Vietnam from North to South. Two Different Realities - December 2004

Budapest - Istambul

2:10 PM we're in the taxi to the airport where at 4:45 our flight to Istanbul awaits us. To be nice and fresh, rested and ready for the next 24 hours of travel (if all goes well!)... last night we slept in our little apartment in Budapest. This morning Matteo and Carlotta were woken by the sound of our furious argument.... caused by the fact that "I" forgot at home the sweatshirt and the waterproof jacket that Giampaolo had chosen for the trip. In the end everything calms down and (as always) we make do with what there is and..... a positive note (there's always a positive note in everything): we set off lighter!

Istambul - Bangkok - Hanoi

After a wonderful trip with Turkish Airlines, which offered good service as well as an appreciable cuisine without too many spices and strange flavors (fresh little salads and, to the delight of my children, this morning even spinach!), we arrived in Bangkok at 13:10 (07:00 our time). The wait at Istanbul international airport was also pleasant, which, I must say, turned out to be a surprise for its modernism, the elegant yet at the same time cheerful environment (style of London's Terminal 3) and with lots of pubs, music, lights, sparkling shops, etc. Having landed in Bangkok, we automatically head toward baggage claim (and there we walked our first couple of kilometers...) but once we get close we realize that to collect our luggage we have to go through passport control.

However, we're in transit and if we go through passport control to re-enter we have to spend 10 euros each (Thai departure taxes), plus the Bangkok agency from which I bought the plane tickets to Hanoi online (they cost about 40% less than the prices you can find in Europe) also advised me not to go out... So let's first worry about picking up the tickets. Appointment at Terminal "A" - International Departures - Post Office - ask for Mr. Jack -...... who knows where he is? Bangkok Airport is huge. A little electric service cart goes by..... I take the opportunity to ask for information and HOW GREAT!!! They give us a ride. After another couple of kilometers back (this time fortunately motorized) they drop us off in front of an elevator: Post Office on the Floor Below! We arrive at the Post Office (by now it's almost 14:30).... Mr. Jack isn't there... he's gone.

Fine, and our tickets? Also, strange custom that an agency delivers tickets at a post office, no?! By now everyone expects some kind of problem. Only I am confident. Matteo laughs! After a couple of phone calls the clerk redirects us to another post office.......another kilometer on foot with my limping leg (due to a ruinous fall down the stairs 2 weeks before leaving..). We pick up (to my great satisfaction) the tickets for Hanoi and then we head to the Thai offices (who knows where our luggage ended up and what the procedure will be to recover it?). The Thai Offices are exactly where we came from before (another long walk back). They check us in and assure us that they'll take care of everything for the luggage. HOW GREAT! The plane leaves at 17:45 and the Gate is 33... guess where it is???? A couple of kilometers back...

practically where we were this morning! At 15:30 we sit down in a mediocre little restaurant to drink and eat something while waiting for departure. At 17:00 we watch the perfect and very long loading of luggage (let's hope ours is there too) containers, etc. onto the plane. Carlotta and I even take a nice photo of the Thai Boeing. At 17:45 the plane slowly makes its way toward the runway. The captain gives the usual greetings, after which he revs the engines to the max but.... a few seconds later everything goes silent and we head back. The captain apologizes and informs us that the plane isn't working properly and that we'll therefore be switching aircraft! Good thing he noticed before taking off. While they transfer the luggage, containers, etc.

from one plane to another, they serve us dinner! At 19:40 they transfer us onto the other plane, which also has little decorative paper birds (like Origami) hanging from the ceiling.. NICE.. At 20:00 we roll again toward the runway (let's hope this one works properly)... but muffled noises can be heard from under the plane.... so much so that a Thai passenger calls the flight attendant... who, after a long consultation, seems to manage to reassure him. Carlotta and I prefer to go with the theory that the worker busy checking the engine stayed attached to the landing gear and is desperately knocking. We laugh. On this plane too they'll serve us a small meal. At 21:40 (we're already past 24 hours!!!) we land - a bit roughly - but in any case we land in Hanoi! It's not raining and that's already a positive thing (the usual positive things).

Passport control is fairly quick (except for Matteo's visa which has some problem we don't understand but the mystery is solved right away, just an error by the Embassy on the exit date). Outside, the taxi sent by the Camellia Hotel is waiting for us (included in the price) complete with a sign bearing our name!! The route from the airport to downtown Hanoi is along a two-lane road with very little traffic. We notice some very tall buildings along the sides of the road (four or five stories) but very narrow (at most the width of a room), typical Vietnamese architecture, a habit caused (it seems) by a sort of municipal tax calculated based on the frontal meters of street frontage occupied. The Hotel isn't bad but the common areas are bleak in the sense that there's no nice place to sit, chat, have a drink........

Moreover my reservation doesn't match, in the sense that the two deluxe doubles aren't available (the ones at 20 USD each with balcony) they have 2 standard doubles left (at 15 dollars) I protest so they show me an available deluxe... Horror!!! Practically identical but with a much worse bathroom... Since it's absurd to pay 5 dollars more for such a dump, we keep the 2 standard doubles and save money too. One on the second and one on the third floor with very steep stairs made specifically for my invalid knee! Once we've settled (or rather dumped!!!) the backpacks in the respective rooms we take a shower (with which our bathroom immediately floods)... then after going up and down the stairs two or three times to ask for towels, to report the flooding, etc.... Matteo and Carlotta sleep and we go looking for a little place to have a drink... and also to see something...

we've been out and about for more than 26 hours and have only seen airports! The impact is strange but nice. We're in the Old Quarter of Hanoi and our street - dimly lit - is full of little bars... more for locals than for tourists... with seats 20 cm high and proportionally tiny tables (very low to the ground)! For tonight it's too much... so we choose a little bar for tourists... Cute and also run by a friendly guy (he'll become our evening little bar for our entire stay in Hanoi). Here we run into a problem we'd already noticed in the taxi from the airport. No one speaks English......... or at least not at conversation level. Around twelve-ten the owners get animated... one goes out to check... the other closes the shutter... We think they want to send us away... But instead they explain... the police check the closing times and...

(this last thing we really struggled to understand) if they break the rules.. as punishment they confiscate some chairs... last night they confiscated two of theirs..?! Strange kind of fines...

Hanoi

After a good sound sleep! (5 hours..) at 7:30 breakfast... Excellent buffet!!! It makes up for the flooded bathroom. I eat the tagliolini!! We let the exhausted kids rest and Giampaolo and I take a walk... First we go to the agency found online (as it happens it's right around the corner) where we have to confirm and pay (sob... sob....) the Mekong tour - the only tour for which we relied on an agency both for time reasons and because it cost much less! -But the agency is still closed... it opens at 9:30... So we go to the Central Station to book the sleeper berths on tomorrow evening's train to Lao Cai. We find the station and also the right counter... except that - minor detail - I haven't withdrawn or exchanged any money yet... so ABOUT FACE! Back to the hotel...

We wake the little ones who have a hearty breakfast, then the happy family sets off on foot; first to look for an ATM (essential), then to the "Mekong" agency where I take the opportunity to also book a car with driver for tomorrow (30 USD). Then by taxi we go back to the station to buy the tickets (for 4 people the taxi turns out to be the cheapest means as well as surprise-free...). At the station I take the opportunity to ask how to book the sleeper berths for Hué that we'll have to take in 5/6 days (but not from Hanoi... from Ninh Binh). After a ten-minute queue at the counter everyone starts cutting in front of me.. I get angry but they ignore me (nice... very gallant!) Giampaolo arrives (he was outside eating baguettes with the kids) and says to me "Are you still there?". I explain... he steps in and they let him through...

NICE! High regard for the female gender and to think that here in Vietnam it seems only women work, they should have a very high sense of respect toward them!. Anyway, for the reservation they announce that it's impossible... you can only book from the various departure stations. In fact, even for Lao Cai they only sold us one-way tickets. But how do you risk not finding a seat if you arrive in Ninh Binh only a few hours before the train departs??... Oh well.. we'll go to an agency in the afternoon. At 11:30 (shameful delay on the schedule) we go to see the Temple of Literature. The garden is very relaxing. On the third photo taken... the light meter stops working (strange, we changed the battery this morning!)... Then we go to lunch at the restaurant "Bar Koto".

It's a restaurant run by a non-governmental organization that takes children off the streets, teaches them a trade and then also finds them good jobs (there's even a photo of a boy in front of the Sofitel Hotel restaurant). BRAVO. And here at least they also speak English, everyone is kind and they work very hard. Giampaolo immediately orders a dish based on MUOC MNON (That little sauce with the acrid smell, made from fermented fish, that has a horrible effect on us Europeans!)... so we get to know it right away! After lunch we take two cyclos (one for me and Carlotta and one for Giampaolo and Matteo). We take a little tour of the center and then have them drop us off at Hoan Kiem Lake, a little lake in the heart of Hanoi from which we start the walking itinerary of the center. The video camera starts acting up! Practically every now and then it freezes....

We see the Chinese House Museum (a house of old Chinese merchants completely restored) and many other things... Among these a very interesting neighborhood market where there's everything, fruit, vegetables, ducks, spices, dried fish..., where they even kill chickens right in front of your eyes, throw them into boiling water and then prepare them for sale... To conclude we pass through the SHOE Street (the historic center of Hanoi has 36 streets, each specialized in a type of craft). On the shoe street we spend half an hour choosing shoes we might buy... Puma Adidas Nike... In the end we buy nothing, promising ourselves to come back tomorrow... Now we hurry because we still have to stop by the agency for the trains and then at 18:30 we have to go to the Water Puppet theater for which we already ordered tickets at the hotel this morning. Train tickets at the agency...

a rip-off (they cost 50% more!) At the water puppet theater (which I thought was performed on the lake, but instead it's inside a real theater, only that instead of a stage there's a large pool of water) we almost almost fall asleep and yawn a lot (jet lag?). We feel bad because they'll think the show isn't enjoyable, but it's actually very beautiful and definitely worth seeing! There's also live traditional music with very particular instruments, one of which looks like a harp, but with only one string! For dinner we decided to go to the Soho restaurant (one of the best seafood restaurants in the capital, which indeed won't disappoint expectations!) However we have the unfortunate idea of taking cyclos for a dollar each.... Arriving at the restaurant we pay our two dollars, they ask us if they should wait for us and we tell them no thanks... we don't even know how long we'll stay...

