Mai Chau; Mountains With a Side of Mist

Sometimes, the sight of mountains slicing the sky is what you need from a weekend. 

As a spectacular result of good fortune, my normal days off from work, combined with the Hung King’s Anniversary (30th April-1st May 2016), gave me four days of unfettered opportunity to explore more of Vietnam; hence, it was time for a getaway into the mountains of Mai Chau.

Courtesy of Google Maps. The pin marks Mai Chau District and the black circle indicates the location of a vast number of lodges and homestays.

After agreeing to ride with co-workers, and head down to Mai Chau together, I was late to arrive at the designated meeting point and thanks to a breakdown in communications, wasn’t able to meet them before they got bored with waiting and left Hanoi without me. Being the mature and well-adjusted adult that I am, I decided to take it to heart and arrive before them, making the journey in as little time as I possibly could. Leaving the city at around 11:30am on Friday, I prepared for the onslaught that lay ahead. According to Google Maps, the distance would take just under 4 hours, but thanks to my inability to navigate without a phone screen in front of me and a morning filled with driving rain, the total time was more like 5 hours.

Not deterred by multiple wrong turnings and a crash into a sludgy road that left a small gouge in my left elbow, I found myself at Ban Lac village before my co-workers and immediately felt vindicated in my stupidly high levels of pettiness. Before I had the pleasure of finding my homestay, I ran into a favourable co-worker (not part of the any-man-left-behind-group) who had happened to be in the area at the same time.

The road into the Mai Chau lowlands.

 

The pin is approximately where the Hao Ban stilt house is. The black oval shows a very good cafe/shop and the red oval shows a photo opportunity (one I missed the chance to see). During my first night, I joined a friend at a buffet BBQ held at the Mai Chau Nature Palace which cost 150,000VND.

I booked 2 nights at a stilt house with Agoda and after a nightmare of trying to find the damn hostel I’d reserved for the princely sum of £11.70GBP, found that there had been a royal blunder and I’d have to be transferred to a different hostel, instead. My new place of residence for the weekend was Hao Ban Homestay, located about a 10-minute walk away from the central Ban Lac area.

Mosquito nets and mattresses on the floor were the bedding for the group room. There were no blinds – sunlight poured in from around 5am in the morning.

The shared room was spacious, but decidedly less enjoyable after a large group of older Vietnamese tourists arrived and wanted to make as much noise as possible.

The toilet and shower block were part of a separate building and can be described as ‘functional’.

The main hub of Ban Lac was awash with outdoor meat BBQs, shops selling machetes and miniature crossbows and scores of places to drink beer. The prices here were far from the exorbitant Tay (Westerner) sums seen in Hanoi: A meat skewer of about 30cm in length would cost 30,000VND (1.33USD); sugar cane juice was 10,000VND; beers were 20,000VND; at the Handmade Shop, two ice creams, two sugar cane drinks, and a 500ml bottle of water came to 80,000VND. The waiter at the Handmade Shop also had very good English and even drew a map to allow a friend, and I, to navigate back towards our hostels after we were caught out by a torrent of a thunderstorm.

Content with my efforts during the day, and my left elbow gauzed and no longer weeping, I doused my net and bedding with 90% DEET and settled in for the night.

Day 2 – Let There Be Light.

I woke up not long after 6am, after fighting the light that pierced the open walls and shutters of the stilt house. Surprisingly enough, the noise of animals in the city was so much worse than that of a rural setting. At every ungodly hour of the day in Hanoi you will hear people beeping, building, or shouting, dogs barking, fecking roosters crowing; in Mai Chau there was little of any of the formers. After spending an hour gaining the usual fix of Facebook, and social media in general, I showered and met the coworker I had drunk with the night before. Having enough of mosquito bites and early starts, casting away all mettle, he’d decided to head back to Hanoi before the end of the weekend. I joined him until we reached the peak of the mountain pass in the North and then stopped to breathe in the scenery.

