a Vietnamese language lesson. We learned how to say "Hello" "Thank you" and even "Oh My God! That's too expensive!!" It was fun and heartwarming and it made me even more grateful that I've been blessed with this life. Before leaving we made a donation and bought some crafts that the kids had made. If you would like to learn more about Blue Dragon Children's Foundation, you can see the CNN Heroes segment on Michael Brosowski here:
www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/05/12/cnnheroes.brosowski.street.children
Or you can go to their website:
www.streetkidsinvietnam.com
After our visit to Blue Dragon, we boarded the bus again and drove for a few hours until it was time for a pit stop. The place we stopped at was a ceramics village where they have been making ceramics for hundreds of years. We got a tour of the facility and watched them fire the kilns and paint the pots and dishes. Then we sat down for a cup of tea and some homemade peanut brittle. Delicious! I bought a few little things that would travel well and we headed back to the bus for the rest of our drive to Halong Bay.
The woman painting the ceramics can finish 40 of these in a day.
The kiln is still fired with wood
Halong Bay was amazing; the Unesco World Heritage site is an array of hundreds of limestone Islands in an emerald green bay dotted with Vietnamese fishing boats. We boarded our boat for our overnight trip and settled in for lunch. Lunch was fabulous. We had spring rolls, fish cakes, a sesame coated pork dish, squid with sautéed vegetables and of course, rice.
The delicious lunch on the boat.
The rooms were bigger than I had expected
Shaun and Lorenzo up on deck. Lorenzo was very excited for our boat trip!
That afternoon the boat dropped us off at one of the amazing limestone caves that are scattered throughout Halong Bay. This one was absolutely huge, stretching through three caverns for what seemed like a mile. There were huge stalagmites and stalactites and amazing natural formations like a rock that looked like a big turtle. We explored the caves with hundreds of other tourists and then headed back to the boat.
One of the beautiful caves
Back on the boat we cruised around for a while before pulling up to a group of fishing boats. There, the chef jumped over to the fishing boats and picked out some things that we would have with our dinner that night. Talk about fresh! So the chef went about preparing a huge feast for us while we all ordered up some beers and settled in for the night.
Dinner was another feast! Giant prawns, more spring rolls, stuffed crabs, sauteed cabbage, grilled fish, chicken and more. The only strange thing was the music. While we ate dinner, they were playing a series of Abba videos on the TV in the background. The videos were all from the seventies so they had on lots of shiny outfits and bad seventies hair to go with it. I must admit, I totally love Abba, so it was fantastically awesome in my opinion. I thought that was where the strangeness would end, but there was more to come!
After dinner and a few more beers they fired up the Karoake machine and it was game on!! Almost everyone participated and the song choices were really bad so that just made it more hilarious. I did "Like a Virgin" and a bad rendition of "Don't cry for me Argentina". Shaun did "The Final Countdown" by Europe and "Don't Speak, by No Doubt. Some of the other fabulous acts that night included Carl doing the Tom Jones classic "Delilah", Lorenzo doing "Papa Don't Preach" and Aidan and Nikita doing Spice Girls "Wannabe". And of course, we ended the whole night with a group rendition of "We Are the World". There were definitely a few moments when I just shook my head and wondered how on earth I ended up singing Like a Virgin on a boat in the middle of Halong Bay with twelve strangers. Well actually, at this point we had already crossed the line from strangers to friends. You get to know each other pretty quickly when you have crazy experiences like this!
Shaun doing The Final Countdown
Aidan and Nikita, aka the spice girls
The big "We are the World" finale
The next morning we arrived back in port and boarded the bus again back to Hanoi. We were heading to Hue on an overnight train but we had most of the afternoon to kill. Intrepid had arranged two day rooms for us to use, so we got to Hanoi, ate lunch at a fabulous place called Koto and then headed back to the hotel to shower up.
The overnight train was not nice, but it was better than some I've taken. We had three cabins for the group with 4 berths each, so Shaun and I took a cabin with Meredith and Nikita. Soon Aidan joined us and we played a few rounds of cards until everyone got sleepy. Then we rolled out our sleep sacks and hopped into our respective berths. Personally, I've had too many sleepless nights on trains over the years, including a terrible night on the train from Vienna to Berlin in December, so I was not taking any chances. I took an ambien and crawled under the covers.
Meredith, Aidan and Shaun on the overnight train to Hue
In the morning I was quite happy I had taken the ambien. Most of my fellow travelers had not gotten much sleep, but I was totally well rested and ready for the day. We boarded another Intrepid bus to take us to our hotel in Hue, a place called Thai Binh 2. It was another good sized room in a good location for sightseeing. We checked in and the group split up breakfast. Shaun and I joined Kerri, Nikita, Katrina and Pam at a place close to the hotel called the Mandarin where the specialty was Vietnamese pancakes. I ordered the savory one, which was crispy and served with little pieces of pork, shrimp and bean sprouts on top, but most everyone else got the sweet ones with bananas and chocolate. The restaurant is owned by a guy named Mr Cu who is also an award winning photographer. A few of the girls bought photos while we were there and he gave us all a postcard for free. The whole experience was very nice!