After an abundant dinner, with a bottle of wine, we go out and outside we find the same two cyclos... We have them take us to the hotel. When we arrive we give them another 2 dollars.... at which point the problem explodes... they want double because they claim they waited for us... (but who told you to?) and then that it was farther (a perfectly identical distance!). Then one of the two starts shouting, throwing our 2 dollars to the ground..... then he picks them up and follows us right inside the hotel (another strange thing... they always leave you about twenty meters before any destination...) At the hotel the fight breaks out... this guy (in my opinion a former Vietcong guerrilla) shouts, rants, says swear words (at least that's what we assume). By now we're adamant about not giving him anything more (it's become a matter of principle).

At a certain point this guy picks up an enormous ceramic vase and threatens to throw it at Giampaolo. I ask the Hotel people to call the police... but they just stand there inert... In the end the thing ends when I pull my cell phone out of my pouch and declare that I'm calling the police. The madman disappears immediately and, at that point, the hotel people comfort us and tell us we're completely right... Beats me?? After all this pandemonium Matteo and Carlotta go to their room and we go to our little bar to have a vodka to wrap up the lively evening, hoping that the "Vietcong guerrilla" from before isn't waiting for us on the street! Tonight we try to converse with our friend at the bar but it's extremely complicated...

for example, to understand whether coins exist (and not just paper bills) we launch into a series of drawings reproducing the bills and then we draw little circles with a question mark next to them.. They don't understand... We show them our local coins as a comparison but... Nothing! Finally a local patron has a flash of insight, he understands! And... he even gives us our first two little coins! The value, in fact, is negligible and perhaps that's why they don't use them. When we get to the hotel we find the kids in our room. They got scared so they decided to sleep with us... In fact, the two single beds in the rooms are practically one-and-a-half-size beds or more, so we fit just fine (we could have saved 15 dollars a night...)

Hanoi - Surroundings - train to Lao Cai

At 7:00 wake-up. Quick packing, paying the bill and leaving the bags at the hotel. At 8:30 our driver arrives with the car, right on time! Before heading outside Hanoi we try to go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (Yesterday afternoon it was already closed)... but unfortunately it's closed this morning too... we settle for seeing the changing of the guard. Then we head 30 km west. First stop the Thai Pagoda. Second stop Tay Phuong. Lots of very steep steps but beautiful temples and a stunning panorama over the rice fields below. After that we go to So village, a craft village where they make rice noodles. We see the various stages of processing from house to house... Here there are no tourists nor people approaching you.

It's all very quiet, we only meet a very kind boy (but he doesn't speak English either so no communication) he gestures us into a small artisan workshop where we turn out to be more of a curiosity to them than their workshop is to us. In my mind I was already savoring a lunch based on noodles produced locally in the village but we're disappointed... there isn't even a little restaurant in the village. It's not an organized tourist place but simply a craft village. We communicate to our driver that before going to the silk village we'd like to eat something... Heaven help us. He takes us to a 100% Vietnamese restaurant where there's neither an English menu nor anyone who speaks a word... They take us into the kitchen (let's not even describe the kitchen) and show us what they have. We point to a chicken and some vegetables... Let's hope for the best...

Half an hour later they bring to the table a half-raw chicken, chopped up with skin, bones, feet, nails, head and innards all together... raw vegetables (those weren't bad) various little sauces and rice... We eat almost nothing. At the entrance bar there's a complete collection of Vietnamese liquors (they sell them by the deciliter, drawing them from large glass containers which inside, as flavoring ingredients, contain: snakes, cobras, scorpions, iguanas, gigantic geckos, or a mix of everything....) We opt for a simple little glass of Hanoi Vodka. Then the owner arrives, all happy to see tourists in his place, and starts photographing us with his super-modern cell phone! We film him! The video camera works better... you just have to hold the battery pressed while filming because otherwise it turns off.

Very CONVENIENT! We pay 8 dollars for four including the driver's meal and the tip and off we go. After a stop at the Ho Chi Minh Trail Museum (closed because it's Sunday), we continue toward the silk village (Van Phuc). The latter is much more touristy than So, there are lots of little bars, nice restaurants, well-restored houses and streets and above all many shops. We visit a couple of workshops and work shops where they work at the loom. The looms are motorized but the preparation for weaving is still entirely manual. We buy the first little gifts to bring to friends and relatives. The prices are very good. Our driver takes us back to the hotel.

We leave the souvenirs in the luggage storage and head to the shoe street where Matteo and Carlotta finally make their purchases! We go to have an aperitif by the lake and then look for a restaurant to refresh ourselves before taking the train. We find a very nice little restaurant with a terrace on the first floor on one of the downtown streets near our hotel. Not elegant but we eat very well and a lot (after today's meal it was just what we needed) and we spend 15 euros for 4! Moreover, no small thing, the owner speaks perfect English! After dinner we rush to the hotel to pick up the bags and take a taxi straight to the station! At 22:30 We're on the train to Lao Cai (Sapa). The train is great fun. It even has a dining car (and us having brought drinks and various things...). Very few tourists. Zero Italians.

We said goodbye to Hanoi a few minutes ago and it's time to make some comments:. "It seemed to us a modern city, much more than we expected, and also clean. Obviously placed in the Asian context. The chaotic street traffic is, in its own way, orderly. If you can forget our highway code, you can say that an organized road system exists. Traffic lights are optional, as is right of way, but if you learn to handle the traffic their way it works. When you cross the streets, for example, it's not you who has to worry about whether someone is coming from the right or the left (also because in that case you'd never cross until late evening) but it's them who make the effort to dodge you. You just have to cross calmly and at a steady pace. It's certain that you'll reach the other side unharmed. What we haven't understood is the yardstick for the cost of living and purchasing power.

We know that a minimum wage is around 25 euros a month and we've noticed that ATMs even dispense the equivalent of just 50 euro cents but, at the same time, for two hundred grams of lychees they want one euro and if you try to haggle they'd rather not sell them to you. At the same time in Hanoi and the surroundings we still haven't noticed much poverty, not at the level of South America or Sri Lanka at least. We haven't seen dirty or poorly dressed children wandering the streets. Very few beggars, not even outside the temples. Prostitution isn't evident but it certainly exists, as does the drug problem, otherwise the existence of all those organizations fighting for children's rights wouldn't make sense. However, we must not forget that we're a family and that therefore it's unlikely that anyone would approach us for strange reasons.

Carlotta too has noticed that here only women work, or rather that the heaviest and most visible jobs are done by women. We've read that even during the Vietnam War they distinguished themselves as soldiers, too bad that afterwards no one ever gave them the recognition they deserved. And what about the people?! Compared to our other experiences in Asia, the people here in Vietnam (in Hanoi at least), are very tough, they smile little. Not that they're standoffish but... Maybe it's the war years, not so distant after all... or maybe more simply they're character-wise more similar to the Chinese people." At 23:30 Giampaolo and I are in the dining car. Matteo and Carlotta are already asleep. I understand them. In two days we've done and seen so many things that even to me it feels like we've been here a week! The compartment is nice.

The air conditioning (fortunately for me) isn't there and anyway it's not needed... The mattresses are decently soft, the beds are wide. There's a bottom sheet, blanket and pillow! Besides a bedside lamp, luggage rack and little table! In the dining car, apart from us and two Australian girls we'll meet more than once during our trip, there are no tourists but only Vietnamese (or Chinese?), after all the railway line is the one that goes to China.

Lao Cai - Sapa

At 7:30 we're on the Jeep taking us to Sapa! The morning has already turned out to be chaotic and stressful enough. First of all at 5:50 they woke us up knocking on the door and shouting LAO CAI LAO CAI... I, who had fallen asleep convinced that the train continued to China, panicked (making quite the scene!) so first of all I tried to ask the conductor how long it stopped (but he understood nothing) so, not to waste any more time, I started fussing, shouting to all my family... "hurry uuuup... we have to get oooff... quicklyyy..." Only after practically throwing Matteo off the train with one shoe in his hand did I notice that in the various compartments of our car everyone was calmly putting on socks, shoes, etc....WHAT A SPECTACLE! (I thought of the old No Alpitur Ahi Ahi Ahi Ahi commercial).

Meanwhile in the rush to pull down the bags the video camera fell, breaking definitively (it broke!)! Anyway we arrived in Lao Cai. Then, since we'd been woken suddenly and gotten off in a rush, without time to go to the toilet, I urgently needed to pee so, despite the Mountain View representative (hotel booked online) - who had come to pick us up - insisting on telling us to follow him, I rushed into the first available bar... And since I had backpacks, photo vest and mega pouch on me and since there was the classic Turkish toilet, to keep my balance, I semi-dislocated a hip and therefore came out of the bathroom limping. After that another problem comes up... The Mountain View hotel, to which I'd ordered the private jeep to go to Sapa (being four of us it cost little more than the minibus), didn't provide it...

a representative informs us that there's the bus! I get angry (and on top of that I even called them last night to confirm...)! With my stubbornness I dig in: I want my car! After various discussions with various people, in the end the jeep arrives. An old jeep (Russian?). The driver is also nice. He's the same one who'll have to drive us around later. And he also speaks a little English. At 9:00, after not even an hour on a SUPER PAVED road (we wonder what a jeep was for?), we arrive in Sapa, a town that immediately appears to us as decently elegant and well-organized for tourism. In the central square, where our hotel is, a group of 'Hmong' girls (a northern tribe) welcomes us. At the reception another surprise: Our rooms aren't there (déjà vu)... Anyway they send us to the hotel next door (the Royal) for the same price (positive note: we have a better hotel at a lower price).

We have breakfast, drop the bags in the room, freshen up quickly and then set off with our jeep to the Thac Bac waterfall and the Tram Ton pass. On the way back, our driver takes us to visit a local nursery with greenhouses; nothing particularly interesting for us, but we understand that it's important to them, in this area the climate is such that they can even grow plums, that nursery is one of the major producers of houseplants exported all over the world. Fansipan, as per the manual, is covered in thick clouds. But it's not raining (positive note!) On the way back we visit the Sapa market and are literally surrounded and assailed by the various Hmong sellers, they sell everything and with incredible persistence. We buy two little things from some little girls.