Unfortunately, now we were into the national holiday proper, there were scores of tourists with their bikes and their buses littering the mountain road. After getting a rather impressive shot of the plains stretching away from the mountainside, I turned to see some guy with his trousers down taking a shit on the side on the slope, in the open. A pretty good allegory for humans and their treatment of natural beauty, as a whole, I’d say.

After exhausting my photo opportunities on the mountain pass, I headed back into the plains of Mai Chau and drove around the area for the next 3 hours, or so. It is amazing how therapeutic just travelling on your own somewhere can be. Despite the ‘real feel’ on my weather app being 39 degrees Celsius – the ride was quite pleasant and I revelled in being alone with my camera, and the landscape, just choosing whichever path my GPS said would take me on a circuit of the lowlands.

Returning to Ban Lac Village, I replenished my water, sugar, and energy levels at the Handmade Shop and then napped for 3 hours back at Hoa Ban Homestay. Owing to there being no air-con and only the presence of barely-effective ceiling fans, I woke up in a geometrically-impressive rectangle of my own sweat, to a power blackout. Like some kind of zombie guided by its desire for flesh and sustenance, I shuffled towards the lights and sounds coming from the hub of Ban Lac Village – it seems they were no strangers to intermittent electricity and had the backup power sources to support that fact. Gnawing on fleshsticks and walking around the stalls until satiated, I headed back to my hostel and was treated to a dance performance from members of the local Thai community in the area. The performance was without interruption, even during the moments of darkness where candles had to be brought out. After the show, I met a friend who used the same gym as I did, only to consistently get thrashed at Uno with them and their partner, before cleansing myself in the shower and calling it quits on the night. The deserters messaged me to see if I was up for drinks at the hostel they were staying at, but knowing that a night dealing with rowdy, old, Vietnamese tourists and that a 5am wake-up waited for me, I happily turned down their invitation.

Day 3 – Not knowing a language means that you can’t loose all the swear words you want to use.

After being kept awake until gone 11pm the night before, and being woken up at shortly after 5am, I was ready to see the world burn and the occupants of my room torn limb from limb. After the sunlight beat my eyelids, loud Vietnamese conversation pummeled my ears – my senses were failing me before the first round bout had even started. With little motivation to wait until midday to leave for Hanoi with the deserting coworkers, I showered and packed, leaving Mai Chau shortly before 7am, on Sunday.

The journey back to Hanoi was a lot simpler and definitely easier to navigate – the journey took under 4 hours and I was back well before lunchtime. Unlike the bike journey during my time in Da Nang, the roads had all of the danger and none of the joy. As the morning mist had yet to burnt off, the mountain pass in the North was clouded with fog and visibility was seemingly under 20m; twists, turns, declines, oncoming traffic and even motherfucking buffalos do not make for an easy ride, surprisingly enough. Once through the gauntlet, it was only really the threat of oncoming traffic that was a problem – vehicles don’t run you off the road, but rather, they give you a choice: risk being hit head-on, or take to the side of the road. Perhaps this is seen as a courtesy in the culture out here, because it certainly happened frequently enough. My fears were thankfully alleviated somewhat when I had the fortune of using a Ford Everest SUV as a chaperone along the highways (more like single-lane carriageways) for at least an hour, or so. Any oncoming vehicles were deterred from advancing into our lane by my big, black, motorguard and I peacefully sailed in the wake of his advance.

Overall?

The ride to Mai Chau is pretty simple, but still fairly arduous in its nature. If you haven’t been outside of a city before, the behaviour of traffic isn’t an easy thing to adjust to and you’ll have to carefully look after your fuel levels, when leaving populated areas. I was fortunate enough to be used to taking dives into the ground and fully prepared to treat any minor wounds that may occur. All that being said, the mountains were such a blessing after the flat, grey and bleak landscape that Hanoi offered. I have a great love for hiking and Hanoi is a city that just cannot satisfy that itch. For a novel weekend, the Hao Ban stilt house was appreciated, but for a longer stay, I’d have been elated to have a TV, air-con and sound-isolated room, away from other travellers.