After breakfast we unpacked and most folks napped for a while before we met up for sightseeing. We started with lunch at a place called Ushi, which was where we had yet another fabulous meal of Caramel Shrimp and Lemongrass Chicken with Chilis. Then we headed just out of town to the Citadel, a huge complex which houses the Imperial city and inside that, the Purple Forbidden City. It was the former home of the Emperor, and although the buildings sustained lots of damage during the many wars here, it is still quite beautiful.
The group was a bit tired at the start of our sightseeing
The entryway to the Imperial Palace
One of the groundskeepers riding an elephant down the street
Love all the dragons around here
Even with all the damage it was still very pretty
We spent most of the afternoon exploring the grounds before heading back into the city. Dinner that night was at a place called Golden Rice. It was my only forgettable meal of the first week, a chicken curry dish that was extremely bland. Shaun on the other hand had beef cooked in Bamboo, which was both interesting to look at and delicious.
Yummy beef in Bamboo
The next day was a day I will never forget. Intrepid tours include a lot of activities, but sometimes there are optional "extra" activities that you can do. Today's option was a motorbike ride through Hue. Having watched the motorbikes whizzing around Vietnam for a week, I was pretty scared to take a tour on one, but I was more afraid to miss out on the experience. So we walked out into the street where there seven bikes waiting for us. The drivers walked up and put helmets on us and then Bon gave us a few tips on safety. Finally, the drivers got on the bikes and we hopped on back and we were off!
Our crazy biker gang riding through the rice paddies
The countryside was beautiful
We got a demonstration of the farm tools used in the olden days to dry, husk and grind the rice
As they say in Vietnamese, Oi Choi Oi!!!! (Oh my God!) I thought I was going to have a heart attack the entire time. While the 5 smart people from our group took a bus from place to place with Bon, the seven of us were flying through the streets of Hue, around corners, through intersections with no traffic lights, dodging cars and bikes and people and even dogs! It was total insanity. The one highlight for me though was the kids. The little kids here all know the word hello, so as we wound our way through the little alleys, they would all run out to the street yelling "Hello! Hello! Hello!" Some of them would even high five us as we went by. It was hilarious.
Our stops along the way that day were the Tomb of Tu Duc and the Thien Mu Pagoda. They were both quite lovely and peaceful and a welcome respite from the crazy city streets. Between each stop we would get back on the motorbikes and ride on, like some sort of nutty Vietnamese/American biker gang. I got a little less scared each time, but I know that my fellow riders enjoyed their rides more than I did. I'm still trying to break through my little fears and phobias, but some things come easier than others. Either way, I'm glad I did it. In retrospect, its much less terrifying!
Scenes from the Tomb of Tu Duc
That afternoon we dropped the bikes off by the river and said goodbye to our drivers. Then we boarded a dragon boat for a lunch cruise up the river run by a husband and wife team. Lunch was very nice, a big assortment of fish, chicken, beef, pork, veggies and of course, spring rolls. Then the fun started. Everyone here wants to sell you something and this was no exception. When the wife saw me looking at the assortment of silk clothing they had, it only took about two minutes before she had literally dressed me up in a red silk shirt and some kind of silk pant/skirt. Then she started the bargaining process. I never really even intended to purchase anything but once she started, I just ended up going with it. I got the whole outfit for around 25 bucks. If nothing else it will be fun for Halloween or the Asian dinner parties that I will definitely be throwing once we are gainfully employed again!
Hanging out on the dragon boat
And hanging out some more!
That night we ate dinner at a place called the Royal Palace. It was hilarious! We all had to put on traditional royal dress and parade upstairs where we were seated at a table with a pair of thrones at the head. We picked David and Shirley to be the King and Queen and they were excellent, calling us the royal subjects and making toasts with rice wine. The food was good, not the best we have had, but certainly the prettiest. They made birds out of turnips and carrots and flowers out of scallions. As we ate we were serenaded by a band playing and singing traditional folk music. It was quite the scene.
I felt like I was married to the Pope!
Our king and queen for the night
The food was beautiful!
Eating dinner in our silly costumes
After we finished dinner we headed out to a bar called Brown Eyes, where we played Jenga and tried some Vietnamese Mojitos. Everyone was pretty tired from our big day out though, so we didn't stay too long. The next morning we were up early and Shaun and I joined Bon, Carl and Aidan for a traditional noodle soup breakfast. I had mine with duck and Shaun had his with beef, pork and crab. Delicious! It was a good base to get our day started. We were leaving Hue and headed to Hoi An. From everything we had heard, Hoi An was a much quieter city than Hue or Hanoi so we were all pretty excited for this leg of the trip. I had enjoyed our time so far but the idea of a peaceful lantern lit town on river sounded great to me!
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