For the typical fabric that I really like, instead I unfortunately notice that inside the market, at the stalls, it's sold for less than half. So I don't buy anything from them or from the stalls. We go to lunch at a little restaurant and sit on the terrace. There's nice sun so we take advantage of it. But after three minutes we're surrounded again by the sellers so we move inside (that's why all the tourists were eating inside!). In the afternoon the male part of our family goes to the hotel to rest while the female part (Carlotta and I) decides to go around Sapa. We visit a little Catholic church, eat roasted chestnuts from the stalls (they even peel them for us!), chat a bit with the locals and with two little girls, have a few things explained to us by the owner of a "pseudo pharmacy" where they sell all these healing products unfamiliar to us..

gigantic dried mushrooms, algae, spices and unknown herbs, various distillates "flavored" with snake, scorpion, etc. We also buy a little sweater for Carlotta and get my pouch repaired, which had come unstitched. Then we return to the hotel and all together decide to go for an aperitif at the Victoria Sapa Hotel (4-star)......but we don't like it! It's not a genuine environment. Everyone is super-elegant... absurd. Then it costs a fortune! So we leave. For dinner we change restaurant (also because today's is already closed) and we do great! They even put braziers near our feet to warm us. In the evening it's quite cold. We exchange the day's comments and on one fact we all agree: "The girls from the tribes are much more open, jovial and friendly than the Vietnamese. They speak decent English and some even French.

They go to school like the others but probably have more interest in learning". Besides the daily comments, Giampaolo tells us that he too made a "scene" on the train last night. When he went to the bathroom, while we were already sleeping, on his way back he went into the wrong compartment (easy since from the outside they all look the same) but not only that... he even sat on someone else's bed.. at which point he realized it couldn't be his. He said SORRY... and left. We laugh like crazy... Then we put the kids to bed but, since we're not sleepy, we go back to the earlier restaurant to have a drink. There we chat with a young French couple who tell us that to go to and come back from Cat Cat (village of the Hmong tribes that we'll visit tomorrow morning) it takes at most 3 hours! So tomorrow no alarm clock.

Sapa - Cat Cat - Lao Cai - Train to Hanoi

First colossal sleep in Vietnam (mountain climate clearly favors it...)! Breakfast at 9:00! This morning I try the Vietnamese breakfast, based on noodle soup (completely tasteless). Outside the hotel Carlotta makes friends with some Hmong girls... they exchange a few words in various languages, and even write them in their little notebooks! We set off for Cat Cat on foot! The sun is out. The village of Cat Cat can easily be defined as a TOURIST ATTRACTION POINT..... So much for trekking! We, who were already prepared for a hike on rough trails, were surprised. Practically the first 4 km are paved (even buses go there!) the next 3 km of the tour are on a tourist route complete with a very well-made and comfortable little path and stone steps (only the little lamps on the sides are missing for possible nighttime walks).

We'll see if in the afternoon the other village turns out to be more "authentic". The landscape is anyway splendid with waterfalls, streams, rice fields. Their village, with simple wooden huts, is very colorful: laundry hung along the streets, children in their traditional clothes playing in the courtyards. We buy two decorations from two "Dao" ladies (the tribe with the red turbans) who sell their souvenirs on the street... We wanted just one but in the end one of the two convinced us that it wasn't right to buy only from her and not from her friend... "And my friend?"... At 13:00 a short rest on the way back. We drink something in a bar, sitting among enormous glass containers full of rice wine and snakes of all sizes. This morning we threw away the now-unusable video camera.

Now we have 5 brand-new blank tapes! After a good lunch we head to the hotel to pay the bill and pick up our new taxi driver (arranged at the Royal Hotel) who, before taking us to Lao Cai station (with a short stop to see the Chinese border), is supposed to take us to the tribal village of Ta Phin for a short stop (a couple of hours?). I organized this trip yesterday at our hotel because I let myself be convinced it was cheaper than our taxi driver from yesterday. But it starts badly... Instead of a jeep or a normal car, a super-clunker minibus shows up... oh well, fine. Then along the way the driver starts picking up various local people, friends, relatives.. at a certain point there are ten of us! A girl (the only one who speaks English) explains to us that she and her family have to go to Lao Cai and there's no more bus.

Fine! This isn't even a big problem for us (it's even picturesque).. The big problem comes up when we arrive at the entrance of Ta Phin Village, after an 8 km detour from the main road. They tell us we can't enter because permits are needed that we should have obtained beforehand in Sapa! I fly into a rage because the request for a private transfer had been made to have the opportunity to visit the tribal village of Ta Phin along the route; therefore it was the hotel's organization that should have obtained the permits for me or told me where I could get them! At that point, after various discussions, the driver tells us that in any case there's no time so it's better to head straight to Lao Cai. The thing smells a bit like a scam to me so: I DEMAND TO GO BACK TO SAPA because I also want my money back! (...

but why didn't I go to my taxi driver from yesterday???) After half an hour we, with all the passengers gradually getting off at the various stops..., arrive at the hotel and there we make a scene. I want back my money!! An uproar breaks out. Someone from the reception snatches the receipt from us and throws it in pieces under the reception desk... A couple of French tourists sitting at the hotel's little table who are organizing an excursion look at us in amazement (in my opinion they'll change agency). In the end we get the daughter of the owner of the Mountain View involved (after all she's the one who redirected me to the Royal hotel) and after her intervention, her mom's, and who knows whose else, they finally give us our money back (22 USD).

By now unfortunately there's no more time for the tribal village nor to dig deeper into the story of the "entry permits", true or false? Oh well. Anyway the village entrance was very similar to Cat Cat, the roads super-paved and consequently we assume it was along the lines of the previous one. Considerations: "I think that to see something special you'd have to be able to stay in the area at least 4 or 5 days and organize a broader excursion, going down beyond the Ta Throm Pass and coming back from the north side. The proximity to such a touristy town as Sapa has probably now changed the genuineness of these peoples. Only the costumes have remained traditional but under the costume they wear sneakers, Puma or Adidas!" Through the Mountain View, we recover our taxi driver entrusted to take us to Lao Cai. At the Chinese border we take a few photographs.

Here only a canal of the Red River separates China from Vietnam. By now it's dark, only the multicolored advertising signs and the various illuminated buildings can be seen. The pedestrian bridge is already closed. While waiting for the train to depart, we have dinner in a place across from the station where we also drink something with our driver and exchange addresses. Tonight we booked a "special" sleeper car. It didn't even cost much more than the others: 12 USD versus the 8 paid on the way there and - considering that anyway in hotels and agencies train tickets cost you 50% more - the price seemed good to me. But.... There remains the problem of having bought them at the Royal Hotel and, after the afternoon's experience.. we expect anything...... But no..

the car is like the one on the way there but inside there are also the "duvets" with colored duvet covers and then curtains on the windows.... moreover the compartment door also has glass (the one on the way there had an open grille). Tonight we bought a bottle of local "whisky and cognac"... In the sense that on one side it says Whisky and on the other Cognac. FUNNY. (that way they keep everyone happy). We make sure the station where we have to get off is the last stop and so we go to bed relaxed.

Hanoi -- Haipong - Cat Ba (Halong Bay)

At 5:15 we're sitting in a little bar - one of those with the very low little stools and tables that we hadn't tried yet - just outside the Hanoi Station, sipping tea. Vietnamese tea is very strange, bitter, it seems more like an herbal tea than tea but they like it, so we try it too. Matteo and Carlotta stick with Lipton. We're waiting for the 6:00 train to Hai Phong which should take a couple of hours at most. The station is already full of people. The trip from Lao Cai turned out to be worse than the way there because, true, the compartment was nicer than the other one, but much narrower.... then the air conditioning was on max and we were freezing (that's how we understood the usefulness of the duvets!). I tried to call the staff on duty on the train: three of them came.

First they verified that the compartment switch was broken, then they tried to put a sheet over the cold air vent (an operation that proved impossible) and finally they decided to lower the general thermostat of the car! BRAVO! Even though during the night they surely must have turned it back up full blast because we woke up freezing. 6:30 We're on the train to Hai Phong, we're leaving the city of Hanoi and the sun is rising. BEAUTIFUL. The train passing through the center of Hanoi is also very beautiful. It's interesting to watch its route in the midst of the houses. It's like being in a narrow corridor that winds between two rows of apartment buildings... you feel like you're having tea with the Vietnamese sitting at the entrance of their homes. There are people having breakfast outside their doors... you can almost touch them.

At six in the morning Hanoi is already bustling, streets full of people, crowded neighborhood markets, bicycles and motorcycles overloaded with goods, yes because what the Vietnamese can load onto a bicycle we can't even imagine. On the train there's excellent service, tea, coffee, drinks, unidentified things to eat (one had a nice smell...! Yum..). At 9:30: after yet another very lively discussion outside the Hai Phong station with a hustler (do we find them all?) who, posing as a tour guide, insists that the taxi taking us to the pier should be given at least three dollars and that they don't use the meter here... we give in (because we're also tired of arguing over a couple of dollars) and get into a taxi that takes us to the port. There we're assailed by other hustlers who are already trying to sell you rooms in Cat Ba...

We get on the first available boat (they call it a hydrofoil) and set off for the island. We arrive after about an hour. The weather is splendid. We face the multitude of room sellers... we listen to everyone and collect business cards... Then we go into a bar to have breakfast... meanwhile we consult the Lonely Planet and analyze the cards we collected... We visit four or five guesthouses on the seafront (at the third guesthouse I take a ruinous fall down the stairs, always on the same painful knee); and at the fifth guesthouse we stop. Two double rooms with a sea-view terrace at 5 USD each! With TV, bathroom, refrigerator, bedside lamp, nightstands,.... Everything! The My Ngoc Hotel is also an address warmly recommended by the Lonely Planet and indeed we won't regret the choice. We have them get us some mountain bikes and around 12:00 we set off.... Good grief...

the uphill stretches are plentiful... we arrive at the restaurant exhausted. The restaurant, however, looks promising.... It's the floating restaurant Xyan Hong. They take us to the back where they show us all the available fish, crustaceans and mollusks... beautiful

Halong Bay

10:00 am: we're on the wooden boat (Junka style) booked yesterday at our hotel for the trip in Halong Bay. Boat reserved only for our family, for the whole day and including lunch..... for only 40 USD total... It didn't even cross our minds to haggle..! They came to pick us up at the hotel at 8:30 with four motorbikes and took us to the boarding point. The day is splendid. The sea is emerald... the panorama is breathtaking! By now we've only got our old reflex and Matteo's digital photo-camera left... but we go wild anyway. At the exit of the port we pass through the floating fishing village (something not mentioned by the Lonely Planet). Phenomenal. They're proper houses placed on floats, with balconies, windows, plants and flowers, television antennas and even domestic animals (mostly dogs)...

the only difference is that instead of streets outside the door there's the sea and to go somewhere you have to take the boat. On today's excursion we'll have the chance to pass through other floating villages, there are many around the island of Cat Ba. There are also floating schools, in fact one mustn't forget that Vietnam is one of the countries with the highest literacy rate in Asia (we're around 92%). The excursion takes us through the

Cat Ba - Haipong - Nin Bihn - Tam Coc - S3 train

At 7:15 we catch the bus in front of our hotel that takes us to the dock on the other side of the island. There we board a hydrofoil that, after bumping into a dock twice during the maneuvering phase (yes, twice) while leaving the port, finally manages to depart and deliver us safe and sound to Haipong in twenty minutes. Today the weather is foggy—thank goodness yesterday was nice! At Haipong we disembark at another port, from which a minibus (which then continues directly to Hanoi) takes us to the center. We arrive at the national bus station and buy tickets for Ninh Binh, via Nam Dinh, where we have to change. The bus leaves at 10:00. Carlotta and I pop into the station restroom for a moment. There's the usual row of squat toilets with little doors, but on the right there's a kind of trough—a couple of meters long, 15-20 cm high, 40-50 cm wide—with water running through it.