Ban Lac Village was a fun, bustling space that had an appreciated lack of people harassing you to buy things. Yes, there were a few obnoxiously foreign tour groups congesting roads and gawping at things, but no more than to be expected inside Hanoi.

I was happy to have the chance to see something new and experience unexplored scenery – it is worth braving grim conditions for even a small sense of freedom.

Also, I did it all without my coworkers. Here’s to you, you bastards.

You Shall Hai Van Pass

When you just need to feel the thrill of curved tarmac under two wheels.

The city of Da Nang lies between Hue, in the North, and Hoi An, to the South. It is more than possible to travel from to Da Nang to Hoi An in a single day and back, however, to travel from Da Nang to Hue and back in a day is no easy feat and if you want the pleasure of a scenic route, it requires negating the Hai Van Pass – a mountainous road that offers its fair share of excitement and beauty.

A river view on the way North towards the Pass.

After a hearty, Tay (Westerner) breakfast at Hang’s, it was time to hit the road and traverse some mountains. Unfortunately, a quick Google search would’ve helped saved a fair amount of backtracking before even reaching the start of the Hai Van Pass.

Courtesy of Google Maps. Da Nang lies to the south of the map and the Hai Van Pass is marked by the black circle. The blue circle indicates a tunnel route through the mountain.

The ‘motorbike ferry’ terminal.

There are two routes north towards Hue – one is a tunnel through the mountains to the West (the blue circle, above) and the other is a mountain road around the side of the slopes, to the East (the black circle, on the map above). To take the tunnel route, you have to use a motorbike ferry service – you pack your bike onto the back of a truck and then ride on a bus through the mountain tunnel (unless you have a four-wheeled vehicle of your own, that isn’t full of flammable liquid). Lacking a car, the only choice available would be to give up any chance of coastal views and submit to being trapped on a minibus, so it was a U-turn and a route correction to find the mountain passes we were looking for.

A temple immediately before heading north onto the Hai Van Pass.

At the top of the mountain, there were a number of small (and typically overpriced) shops selling snacks and some old battlements that you could freely scramble over to take photographs.

Thừa Thiên-Huế province is the area North of Da Nang, that Hue lies in.

There are multiple turret bunkers and ruins that mark the peak of the main road through the pass. Apparently, there is a steep route to the very top of the mountain, past the Old Gate structure.

As for the mountain road itself, there are numerous potholes and the combination of Vietnamese traffic, undulating turns and sharp inclines that don’t make for an easy ride if you lack confidence. If you have the ability to tilt on a bike and control your speed well – it is certainly an exercise in fun; if you aren’t too used to moving with your bike, it may be more of an exercise in controlling bodily fluids. The added obstacles of farm animals ranging from goats to cattle, also help to increase the skill needed to comfortably negate the pass.

Go, go, Goats.

As for my journey to Hue, it was just too late in the day to make it there and back before nightfall, so accepting defeat, it was a second run through the Hai Van Pass and a chance to appreciate the road just a little bit more.

Overall?

If nothing else than to ride a motorbike and see coastal views – the Hai Van Pass is worth it. As long as you know your bike and how to manage your speed through winding roads, it certainly is more than worth doing. Enjoy the view, soak up the adrenaline and then find religion as lorries are hurled incoming, on your side of the road.

Godspeed be with you, and if not, some good ol’ fashioned Viet-speed will have to do.

Marble Mountains; Definitely not a Load of Balls

When culture and religion meet light hiking and scenery, good things happen. 

The Marble Mountains are located in the middle of Vietnam, near a city named Da Nang (that I reached in no short journey) and make for great photo opportunities whilst also enjoy a bit of hiking, and caving to boot.

Inside Tang Chon Cave.

As I travelled there during Tet, there was no entry fee and locals will all offer you parking in return for you buying a souvenir from them (or more realistically, just paying them 10,000VND – about 0.45USD).