Who knows what it's for? The answer doesn't take long to arrive! While I'm waiting for Carlotta, a woman walks in and, completely ignoring my presence, steps up onto the raised ledge, lifts her skirts, pulls down her underwear, squats over the trough and pees... On the bus, the driver, waiting to depart, is watching television—hanging right above the driver's seat. It's true that Vietnamese people can't survive without television! We watch the loading of goods, because buses in Vietnam also serve to transport things. They load everything: packages, sacks of rice, bicycles, furniture... some things inside under the seats, others on the roof. At 10:15 we're on our way. We're the only tourists and we attract quite a bit of curiosity. So much so that after a few minutes a couple of people come to sit near us and, partly in English, partly with the help of sketches and drawings...

we exchange various information. First question: How old are we? At the answer, they confer among themselves and laugh... (I'd love to know why they're laughing? In their eyes, do we look younger or older?). About Matteo's age (13) they shake their heads in disagreement... indeed, for them he's so tall (5'10") that it's hard to convince them. Then a man takes Matteo's hand, scrutinizes it from one side and the other, and then says "beautiful"! Another man tells us he's a captain in the Vietnamese navy, he even shows us his ID card... with him we communicate in English, in writing. Strangely, we can't understand each other when speaking. Meanwhile the bus goes on its way... local travelers get on and off the bus "while it's moving"... basically the bus only slows down... in any case there's an attendant who grabs them by the hand and helps them get on...

in some cases he literally "pulls them up." Thank goodness we're getting off at the last stop. The various packages get the same treatment. It works like this: the bus approaches the delivery location, starts honking like crazy, at that point someone comes running out onto the road and, after a brief exchange of words, they toss them the package! At Nam Dinh we change buses and end up on a bus even more packed than the previous one! The roof is overflowing with goods and so is the inside, so much so that our kids are sitting on sacks of grain. On this bus there are also lots of televisions and hi-fi systems... let's hope they don't unload them using the same technique as the previous bus....

Once we arrive at Ninh Binh, we take a taxi to the hotel indicated by the Hanoi agency, where we need to pick up the tickets for tonight's train and where we'll also leave our luggage in storage! With the same taxi we have him take us to Tam Coc, and he asks if he should wait for us... yeah, right!? Who knows how many taxis there are in such a touristy place... We have a quick and terrible lunch (for the first time in Vietnam) and then we get ready for the excursion on the canals. Tam Coc is a spot in the middle of the rice paddies, from which a series of natural canals wind into a landscape very similar to Halong Bay. Towering rocky sea stacks, sheer walls, caves. Along this splendid landscape you're taken in small rowboats piloted by women who row with their feet, too. Carlotta and I were with a "grandma" and her 15-year-old granddaughter. Carlotta even tried rowing with her feet....

but it was a failure.... On the way back they show us their products (which they sell), mostly silk embroidery... so we buy a few souvenirs... The "grandma" is very friendly, smiles a lot and speaks French. Row all day long, no kidding.... We then witness a scene that confirms our doubts about the value and purchasing power of the Vietnamese currency. In fact, when we leave a tip for the "grandma," she gives the equivalent of 6-7 euro cents to her granddaughter, who jumps for joy. (Surely the prices we've paid so far, including water, are tacitly agreed prices just for tourists!). There's no other explanation, also because they're all well-dressed, their little restaurants or bars are always full of people... how would they manage if they paid 50 cents or sometimes even 1 euro for a bottle of water?...

it must be like Cuba?! On the way back from the excursion, the square is deserted—no buses, no taxis, no cars, no hustlers...! Yeah, but... how do we get back to the city? We start walking, convinced that before long, as always, taxis and motorbikes will show up by the dozen.... but we're wrong. So we retrace our steps and ask in a shop... after half an hour of haggling, 4 motorbikes show up and, for a total of 8 dollars, they'll take us back to the city. We take a little stroll around Ninh Binh (nothing special) then have dinner at the hotel where we left our luggage. After dinner we chat a bit with the hotel owner, who proudly shows us photos from when she hosted a political group and the Prime Minister. Carlotta laughs because the Prime Minister is fat, and in Vietnam fat people are extremely rare (goes to show that ministers eat well in Vietnam too). The owner laughs too.

At 11:15 we have our train to Hué! At the station we see the first Vietnamese kitten... a child is carrying it on a leash (?!?). The train arrives on time. Bedtime.

Hué

At 9:10 we're about to arrive at Hué station. We've just drunk a Vietnamese tea that we paid a fortune for!! Then again, when the vendor asked me for 40,000 dong (the equivalent of 2 euros), yours truly, still half asleep, paid without batting an eye... but Giampaolo, who was more awake than me, tells her, "What??? 40,000 dong for this swill?! Very expensive! I don't want it..." so the vendor gives him back 10,000 dong, but it's still a lot.... given that, for example, yesterday at the Haipong bus station we bought a sandwich, two beers, a pack of cookies, three teas and a little bag of candies for the same amount... Oh well. Last night we slept great. Comfortable mattresses and adjustable air conditioning. This morning they woke us up well in advance...

they also gave us 4 bottles of water and breakfast, which consisted of a sandwich that Giampaolo immediately devoured! I don't know how he did it, because it was inedible—the bread was sweet and the filling salty—only the little quail egg inside was good! In Hué we still don't have a hotel, but we'll find one; after analyzing the Lonely Planet, we pick one in the old city. The Than Noi hotel. We have a taxi take us there. The rooms aren't exactly cheap, but the hotel is nice, it has large common areas, a nice restaurant, a spacious garden to relax in, and it even has a pool, which we really don't need right now... because it's almost cold and cloudy. We have lunch at the hotel, and very well too. Then we buy a little bottle of Vietnamese digestif (like Unicum) that's also very nice... the bottle is in Chinese ceramic with two little glasses, also in Chinese style with blue designs.

After lunch we rent bicycles: 1 USD per day, and for half a day ½ dollar... in the end, though, we'll have to argue about it as usual, because they always try it on... it's stronger than them. We do the whole circuit of the citadel, and along the way we notice a house with a little garden full of people, all dressed in white with black bands on their heads... could it be a funeral? They're drinking beer nonstop. Someone later tells us these are places where they still play Russian roulette, but we prefer not to believe it. After the first exploratory loop around the immense citadel area, we go to visit the imperial city. Beautiful, though unfortunately the signs of wartime destruction are still visible. In the late afternoon we return the bicycles. At the hotel we book tomorrow's trip to visit the Imperial tombs by boat along the Perfume River.

15 USD for a boat, lunch excluded and paid directly to the owners. In the evening we head to the center, to the new part of the city (across the river). It's while walking along the river that we immediately realize that if we had come here directly, we could have found tomorrow's boat for half the price we paid at the hotel! We have dinner at the Good and Stay café, run by a somewhat eccentric Vietnamese painter... long white hair tied in a ponytail. We eat snacks, including some delicious grilled spring rolls that, wrapped in rice paper, are then dipped in a little peanut sauce. Carlotta orders her usual noodles. Then we take a stroll around the city. This is where we spot the first night-owl rats wandering along the sidewalks... It's Saturday night and the Vietnamese venues are packed, mostly bars, karaoke places and video-bars, with huge television screens showing DVD movies.

At 11:00 pm, bedtime—we leave early tomorrow morning!

Hué (Excursion on the Perfume River - Imperial Tombs)

At 8:00 they come to pick us up and take us to the pier! The boat is beautiful, shaped like a very colorful Dragon. On the boat we've booked there's the whole family: the boatman, his wife and the two children; maybe they even live on this boat. The weather is overcast but - on the positive side - it's not raining. We're already lucky because the Hué area in December is the rainy season. First stop: The Thien Mui Pagoda, an octagonal tower that is a symbol of Vietnam. Too bad it's under renovation, so it's surrounded by scaffolding. At the nearby temple there's the laughing Buddha. Tradition has it that the faithful come to this temple on the first day of the year to get a good omen of happiness (whoever laughs on the first of the year laughs all year long....). In this temple complex we meet the first Italian tourists, with a private guide who... even speaks our language.

The boat lady, to ask if we wanted lunch, showed us a series of photos of tourists eating and then on an old copy of the Lonely Planet she pointed out the various types of food to us. We agree but without asking the price... alas. 10:00 a little sun comes out. During the outbound navigation, the lady opens huge duffel bags and starts spreading on the floor an endless array of merchandise, souvenirs, ceramics, little paintings, wooden objects, silk clothing... OK. Carlotta spots a nice little outfit in black silk (classic Vietnamese pants and a kimono shirt). She even tries them on. I choose a robe. For everything she wants 30 dollars. We try to haggle but no luck. Anyway, since they're very kind, if instead of giving them a tip we buy these items, we're still doing something good.

Second stop: Nom Chen Temple (not in the Lonely Planet), which was nothing special and to get there we all got covered in mud. But we had fun because Carlotta and I hid dad's and Matteo's shoes outside the temple and then waited a good fifteen minutes on the boat.... before they arrived! Third stop: the splendid Tomb of Mihn Mang. Around 1:30 pm we have lunch and very well too. The lady prepared a truly excellent menu for us! After lunch, first bit of news: they advise us against going to the Tomb of Khal Din because they say there are three km to walk and unfortunately it has started pouring. So I add one to the program myself, the tomb of Thien Tri. You won't believe it.... but we couldn't find it.

We even found ourselves in a very strange situation because, after wandering left and right in open countryside (almost reaching the tomb of TuDoc on foot due to wrong information some girls had given us), we ended up on a main road. It was disappointing. We tried to signal to some motorcyclists to stop so we could ask them for directions to the temple. Unfortunately there was no one on foot. We also tried to stop people on bicycles. In any case, despite our amazement, no one stopped. Some even made rude gestures at us and a cyclist shouted something at us. Maybe if they don't have a reason of interest they're not available to help you? It's ugly to think so. Last stop: The Tomb of Tu Duc.

This one is truly splendid, maybe because it's immersed in nature or maybe because it belonged to the emperor Tu Duc, famous for his splendors, for his 104 wives and for having awarded the city of Hué the title of homeland of Vietnamese gastronomy, thanks to his 50 court cooks who every day had to cook him 50 different dishes. It keeps drizzling but never mind, still better than the downpour. In the immense park there are various temples and tombs. It's huge. In the emperor's palace - where he also had a hunting reserve and would go with his concubines - Carlotta even has herself photographed dressed as an empress. Afterwards we return to Hué. Arriving at the dock they present us with the bill for lunch: a good 450,000 dong. I get nervous because in Cat Ba at a beautiful restaurant with much less we ate oysters, huge grilled fish, shrimp, etc.. In short...

they always try it on?! So in the end I give up buying the silk items. We return to the Hotel on foot. Matteo goes to sleep and the three of us go to the central market of Hué. It's huge and all divided into sections: shoe section, hat section, clothing section, etc.. In the clothing section we find the same items that were on the boat. Here they even want 75 dollars. An incredible negotiation begins... at the price of 30 dollars we walk away. At 27 dollars they run after us. At 25 we buy. We also buy a pair of sunglasses and a little watch for Carlotta. We return to the hotel a bit tired. Shower and off we go. Tonight we've chosen to have dinner at the restaurant Tinh Gia Vien, near our hotel. It's famous for reproducing cuisine in the old imperial style. It's in a beautiful garden. Strangely there's no one there, even though the service, the choreography and the flavors are impeccable.

The presentation of the dishes and their decorations are something you rarely get the chance to see. A menu like this, in the West, could cost even over 100 euros per person, here instead with a good bottle of French Wine we spend 585,000 dong (29 euros) in total. Passing through Hué this is definitely a place not to be missed! In the hotel we pack our backpacks and then drink a whisky at the bar. This garden is so beautiful and relaxing...... Tomorrow morning wake-up at 5:30 (6:00 at the latest)!

Hué - Danag - Hoi An

At 7:00 we go to the station after having breakfast and paying the bill! (thank goodness for credit cards). At 8:10 the train toward Danang is already moving. A very nice Vietnamese lady offers us some brownish dried fruits... While we peel them she and her son watch us and laugh. But they're really good; I think they're dried lichies. Arrival in Danang is expected in two and a half hours. At 10:00 we pass over the pass that separates the provinces of Hué and Danang. In theory it should also mark the change in climate, that is, from cloudy to sunny. But unfortunately it's not like that. On the train a lady passes by selling little jars that look like yogurt ones. I (obviously) offer to taste one... delicious! So we buy six more.

In Danang a driver sent by the Hoi An hotel should come to pick us up, so along the way we'll have the chance to make some stops: the first at China Beach, where we'll have lunch, the second at the Marble Mountains. When we arrive in Danang the driver is there and he even speaks English! Good. We take a stroll on China Beach, it's a bit cloudy but not too bad. We choose a little restaurant among the many and climb up the steep stairs. These restaurants are all on very very high stilts... surely the tides of the rainy season must be no joke. We have a colossal feast (what a novelty...) based on oysters, crabs, shellfish in spicy sauce, lobster, fish and shrimp. Here we see the second Vietnamese cat, a pretty female cat and even pregnant! Carlotta cuddles her to dad's delight (who can't be said to love cats very much).

We meet a Vietnamese couple who speak perfect English! We immediately understand why: they live in Canada, he's a former dissident. Now they're here for the Christmas holidays. I'd like to ask them loads of questions but we can't take advantage too much. After lunch we get back in our car and go to the Marble Mountains. They're very beautiful even if a bit tiring, especially after our lunch today! Steps, steps and more steps. We manage in any case to complete the whole route and see all the temples and all the caves (except one). We shoot a whole roll of film which, however.... unfortunately, the next evening we'll realize, with great displeasure, that it wasn't loaded. At the foot of these marble hills there are many craft workshops selling marble sculptures, and not just small ones, there are enormous ones. They tell us they even export them...

and that the cost of shipping by ship isn't that high... we're tempted to buy two nice lions to put at the entrance of our house but then we give up. We arrive at the Van Loi Hotel, found on the Internet and booked several weeks ago. It's very very beautiful. On the first floor there's also a large pool and the bar-restaurant is on the top floor on a panoramic terrace with a splendid view of the river and of Hoi An. Once we've settled our luggage we change and set off to explore the little town but it's already dark. Right away we find the same silk pants that yesterday were the subject of exhausting negotiations. Here they sell them for 5 dollars before haggling. This is the city of tailors! Giampaolo orders a pair of sports pants made to measure for him, they'll be ready tomorrow evening for 7 dollars.

We stroll a bit through the historic center which appears to us very beautiful, elegant, full of restaurants, venues and pleasant guest-houses. It's the first time we've seen so many tourists and so much life in Vietnam but this little town is, in fact, very pleasant. Around 20:00 we stop to eat at a floating restaurant, on the river, near the Japanese Bridge. We eat well and drink an excellent Hungarian wine (we couldn't not have it...). Then we head back to the hotel.

Hoi An - My Son - Hoi An

At 7:30 we're already in a taxi (always the one from the hotel since it's reasonably cheap!) that will take us to My Son. This morning they didn't wake us in the usual kind way like: "Good morning, it's six o clock", but rather with an imperative "please wake up!". But it came to mind that the owner is a retired former Vietnamese soldier. He's one of those who fought against the Americans. We also read an interview with him, in which he declares that, first of all, he feels like a soldier!... which also explains the wake-up technique! This morning's breakfast was rather meager, whether because it was early or because in the whole hotel there are only about ten of us guests!.... Thank goodness the Lonely Planet stated that in Hoi An you have to book well in advance because it's always fully booked...

At 7:50 we've just managed to get past a stretch of "off-road" between mud, huge potholes and incredible bumps - due to roadworks in progress - and the sun is even coming out! So at least Giampaolo stops complaining about the weather, even though we've only had overcast skies for two days and rain for only half a day.... There's been much worse on our trips (flood in Chile where they hadn't seen a drop of water for 70 years... torrential rain in Bahia California where it hadn't rained since 1884... even in Hurgada it rained). You always have to be able to grasp the positive side of things (and I assure you there always is, if for no other reason than the fact that in all cases something worse exists!).

Arrived at My Son (another site declared a Unesco heritage site after Halong Bay, Hué and Hoi An) we buy the tickets and climb onto the jeep that takes us to the visitor center, from which the route starts. My Son is the most famous archaeological site of the Champa kingdom in Vietnam. My Son was at its maximum splendor between the 4th and 13th centuries, and if it weren't for the American bombings that severely damaged most of the structures, My Son would be one of the best-preserved sites in Vietnam! We patrol the various sectors (B and C are the ones in better condition, as well as the most interesting). My Son has its charm also thanks to its position among green hills and the stream that crosses it. Sector "A" hasn't been restored yet and perhaps never will be, it seems to have been left in that condition as evidence of the devastation caused by the American bombings.

At 11:00 our visit already ends. The jeep ride back to the exit is more folkloric than the first because the driver loves to sing and entertains us with the hymn to Ho Chi Min and, to conclude, with Bella Ciao! At 12:00 we're already back in Hoi An and so we have all the time to visit the ancient city. We get our tickets and follow the circular route, we see some temples, assembly halls, Chinese houses from the 1700s, etc... Hoi An is very well maintained. In a shop in the streets of the center we also find pants identical to Carlotta's, but for only one dollar!!!.... But it was an elderly lady who told us, in fact, after a second a guy who speaks English comes running all out of breath and the price magically turns into 8 dollars.... We have lunch in a small restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet and eat very well spending about 8 euros for four.

At the restaurant we argue because Giampaolo (as always) wants to taste everyone's dishes while we, who choose ours very carefully, would like to eat them on our own... The result... he gets offended.. which is why toward evening the family splits up! The kids and I continue our tour and visit a "museum" house, again Chinese, but where a family still lives. This house is beautiful, it belonged to very important merchants. It has fabulous mother-of-pearl carvings on the wooden columns. I try to photograph them but I don't have the flash.... Who knows? Here they also offer us tea (Vietnamese) and Matteo, who wants to be polite, drinks it all in one gulp... so they pour him some more.... On the way back toward the hotel we meet at a bar the two Australian tourists we met on the train and in Cat Ba! We exchange a greeting and a few words and then head back.

The reflex camera's counter has already gone past the 38th photo... and it's still going. That's where we discover that the film wasn't loaded... so Marble Mountains, Hoi An and My Son......... GOODBYE! And to think that right in Tam Coc the light meter had started working again. Giampaolo is still angry so he decides not to come with us into town.... And so we set off all alone. Along the way we find a little CD shop (copied ones) and buy five or six, not without having listened to them all first! Crossing the bridge we notice on the opposite side a lovely restaurant with a terrace on the river... we head there but the prices are very high, so we continue toward the center of the little town.

We stop at two Internet Cafés to read our email but, both the first and the second have such slow connections that the operation turns out to be impossible! We stop at a little restaurant with a nice terrace that overlooks the main street facing the market and have dinner. On the way out we buy some fruit (I don't remember the name... like lichies but bigger and red..) and then we head toward the hotel, but we don't give up stopping at a bar to play a game of billiards. Tomorrow morning we set off toward the South and the longest train transfer awaits us! We've decided, by mutual agreement, to skip Na Trang. All the reports from travelers read on the Internet agreed that it wasn't a very interesting place. If you then add that in December it's the rainy season, obviously you avoid it.

Hoi An - Danang - Train to Phan Thiet (Mui Né)

At 10:00 we're in our taxi heading toward Danang. This morning paying the bill was rather complicated because at first they asked me for a 4% surcharge for paying by credit card. I got angry because normally they ask for 2%, so a furious argument begins. In the end we agree on 3%. Then the phone line connection doesn't work (was that for real?) so they hit me with the dreaded question: "why don't you pay in cash?" - Because I don't have any! No Problem... a waiter on a motorbike takes me to a bank to withdraw cash (where they charge me a 2.9% commission, which added to the Visa one comes to almost 5%.