The layout of the grounds – cave number 6 was inaccessible during my visit.

The mountains are fairly spread out, but the central peaks are the ones where most of the easily accessible caves and Buddhist temples are. You can, of course, hire tour guides to take you around the slopes, but true to my solo-traveller self, I struck it alone and wandered freely from photo opportunity to picturesque landscape.

The largest cave: Huyen Khang.

The biggest discovery I got to make was the presence of a small back entrance/exit to Dong Van Thong cave – you literally squeeze up and out to find an alternative route to the top of the smaller peak of the two closely standing mountains.

Although I use the word ‘hike’ to describe ascending the mountains, it is really just small series of steps that take you from level to level (unless of course your find a path off the beaten track – these are more large, broken rocks and boulders). It still doesn’t make for an overly easy journey, but it certainly doesn’t require all out hiking gear to conquer.

Overall?

The view from the tallest peak.

The site is well worth a walk-around (even despite the hordes of tour groups that grace its grounds) and the view once you reach the highest peak is certainly rewarding. Even if you are not big on religion, there is much to interest and photograph, I am truly glad that I spent an afternoon exploring the area – preparing provisions, grabbing photographs, and prevailing over continual steps to higher ground are more than enough to delight even the hardest parts of my soul.

Endurance Train-ing; Staying on Track in a Sleeper Cell

Sleeper Express trains may not be the fastest method of travel in Vietnam, but my camera argues for using them.

This post has been heavily delayed due to work stress and laziness – as it turns out, I’m only human after all. For Chinese New Year at the start of February (known as Tet in Vietnam), and the mandatory week off that it afforded, I made a slightly last-minute choice to travel to Da Nang and stay for just over 4 days in the coastal city.

Courtesy of Google Maps.

The reasons I wanted to travel by plane were: my general hatred of airport security, wanting to see more of Vietnam’s landscape, and having no particular hurry to arrive in Da Nang. The journey by plane is around 2 hours in total; the journey by train for me was at least 17 hours. Comparing prices from online booking, a ticket for the SE5 train south was 846,000VND (around 38USD) and the SE14 north to Hanoi was 998,000VND which works out at around 45USD; a return plane ticket was around the 2,000,000VND mark, although some friends had managed to book tickets for a cheaper price with early booking. There were several travel options available for trains, with the main choice being between sleeper cabins or standard seating. Being the snob that I am, I opted for a soft-sleeper cabin which could house 4 people, rather than a standard coach seat. If you do travel with 3 other friends, I cannot recommend highly enough sharing your own cabin; as a solo traveller choosing to share a cabin, your entire journey experience may come down to sheer pot-luck. In retrospect, a plane journey should have been my first choice for going solo, but now at least I have crossed an extra item off of my Vietnam-to-do-list and attained some degree of bragging rights in the process.

Train Times – definitely not short journeys.

I left Hanoi from the Central Train Station at 9:00am on a Saturday morning – it was a simple case of flagging down a motorbike taxi (xe om) from near my apartment and making sure I had plenty of time to settle into my cabin and prepare for the journey ahead. The cabins were cosy, yet comfortable enough given the conditions that could be expected. I brought a sleeping bag to use as a blanket, but small pillows and blankets were provided, however, I cannot attest to their hygiene and did not see much bedding being regularly replaced with fresh sheets. Each carriage had its own washroom with sinks and Western-style toilets, but the good ol’ long drop could still be found in a carriage, or two. Each cabin had a central window, table, and power sockets on the far wall flanked by bunk beds. There was a limited ventilation system and small reading lights for each bed as well. The SE5 was seemingly an older train that creaked and grated like a great big, insatiable, blue worm of Meccano undulating its way through the countryside. The regular jolts and shudders didn’t make for the easiest of trips into dreamland.

As for the inhabitants of my cabin, there was one inmate that made the experience more like being trapped in a cell and less of being in the lap of relaxation. I wouldn’t say that I am the type of adult to despise children, but my job as a teacher means that I am regularly interacting with loud children and being paid to do so, in the process. To have to spend my free time listening to screaming, shouting and kicking from an uncontrolled delinquent, in the accompaniment of their parent, is not something I gladly partake in. For most of my 17 hours, or so on the SE5, I had the pleasure of a 4-6 year-old boy screaming out loud for no apparent reason, crying, kicking the door to the cabin and running around the corridor. The only time that silence was heard (ignoring the groan of the train) was when the demonic being lost his will to be infuriating and fell asleep (after which he woke his father up and demanded attention). Never have my travel notes from a trip seemed so full of murderous intent.

When not in my cell, I wandered the train looking for things to photograph, listened to music, slept what little I could, and grabbed a small plastic red chair from a storage area and sat near the exit doors to read my Kindle. It is rare that I have so much free reflective time to myself, but such a magnitude of hours in one sitting is more testing than it is refreshing.

Exhausted and world-weary, I happily set foot in Da Nang by 1:30am and headed straight for my hotel to embrace a pillowy peacefulness of silence.

Train Journey 2: The Trackening 

SE14 cabin interior.

Filled with an apprehension of what may lie ahead, I waited at the train station seemingly in another dimension of consciousness; the one that only exists before 5am on a weekday. The SE14 had a surprisingly welcome wooden-themed interior and was definitely a bit smaller than its SE5 brethren, but also decidedly quieter in its movement along the tracks. As if to grace me with forgiveness for my previous journey, fate had it so that I was the only soul in the cabin for a great portion of my 21 hours back to Hanoi. Never before have I had so much sleep in a 24-hour period. Despite missing the sunshine that graced the world outside the cabin, I could relax, read, and listen to music in my own world away from lesson-planning and deadlines.

The holy trinity of entertainment – an old phone, iPod and Kindle.

Just so that life didn’t make things too perfect an experience, my small Nirvana was regularly interrupted by food and snack carts, with shuffling creatures that would bang on doors and often open them to offer you food, only to leave the door open in their wake. Pretty much leaving unwelcome light and sound greedily flooding in.

Once back in Hanoi, it was an emotional reunion with my apartment and a bed that had probably been stationary longer than I had been an adult for.

Overall?

Nothing does sleep deprivation quite so well, like a holiday of travel in a foreign country; sleep is the currency we pay for adventure with. Quite frankly, this trip is definitely a waste of hours that could be spent at a destination city, but it does offer something different to the more cold-cut efficiency of air travel. Watching the paddy fields and mountains roll away past your window is akin to a painted canvas moving through a frame on an art gallery wall.

Was it stressful? Yes. Was I extremely drained? Yes. Would I do it again? Probably not.

Am I glad that I did it just the once?

You’re damn right.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum; In Death ‘Til We Do Path

It was very quiet and a little dead inside. 

I have to prefix this blog post by stating that I am nothing akin to resembling a morning person and I had had 3 hours of sleep before heading out to experience the wonders of the mausoleum and its accompanying museum. The Mausoleum houses the preserved corpse of Ho Chi Minh, a leader who founded the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. During weekdays, the Mausoleum is only open until 12pm and I had currently avoided seeing it until recently from sheer laziness. Having passed the site numerous times, I was confident in my ability to rock up without so much of plan and blitz the grounds from 10am, with a mouth full of gritted determination and a decisive shutter finger. Apparently, reality had other plans for my arrival. Finding motorbike parking next to a roundabout close to the Mausoleum that cost me a whole 5,000 VND (<$0.25 US), I confidently dismounted my scooter only to end up becoming a bird at the window of a bakery. Despite seeing lines of visitors walking across the grounds and an uninterrupted line of sight to the building, I couldn’t discern where this mystical portal allowing entry could possibly be. After asking a security guard and following signs for a few blocks, I eventually found the road to petrification.