Half an hour behind schedule, we finally set off! In Danang we have ourselves taken to a restaurant on the bank of the Han River where we book a table for 1:00 PM and ask if they'll keep our luggage in the meantime! Of course they will! So we unload the backpacks and have our taxi driver take us to the Cham art museum, where the most important sculptures rescued from the archaeological site of My Son are kept. After visiting the Museum, we walk back to the restaurant along the river. It's quite cold and always cloudy. The Hanakim Din Restaurant is very elegant and has superb service. On the menu there are dishes from all over the world, from Italian to Japanese cuisine. So, between one taste and another (today we're having Giampaolo taste everything too), the time soon comes to head to the station. Our train leaves at around 3:30 PM. On the train we realize we forgot to buy water...

we only have beer, along with sandwiches, fruit and various things, but that's no good for the kids. We play cards a bit and chat. At 6:30 PM (too bad we don't have the video camera) they even bring us dinner, on little airplane-style trays - four courses! For a fee you can also order roast chicken legs and beers. Water is free. The train is full of Vietnamese on vacation! Tourists always very, very few. At 10:00 PM we discover that the door of our compartment doesn't close (I don't mean lock... it doesn't even pull shut, it's stuck). I call a couple of railway workers who obviously don't understand me, but they have what I'm saying translated by a 9-year-old girl (she's part of a Vietnamese family that lives in Singapore and is here on vacation). After ten minutes four of them arrive, armed with screwdrivers, pliers, etc... and they find the solution.

They remove the lock and that way at least the door pulls shut! It doesn't close? Never mind and... good night.

Pan thiet - Mui ne

At around 6:30 we arrive at Pahn Thiet station, a good hour early. This morning they woke us in time but... no breakfast, they serve it later! Just 4 little bottles of water to brush our teeth. When we get off at Phan Thiet station (it's us and an Australian-Japanese couple) we're shocked. In front of us opens up a dirt lot and...... nothing else! The station, in fact, is in Muong Mang, which is a little village about 12 km from Pahn Thiet, but we were expecting a bit more life. No bus, no taxi.... And how do we get to Mui Ne? At the far end of the lot a dirt road branches off, slightly uphill; it's the only one there so we take it... I even venture the guess that maybe around the bend the town center will appear (ha ha). The village is simply a crossroads of two dirt roads with four or five houses.

NICE! Positive note: there's no traffic! The first motorcyclists start arriving who, at outrageous prices, offer to take us to Phan Thiet. But there are four of us with backpacks and, after a quick calculation, what they're asking is pure madness! So we ask "NO HAVE CAR TO MUI NE??"... And there the crazy amounts come pouring down... 60 dollars... 50... meanwhile we keep walking (toward where we don't know but never mind...), they drop to 45 dollars, then 40... etc... We stall for time and sit down in a little place, which for all intents and purposes is a grocery store, where there are the usual low little tables with little chairs. Not much tourism must pass through here, in fact a little girl, as soon as she sees us, bursts into torrential crying... she got scared. She must have taken us for white monsters with light hair.

We get coffee (really good, it tastes of cocoa!), tea and fruit and we wait. Meanwhile the Australian woman arrives and asks me if we're going to Mui Ne and how we're getting there. Good question... But I have an idea...: since they're going to Mui Ne too, we could ask for a car for 6 people and split the costs, right?! The haggling lasts a good half hour but in the end we manage to agree on 24 dollars. After half an hour the off-road vehicle arrives and we set off! By 8:20 we're already at the Palmira Resort hotel, previously booked online. The room is very nice and spacious. The hotel has a nice beach, a nice pool in a lovely garden, ping-pong, billiards, in short everything you need to relax a bit! The weather is splendid, the sea is a bit rough, but in this season we expected that...

however (positive note) the beach, in this stretch, has fairly high dunes so when the tide goes out natural lagoons form where you can swim beautifully! After tanning ourselves (or getting burned?!) and taking a few relaxing dips, we look for a restaurant along the beach and find an excellent place! It's not in the Lonely Planet and it's full exclusively of Vietnamese! Nobody speaks English, but the food is divine!! Here too there are big tanks with fish to choose from. We order clams, sea snails, shrimp, shells and a two-kilo grilled fish! Aperitif based on Vietnamese vodka with lime and salt (tequila-style) and cold beer. And.. GOOO!! This is what life's about! After lunch we take a little nap by the pool. At 8:10 PM, after a family fight because everyone wanted to eat pizza in an Italian restaurant where we'd stopped (out of curiosity) for an aperitif, we stroll around town.

The restaurant was nice and the owner also friendly but I refused to eat there because for just two aperitifs and two mineral waters we spent more than a third of the entire delicious lunch today! In the end we end up having dinner in a modest restaurant, since none of us is very hungry anyway. At the hotel we play a couple of games of billiards. Matteo always wins. Then off to bed! Tomorrow a nice bike ride awaits us.

Mui Ne

At 9:00, after breakfast, we pick up our bicycles rented from a shop just outside the hotel (at the hotel they cost 4 USD while here 2....?!) and set off to explore this village, which stretches lengthwise for kilometers and kilometers.... We're almost at the southern extreme. On the inland side you can glimpse the famous dunes of Mui Ne. They're very beautiful. We go a bit inland but it's too far and too uphill. Plus there's a scorching sun, so we give up... we've seen plenty in the Sahara, in Chile, even in Sardinia... Instead we continue along the seafront, crossing the whole town center where, as the big hotels and resorts disappear, little guest-houses multiply. We stop at an agency recommended by the Lonely Planet to arrange the transfer to Saigon for tomorrow. There they ask us for 45 dollars for a private car from hotel to hotel.

It seems like an excellent price to me (in fact the owner of the Italian restaurant from last night will later also ask us for the address), after all it's almost 200 km.. Besides, since at the hotel they asked us for 58... we book it! We go as far as the fishing village. There the panorama is marvelous. We take tons of photos, then we head back. We're half scorched by the sun except Carlotta who has tanned directly! Around noon we leave the bicycles at the shop and the lady insists that we should keep them longer because we paid for the whole day... True, but we'd already done 40 kilometers and we're sufficiently destroyed... besides today is Friday the 17th so better not push it! Guess where we go for lunch? Obviously... to yesterday's restaurant! We unleash ourselves in another colossal round of eating and drinking. The sky has clouded over...

better since we're all red as shrimp! Today we write the first 32 postcards since, starting tomorrow, the "tour de force" begins again and we won't have all this free time anymore. In the afternoon a little rest on the beach and at 5:00 PM a last swim in the sea of Vietnam! We meet two Vietnamese ladies whom we, given their particular elegance - little hats, cover-ups, etc. - had mistaken for Japanese. They're from Saigon, they're on vacation and tomorrow they're going to the spa (?!? I hadn't read anything about spas!), heading toward Dalat. We have dinner at 9:30 PM in a little restaurant where we meet the first "backpacking" Italians... they're two nice young guys from Turin and they're doing our route in reverse (but they also have many more days of time.... Lucky them!). Tourists, anyway, we've seen very, very few so far.

Maybe they're all concentrated in the Christmas-New Year period... because our hotel is practically empty too, but judging by the existing structures and the preparations you see around town, they must be expecting quite a lot of tourism. After dinner we go to bed also because the alarm is set for 6:00!

Mui Né - Saigon

At 7:30 our driver arrives punctually to take us to Saigon. We have already settled the bill, had breakfast and so off we go at once! As soon as we set off I immediately have him turn off the air conditioning (in the car it must have been at least two degrees below zero...) and he even seems happy about it! Today the weather is splendid. On the road to Saigon the smell of MUOC MNON (the stinky little sauce made from fermented fish) is tremendous! The factories must be concentrated around here. Anyway yesterday we ate it too with the rice paper... you can see that after a while you get used to it... Towards 11:00 we arrive at Saigon, we enter the city by means of a very modern four-lane motorway, in places elevated, which crosses a very modern industrial zone. At the entrance to the urban centre modern apartment blocks begin to appear on both sides.

The traffic seems much more orderly than in Hanoi (however, one has to consider that today is Saturday...). We arrive in the centre. Stupendous. The city begins to amaze us quite a bit. We were expecting something completely different. From reading the Lonely Planet, but also some travel diaries published on the Internet, we had formed an idea of a chaotic, dirty city, infested by rats that stroll through the streets at night, beggars, children who snatch things from you, shanty towns.... Some people even spoke of shock and horror right on arrival at Saigon..... We are speechless. Of course, you do see poor people around, we are still in Asia, but from there to horror.... We arrive at the Hotel Majestic. In Saigon we chose a luxury hotel. Here in Asia we can afford it.

I booked it via the Internet and they gave us a splendid suite for 98 dollars!! The hotel is stupendous, not so much for the luxury and elegance but for the imposing architecture of this old building in French colonial style. We leave our luggage at reception (also because the room is not ready yet) and launch ourselves into the discovery of Saigon. It is very hot. We go around all day on foot (there are the insistent cyclos here too but they are not as obsessive as in Hanoi). We go as far as Notre Dame Cathedral then look for a restaurant recommended by the Lonely Planet, near the War Remnants Museum, but it is closed... so we opt for a nearby trattoria. We eat an excellent roast pigeon! Then we go to the Museum, to which the old name of "Museum of American War Crimes" perhaps better suited. In any case most of the photos exhibited here come from American archives.

The museum is shocking, above all the part dedicated to the devastation caused by chemical bombs, Napalm and defoliants. There is even a room where deformed embryos of children are displayed under glass, which I suppose were stillborn. And photos of people disfigured by burns, bodies blown apart by bombs, faces disfigured by gases... It is horrible. There is also the photo of an American soldier posing holding in his right hand the shreds (I mean really the shreds) of a Vietnamese soldier. And all this then for a war that turned out to be useless. We distract ourselves a little by looking at the cannons and the 7-ton bombs displayed in the courtyard. They make less of an impression. The last room of the museum is dedicated to the press and there are photos of all the protest demonstrations against the Vietnam war that took place in the world, from 1966 to 1969.