Courtesy of Google Maps. The red route is the ‘son-of-a-bitch walkway.’

As a general description of the route from the entrance of the grounds to the exit of the Mausoleum – it was a fairly linear path with just a slight semblance of freedom of choice along the way. I couldn’t help feel that it was a rather apt representation of what the building itself championed.

After a seemingly pointless security check, where not a single pat-down of a patron was given after a conspicuously loud metal scanner alarm, I received a rather fetching temporary handbag and parted ways with my backpack as it chilled in the bag check area.

Although the route through the site was scenic enough from the decoration of foliage and glimpses of the Ho Chi Minh Museum, it was another chore en route to the main event and the images of singing elderly men playing on television screens along the way were of little interest. Once upon the route to the Mausoleum proper, it was now time to say goodbye to the fleeting love that adorned my arm and part ways with the camera that we had supported, together. Strangely enough, it was requested that any professional cameras were checked into the holding shack, but we were allowed to keep hold of any phones. Seemingly, security guards shouting at anyone who tried to use their phones were deemed a suitable deterrent (to my annoyance after trying to contact a friend.)

When you finally reach the foot of the monolithic building, it is hard to feel anything other than distaste at such an unapologetically hideous looking creature of stone. Once inside, the plastic red carpet leads you through the bowels of the building and into the chamber of Ho Chi Minh’s death-slumber, with nought but solemn stares and silence to fill the air. Whilst I am no stranger to preserved body parts and specimens, the perversion behind this setup was a little disturbing, like the Victorian death portraits, but a live-action peepshow of which we were all perverts vying for a fix of the dire. Shuffling along the edges of the chamber, my eyes alternated between the orange-lit, domed head of Ho Chi Minh and the numerous guards in white, serving their master in his afterlife.

Exiting the spying booth, the daylight had a hard, judging light to it, but once reunited and reconciled with my departed camera it was onto the next – for the first time in my visit to the site I was given an actual option on how to advance onwards: ‘left to the museum and One Pillar Pagoda’ or ‘right to the Presidential Palace.’ I’d hate to ruin a surprise, but both paths take you back to the exit of the grounds; the choice leading right, however, lets you pay 40,000 VND (under $2 US) to see the housing buildings of the deceased president before reaching the exit.

Fully saturated in the vat of lucidity that comes with sleep deprivation, a lot of the photographs and information dotted about the presidential grounds held little attention or interest, but once pointed straight towards the One-Pillar Pagoda and Ho Chi Minh Museum, spirits were greatly lifted – not only freedom to wander and to photograph, but to also mill about and observe the different, and often colourful, groups of tourists.

With only 20 minutes to view the museum and make it back to the original bag check before 12pm, there was 0 to none opportunity to take in the information on display inside the museum and with a brisk pace and discerning eye for photographs, it was a whistlestop affair. To my shock and surprise, the museum was full of art displays and alternative pieces inspired by the history of Vietnam – it was a welcome contrast to the grey and gothic scenes that had come just before.

Accidentally exiting via the car park and not the front of the building, I managed to dodge a motorbike tour salesmen, load up with my bag again and trek back to my scooter for a ride straight to land of dreams before I had to start work in the evening. Thankfully, it wasn’t a nightmare making my way there.

Overall?

Living here, in Vietnam, it is pretty imperative that I discover and learn about the local culture and history that I am clearly benefitting from, but learning from the Mausoleum itself may need only be a one-shot deal to that end; the Ho Chi Minh Museum itself was really intriguing and it was such a shame that I had to the former, only to be briefly introduced to the latter. The museum is also open in the afternoons and I’d be perfectly happy to frequent it again with my camera and a head filled with rest and patience. Considering the fact that the only part of touring the grounds paid for was the Presidential Palace, it isn’t the worst attraction I have ever encountered, but as far as unintentionally creepy opportunities to experience local culture go: you are a great ruler, Ho Chi Minh.

Temple of Literature, Literally Renowned

With these guys; it was pretty much written in stone.