There is also the photo of a demonstration in Rome, and even from Budapest! When we come out it is already late and the Reunification Palace is already closed. One more thing to do tomorrow! We head towards the central market, strolling pleasantly among these beautiful colonial-style avenues, among old buildings for the most part very well restored. The central market also proves to be a pleasant surprise.. It is extremely clean, very bright. The stalls are all well aligned and tidy. The goods are well displayed and (unheard of!!) for the first time in Vietnam there are also price tags! Returning to the hotel we pass along a street full of shops that I would call quite luxurious... Certainly in Hanoi we have not seen anything of the kind. There are international clothing shops but also Western-style supermarkets. We also find a shop specialising in French cheeses, wine shops and a

Saigon - Cu Chi - Saigon

We're late for breakfast so we set off around 8:30. The driver the receptionist got us is friendly and also speaks fairly good English (about time). We then discover that Mr. Trung, that's his name, fought with the Americans during the war. He also explains that almost all rickshaw drivers are people who fought with the Americans. When the country was reunified, Ho Chi Minh's government no longer allowed these people to return to their professions (teaching, politics, public offices) but left them only this possibility... pedaling! By 9:45 we've almost arrived. The roads are in excellent condition. We're in the countryside but everything is very tidy. The little houses are all very respectable and painted in pastel colors, they have tiled roofs and fences.

Near Cu Chi we notice there's even a Water-park! We arrive at the tunnels where, first they show us a film, and then we begin the route through the jungle, among reconstructions of field kitchens, dormitories, various rooms and tunnels... These, which for a 50-meter stretch are open to the public, are also lit (we had brought our flashlights...). In the first tunnel Giampaolo almost feels sick (a claustrophobia attack) and we don't know what to do because you can't turn back... but after a few meters there's an exit (thank goodness) so we continue on our own - me on all fours! The second tunnel I leave to the kids. It's very hot down there... and to think that inside they used to run with weapons on their shoulders too. Since we didn't take the guide.. we tag along with a French group, so we understand something.

After a while, though, we change groups because there's another guide, who speaks English and is really great! In our opinion he's a former Vietcong soldier and he's so caught up in the memories of the war against the Americans that he explains to the group how the anti-personnel traps worked with a cynicism and fervor that gives you chills.... After drinking a tea, offered by the Museum's management, in a room that is a reconstruction of the underground dining halls, we head for the exit. End of the tour. We return to Saigon just in time to go to the Reunification Palace (which closes at 2:00 PM). On the way back we take another road, which runs along the river. There it's full of shacks, stilt houses in precarious balance, with tin roofs, terraces that look directly onto the banks of a dirty and smelly river. This is the poor area of Saigon.

Because if you don't pass through here you don't realize how Vietnam can be considered one of the poorest countries in the world... especially here in Saigon. The Reunification Palace is very interesting especially architecturally. Today is also special since there's a military event with parades and a marching band. After the visit, still strictly on foot, we head toward the Pham Ngu Lao neighborhood, the neighborhood of the cheapest guest-houses, but this neighborhood is also well-kept and tidy. The only thing is that we can't find the restaurant we were looking for. There's a big shopping center under construction. Since it's late (almost 3:00 PM) and we're also hungry, we take a taxi and have ourselves taken to another address in the Cholon neighborhood. But that restaurant is closed too. But we find another one a little further on, cozy and with a terrace full of plants.

The patrons are all Vietnamese. GOOD. It's a restaurant specializing in Saigon dishes. The menu is only partially in English too (in the sense that the things they didn't know how to translate they left in Vietnamese) but there are drawings that help. And, look at that, there's even field rat... grilled, in sauce or fried!? Between the lines we also glimpse the little drawing of the scorpion... this one they only do fried! We order rice, thin noodles, a grilled fish (which turns out to be a river carp in foil: better to gloss over the fishing spot) and also a grilled chicken.

Also the chicken, in our opinion, wasn't a chicken but probably a pigeon (very good) and Giampaolo was waving the little bones in front of my eyes saying "Have you ever seen a chicken with bones this tiny?" Some Vietnamese customers offer us a beer and want to toast with us ALE'! We smoke two cigarettes to the outrage of our kids... then on foot we set off toward the herbalists' street. Along the way we stop to visit two Chinese pagodas. The first very beautiful, the second a bit particular... inside they had even parked two motorbikes and some people were having lunch in the temple(??!). The herbalists' street is incredible... besides the usual herbs, dried mushrooms and various spices, here they also sell enormous iguanas in alcohol, snakes of all sizes, but also seahorses...

Then Giampaolo spots a basket with little black beetles and asks "do you eat these?" The lady, kindly, answers him that yes, but they're things for men... we laugh... Then we go back to the hotel. Tonight, at the Majestic, there are even more Vietnamese than yesterday, whole families with children who, at the 8th-floor bar, but also in the ground-floor restaurant, are pre-celebrating Christmas. We go up to the room to change and then to the 6th floor for an aperitif. Giampaolo had gone ahead of me and, when I arrive on the sixth floor, outside the elevator I'm greeted by a sea of lights, colored little stars, music... HOW BEAUTIFUL! Tonight there's another wedding and it's truly very lavish.... There's even a Super-Star singing.... TV cameras, photo cameras, flashes galore. The bride and groom don't sit at the table. Only the guests eat.

With us too, often the bride and groom don't eat much but the place at the table is always provided for. Here, instead, it's a job. The bride keeps changing outfits (this is already the third). She changed the second one for the exchange of rings. The lunch will already have reached the eighth course. When the kids join us, we drink something else with them and then decide to go out for dinner! There's a nice restaurant just behind the hotel, also very elegant. I eat eel! We also drink an excellent French wine and in total we spend 45 dollars (35 euros..?). The waiter was very professional and spoke very good English. It's the last evening in Saigon. Saigon, this city so modern, classic and elegant with restaurants and venues on a par with the West. This city teeming with such alive, active, well-dressed people.

People from whose smiles shines through a multifaceted culture, semi-Westernized. People who want to communicate.. What a difference between Saigon and Hanoi. In Hanoi you breathe much more of the air of the communist regime. In Saigon, on the other hand, there's a latent capitalism, you notice it reflected in the sparkling shop windows of the fashionable clothing stores, in the well-dressed people, in the modern supermarkets full of Western products and in the French-style delicatessens. You notice it also in the families who go to pre-celebrate Christmas with their children, in their city's finest hotel, or in the groups of young Vietnamese we met at the disco-bar on the 8th floor of the Majestic. And you "suffer" it in front of the shantytowns on the canals of the Saigon River.

After dinner we go up to the 8th-floor bar to hear the Vietnamese "Gloria Gaynor" sing, but when we arrive she's on her last song. We drink something and go to bed... early wake-up call tomorrow morning. We leave for the Mekong tour!

Saigon - Cai Be - Vihn Long - CanTho

5:00 AM: we're woken by an infernal racket coming from the street! Cars, bicycles, motorbikes... the city has woken up! Today is Monday. Then, as if that weren't enough, someone starts shouting as if at a political rally and goes on for over half an hour... Where this voice comes from and what it's saying we can't even imagine. 9:00 AM: we're on the road to Vinh Long. This morning our driver and our guide (in French, so we'll finally understand everything) arrived very punctually with an 11-seat minibus and there are only 6 of us in all! We have two days to ask all the questions and things we still haven't understood about Vietnam! I had the air conditioning turned down right away... but every now and then they turn it up on the sly.... We're already well outside Saigon, but the roads are still in perfect condition and the countryside is very tidy..

We've already stopped along the road for a coffee because our guide needed to have breakfast... In that complex of bars and restaurants there was also a small zoo and in the monkey cage there was a little one that could get through the holes in the mesh... so, laughing and joking, I found it on my shoulder! In the car we start chatting with our guide. His name is Tó Hiép and he's nice. He tells us the story of his life. Viet Minh, born in the Mekong Delta area in 1950. He becomes a teacher and moves to Saigon. During the war he doesn't fight, precisely because he's devoted to teaching. But after reunification, Ho Chi Minh's government removes from public positions all the employees put there by the previous government and confines them to the Delta area to work the fields. After a few years of real hardship, Mr.

Tó manages to scrape together the money to buy himself a rickshaw, so he works in Saigon for 7 years. While waiting for customers, sitting on his rickshaw, he studies French. Now he's been working as a guide for several years!.. We also take the opportunity to ask him why in Vietnam we've seen so few cats...? He explains that the cat, unlike the dog, is an animal considered unlucky, so many Vietnamese don't like it. Then Carlotta immediately wants to know why here they sell, besides tiger balm, cat balm too! But it remains a mystery! At 11:00 we arrive at the Cai Be pier from where we set off in a long, slender boat, the four of us and the guide. The driver will wait for us in Vinh Long! On the Mekong we first pass by the Cai Be market... but by now it's late and only about ten boat-stalls are left! We then get off in a small craft village on the banks of the Mekong.

Here the people live in very, very simple huts but the children, in their school uniforms, don't look either suffering or sad. They speak a little English, they smile at you. We give them pens we brought along on purpose. In the village there are craft workshops making candies (like mochi) and brittles. We follow the various stages of production. The most interesting is that of puffed rice... They put the rice grains in a big cauldron, mixed with black river sand, and when everything reaches high temperature the grains start popping and puffing up! Then they sift out the sand and they're ready! We buy a few sweets of their own production (especially the various kinds of brittles) and then also a Vietnamese conical hat. Here it costs less than half of all the ones we've seen so far. At 1:40 PM we stop at a really very beautiful restaurant on the bank of the Mekong.

Surely it's only for tourists (you only get there by boat) but it's immersed in greenery, with a lawn full of flowers and a view of the Mekong. Even the Mekong's water seems blue today! It must also be thanks to the weather, which is splendid. The service leaves a bit to be desired but the cooking is excellent! And... surprise.... We spend 5 and a half euros for four..?! Have we arrived in a different reality? Maybe here we'll see what their real purchasing power is? After lunch we resume sailing on the Mekong. My family is very happy today because our guide is much less stressful than me. He's not in a hurry and often stops to drink something, rest, etc. Even though the sun is scorching, the breeze you feel on our boat is more than pleasant. The navigation continues among the picturesque canals of the Mekong, surrounded by nature, little islands and stilt huts.

Every now and then we cross boats of locals returning from the markets. We also see many barges transporting something that looks like seeds to us... they're the husks of the rice grains that they use instead of wood, for cooking. The simple huts of this area are anyway more respectable than the ghetto we saw the other day in Saigon, it must also be thanks to being set in an almost paradisiacal natural environment. Our boat trip ends at 4:00 PM at Vinh Long. We disembark where there's the market, which we immediately pay a little visit. Incredible! They sell everything, from snakes to pigs, and the frogs?! They kill them right in front of your eyes then skin them in one go and they're already ready for sale. Only the field rats are missing, which I can't manage to see even today. The market is truly very colorful: fruit, vegetables, spices.