After spending the morning rushing around the city and generally getting lost, I decided to do something with my only second consecutive day off since starting work here in Hanoi. Making sure to charge my camera, I headed out late in the afternoon, to have my roommate tell me that the temple closed at 4:30pm so I’d better hurry; thankfully for me, that didn’t seem to be the case. The temple itself was pretty easy to find thanks to Google maps and my ability to locate a sizeable city block dedicated to a single collection of buildings. Lying just south of the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, the Temple of Literature is a stark contrast to the rag-tag buildings and shops that pepper its circumference. Navigating my way to the parking area that was just to the left of the main entrance gate, on the south face of the block, I wasted no time in finding the ticket booth. I was surprised to see even this late into a chilly and slightly wet December afternoon, that there were many people still walking around the site. Entrance costs for a single, adult ticket were 30,000 VND (around US$1.33) and I picked up a leaflet for another 8,000 VND (US$0.40) which gave a little information and context to the site, but more than that I was greatly impressed by its durability – it had seemingly been printed onto laminated paper and would seemingly give non-tear playing cards a run for their money.

The Temple of Literature, or as the site was known: Quoc Tu Giam, was originally the first National University of Vietnam, constructed in 1076. The University taught students in the ways of Confucianism so that they may become doctor laureates and mandarins (I believe that is not the fruit.)

It was the tourist, in the garden, with a camera…

Walking through the first doorway of the site, named the Great Portico, you can’t help but to admire the rectangular symmetry that runs throughout the grounds; from the courtyards to the door frames, 4 sides and 90-degree angles are king. Veering around tourists and loved-up couples I rushed to photograph as much as possible before security or remaining daylight decided to end my day for me, as it turns out, I need not have worried so much. Although the gardens were clearly well looked after, the grey of the sky and the lack of warm temperature seemed to add a lifeless edge to the plant life present. Although there were some flower displays before the Great Middle Gate, there was a real lack of vibrant colour and especially of life in the four ponds of the garden before reaching Khue Van Pavillion. Shaking off thoughts of being a crime scene photographer I carried on, to the majestically named 82 Doctor Stelae, and the Well of Heavenly Clarity (it was not crystal clear, I would also add.)

The stelae were literally records in stone of the Doctors that graduated the University from 1442 to 1779 and of great pride to Confucian scholars, they have at least seemingly lasted the ages.

Let me check in the back for you.

Moving deeper into the grounds, you come to the Courtyard of the Sage Sanctuary which greets visitors with an intricate metal urn featuring three dragon heads twisting to the sky flanked by snaking dragons facing the bottom of the urn. Once again, the symmetry of the courtyard was beautiful, but it seemed sparse and barren. The courtyard was hugged by gift shops on each side and stared down by large rectangular building containing statues and a gold plated tortoise. There was no need to take shoes off and the staff were surprisingly relaxed about tourists taking pictures and walking around the entire building. It would seem that ceremony, more so than religion, was the general thought in place.

Heading back out into the courtyard, I followed a rather ominous sign and trail to the final segment of the grounds – Thai Hoc Gate and Thai Hoc Courtyard.

The courtyard here was even more lacklustre than its predecessors, but the real gem here was inside the main building at the far side of it – a few more gift stalls, but also more information on the site and its history, and numerous statues and displays with a great deal more grandeur to them. The highlight of an earlier building was a gold plated tortoise – here each statue on the upper level was gold plated. Left to my own devices, I casually wandered around the ground floor taking photographs and then graduated to the upper floor where there was a garish display of gold and colour. If colour had been shared across the site, I would say that the upper floor of the final building had stolen it from the gardens and earlier courtyards – or perhaps it was left as a reward for those willing to seek out the sight.