On one side it opens onto the road and on the other onto the river. Most of the goods, in fact, arrive and leave by river. We buy some limes. At the Vinh Long market for 1000 dong they give me six! (until now I've always paid 1000 dong each!).

Then, after a cold beer in a bar, we set off in our minibus, which has come to pick us up. We have an hour and a half of road, including the ferry across the Mekong because the only bridge that exists on this side of the Mekong is very far back relative to our direction. We arrive in Cantho and move to the Hotel Asia, which isn't bad at all. We offer our companions something to drink and arrange to meet tomorrow morning. A quick freshen-up (now our guide isn't with us anymore so I'm the one calling the shots!) and then we go out to explore the town of Cantho. We head for the central market but we can't find it because it's closed... (of course, it's 7:30 PM)... so we take a stroll along the riverfront. Cantho is a clean little town, the riverfront is modern and also lit up.

We take a ride in a rickshaw (in the Delta area even the rickshaws are cheap) and this one is motorized and even carries four people! We then look for the restaurant flagged by the Lonely Planet (which coincidentally is the same one our driver recommended) and at 8:30 PM we go to eat! The restaurant has a long, narrow first-floor terrace (in the Vietnamese style) overlooking the main street. The service is friendly. Tonight I eat snake! Matteo and Carlotta (very strange..) taste it too. At the next table there's a couple from Italy (the third we've met in the whole trip).They're from Ancona and are on a long vacation in Asia. Lucky them. As a digestif I drink a nice little liqueur made with cobra. Then we walk back to the hotel but everything is dark, everything off, everything already closed! Better since tomorrow morning the alarm is set for 6:30.

Can Tho - Floating Markets - Chau Doc

After a rather poor breakfast (used as we are to the mega buffet at the Majestic hotel...) we load our luggage onto the minibus that takes us to the pier where we set off to visit the floating markets of the Cantho area. The first market is that of Cai Rang, very lively at this time of morning. The most picturesque thing is the poles hoisted on the boats, made of cabbages, cucumbers, pineapples, tomatoes or other vegetables. It's the illiterate-proof indication of what's sold on that barge. We run into last night's Italians (hard not to, since the tours are the same for everyone). Then we make a stop at a village on the banks of the Mekong where they make rice paper... but we've already seen so many of these workshops that we tell our guide to forget it...

so what does he do? He takes us to a gentleman (surely of Cambodian origin because he's the spitting image of the one on the cover of the Lonely Planet Cambodia) who produces typical rice distillates. First he shows us the various stages of production and then the raw material, including that in the vats, namely snakes, geckos, iguanas, etc... Then we move on to the tasting stage! Just like in any wine cellar, they bring us a tray with little glasses and a couple of snacks. Giampaolo drinks it too (unbelievable!). And in the end we even buy a little bottle. The navigation then continues among ducks and canals surrounded by jungle. The water is very low and we're proceeding very slowly. At 9:30 the boat runs aground and our boatman gets down into the muddy Mekong canal to push. I help him a bit with the oar... who knows if I did the right thing? The scene, anyway, will be repeated.

We arrive at the second market, that of Phong Dien, rather disappointing, but probably by 10:30 it's already too late and only a few boats are left. The peculiarity of this market, which is described as one of the most beautiful markets in the Mekong delta, is that it's frequented by boats exclusively with oars. Once the boat trip is over, we get on the minibus and head toward Chau Doc. Along the road we stop to eat in a horrible place (but I have the feeling there wasn't much else available...) the restaurant was squalid, even a bit dirty, the waiter was sleeping in a hammock stretched out in the dining room.. The cooking wasn't even bad..... except Matteo's chicken which surely (poor chubby) had been marinated in Nuoc Mam. (the little sauce described at the beginning of the diary).

Along the way I have the minibus stopped because through the window I caught a glimpse of a shot for a slide that I can't miss! From the bridge over a rather narrow Mekong canal, there's a postcard view: a row of very tall bamboo stilt houses that seem to be teetering on dozens of poles crossing each other in disarray and on every terrace, colorful laundry hung out to dry. The water beneath us is putrid. Our guide explains to us that the Vietnamese government (also for hygiene reasons) is arranging to build, in the various residential areas, some apartment blocks to relocate the families still living in these precarious conditions but he also tells us that, sometimes, the habit of living on the river means that not everyone is willing to move. We arrive in Chau Doc at the Hotel Thuan Loi at 3:30 PM. Our guide tells us we can rest until 4:30 PM, when we set off to climb Mount Sam. Rest?..

what novelty is this? No, come on... so we rush to the central market (which otherwise closes in the evening) to buy the last souvenirs. We also buy three hammocks for our garden. We get back to the hotel right on time and set off for Mount Sam. And here I recommend readers read the Lonely Planet, which says the climb is tiring but the descent less so, therefore whoever wants to make less effort can go up by motorbike... MOTORBIKE?? What motorbikes? Here it's all steps!! The sunset isn't much because there's a bit of haze, but the panorama over the rice fields stretching in succession to the Cambodian border is fantastic! We stop at a little bar to drink something cool and enjoy the sunset. Here we see again yesterday's Italians who are breathlessly chasing their group, which passed us at least 10 minutes ago. We come back down almost in the dark.

We visit the temple at the foot of Mount Sam and then return to the hotel. With our guide we drink a good bottle of French wine and say goodbye to our driver, because tomorrow morning they'll come pick us up by boat right here.. We decide to have dinner at the hotel because the restaurant terrace on the river is really beautiful. The Lonely Planet says nothing about it because they've just built it. The service is a bit poor but they're all friendly. Giampaolo eats fried frogs' legs. They're almost as big as chicken ones! I call the Hawaii hotel in Phnom Penh to confirm tomorrow's arrival and the time, so they'll come pick us up at the dock. Right.... because tomorrow morning at 7:30 we leave via the Mekong for Cambodia! At dinner we drink another bottle of French wine and at 10:30 we go to bed because tomorrow the alarm is set for 5:40!

Chau Doc - Vietnam/Cambodia Border

6:30 AM breakfast on the Mekong, again on last night's floating terrace. Going down the little gangway with all the backpacks on our shoulders was more demanding than last night, but we managed. It's very poetic... The sun has already risen and its rays draw golden reflections on the calm waters of the Mekong, sometimes interrupted by the passage of the dark silhouettes of boats outlined against the light. The profiles of the women with the classic conical hat, rowing their boats, already loaded with goods, will remain like this, imprinted in our minds, as a memory of the last breakfast in Vietnam! 7:00 AM we set off on the barge. We don't go straight to the pier, our guide explains, first there's another program.... Another program? I had asked for tickets for the boat leaving at 7:30?! Oh well... let's go see the canals of Chau Doc. Beautiful, but by now we've had enough canals.

At a certain point, though, we arrive in the area where the floating houses are (like in Cat Ba) but this time on the river. Very interesting. There are also some very beautiful houses. Some, Tó Hiép explains, even rent rooms to tourists. NICE! We shoot almost a whole roll of slides. We also witness the spectacle of fishing. They have structures in the river formed by two large nets connected by a wooden beam 3-4 meters long, appearing like a seesaw anchored in the center. They walk up the beam until, past the central point, one net enters the water and the second emerges on the other side (with the fish inside). With a little net they collect the fish and, after a few minutes, they repeat the operation in reverse. They then take us to visit the "fish farms" with attached "feed factories".

They're large floating houses with in the center a system of large tanks containing fish of all kinds. Then on the side they have big cauldrons where they cook, over a high flame (fueled by the rice husks we saw yesterday!), a mixture of fish leftovers until it becomes a compact mush. But the morning tour doesn't end here... (when are we leaving???). We then go to visit a Cham village, a small ethnic group originally from Indonesia, of Muslim religion. At 9:00, finally, we take the ferry to Cambodia. It's practically a boat like yesterday's except on this one there are 25 of us.. We say goodbye to our guide and set off. We didn't understand much about this transfer system... it seems they've put us into a group of tourists from some agency (yesterday's Italians are there too) who are transported to the Vietnam/Cambodia border to then take the boat that goes to Phnom Penh.

It isn't in all cases the direct ferry and maybe it would have been better if we had handled the ticket purchase directly ourselves, as we usually do. The surprises, in fact, aren't long in coming. The woman, who seems to be the guide for this group of tourists, asks us for our passports and 25 dollars each to do the visa. I protest because I'm sure she's asking me too much (the Cambodian government offices sent me an email before departure, indicating the sum of 20 dollars). I even show her the copy but she says it's impossible. In any case, I dig in my heels and tell her that we'll do the visas ourselves! After three hours of slow sailing, we arrive at the border, the last Vietnamese checkpoint. There they tell us we have an hour to eat. Thank goodness there's an eatery because on the boat there was no service and we're dying of thirst.

I ask her where the visas are done and she answers that they'll do them on the yellow boat that will arrive. We eat in peace and spend our last Dong! At 1:00 PM they signal us to get on the ferry. There are two anchored. We go where most people get on (also because nobody gets on the yellow boat and it also looks a bit sad...). As soon as we set off they check our tickets and tell us it's not the right boat, we were supposed to take the other one (the yellow one)... Couldn't they have checked the tickets before? But... NO PROBLEM!... at the Cambodian border we can get off and wait for the other boat. After all, everyone stops for the visas. Right, and we still have to do our visas.... So we get off with bags and baggage and I go to the offices for the visas but the visas aren't done here! Here there's only the stamping service! GOOD!...and where are they done? CLEAR...

where we were before, at lunch. I immediately understand: the Vietnamese woman got her revenge!! It's terrible. Now what do we do? I question the Cambodian customs officers with a rather worried look. NO PROBLEM... moto-taxi ONE DOLLAR! Not having much time to waste, I yell at Carlotta to tell dad (who's on the dock with the luggage) that I'm going by motorbike to do the visas and to do something to make the boat wait... Motorbike ride along a bumpy path to the customs office (which was right next to the restaurant where we ate). Meanwhile I think about what I could do to that old witch if I were to run into her but, in fact, it won't even be her fault... It's the agency that played this little trick on me! Too bad....

Because up to now it had proved reliable! In any case, after a short time, on the same motorbike, I come back beaming - with our visas at 20 dollars each!! The yellow boat is still there waiting for us... a bit battered but we've seen worse. We get our visas stamped and set off. WE'RE IN CAMBODIA!