Taking an opportunity to step out onto a balcony, the fading light outside still did not damper my mood as I looked out over the grounds surrounding either front corner of the building. Unfortunately, the noise from the city could still penetrate the contrasting peacefulness of the temple, but my desire to see something new had been sufficiently satiated. Being one of the few visitors left on site, I made my way for the car park at around 5:30pm and had the pleasure of paying a hefty 5,000 VND (US$0.22) for being the last person to reclaim their bike.

Overall?

Whether a solo tourist, madly-in-love couple or a sheep on a tour, the Temple of Literature is definitely worth seeing; if not to learn about the history and culture of Vietnam, then at least to take some shameless selfies to show how world-cultured you are. There are plenty of benches lining the courtyards and gardens, so if you want to sit and people watch, the world is your goldfish bowl. You can attempt to learn how best to take photographs in low-level settings; chat to the air, and your lover, about how seemingly poetic it is that the trees so twisted and gnarled in an ugly way appear indisputably beautiful; then again, maybe you just like to be part of a garbled squad of cameras herded from one pen to the next by a knowledgeable shepherd – in either case, a total cost of 43,000 VND (under 2 US dollars) for entry, basic information and parking, isn’t going to break the bank and certainly isn’t worse than doing something meaningless elsewhere.

Ba Vi Bound

I want to break free (whilst riding on a clapped-out scooter.)

After living in Hanoi for the last 2 months, I had yet to venture out of the confines of the greater city area and after a few drinks and a cobbled-together plan, myself and 3 workmates headed out to explore some scenes of nature that the city had denied us.

Once we had burnt through a hangover worthy of cheap Bia Hoi drinks, we scrambled to organise and meet at a Big C shopping centre south of Hanoi; with most of the morning lost to us, it was time to begin the journey proper. The route was fairly simple and direct, but thanks to a continuous downpour of rain the mood and the average speed grew decidedly more morose.

Hanoi is on the right and Ba Vi is the green area West of the city. Compliments of Google maps.

Easily the most enjoyable part of the ride to the park (before it became soggy and disappointing) was being able to go at speeds way in excess of those normally possible on the chronically congested city roads – the feeling of continuous momentum was slightly addictive and more than welcome. Once the rain made its stage appearance to boos and hisses, the only positively memorable experience was passing a construction crew surfacing a road and being waved across hot tarmac – the steam blocking our vision and the heady smell prolific in the air.

After accidentally passing our turning towards the park, we doubled back and found a restaurant where we could relax, dry off a bit and enjoy some Bun Cha (thin noodles with pork and soup.) The food outside of the city definitely has a nicer taste and bbq’d  pork with a beer was much more pleasing when a fair few dozen kilometres into the unknown. Although, the frequency of Thit Cho restaurants (dog meat) was a little surprising as well; thankfully we had a slightly proficient Vietnamese-speaker in our party, so were safe from ingesting any furry, four-legged friends.

Parks and Rec. 

Eventually arriving at the park after more than 2 hours from our time of departure, the cost of entry was 40,000 VND with an extra 6,000 VND for our bikes, which altogether is just over 2 USD. The trail was fairly simple and the roads were for the most part completely paved, which came as quite a surprise; even my 11-year-old, automatic scooter was more than a match for the ominously steep switchbacks and inclines. Before you could realise, you were escalating the mountain at an alarmingly fast rate – something that was very easy to do if you were enjoying every twist and turn the road had to offer to you. Admittedly, fuel consumption was a worry to me – our group had tanks that were half to three-quarters full, but as it turns out, my concerns were nothing more than an anxiety whisper in my ear.

Our first stop was to visit the ruins of a French church about half way up the mountain – the cloister of buildings looked amazing, but the centrepiece of the main church hall was the most breathtaking structure. It looked like something out of an Indian Jones set and the scenery added to the authentic jungle feel of the surroundings. We had managed to make it to the national park on a Monday, so there were thankfully very few other tourists there – there was at least 45 minutes of silence before more excited and camera-wielding fellows came along.

After a semi-disastrous incident of a workmate trying a semi-automatic bike for the first time and driving it into a ditch, we headed further up the mountain to the highest peak possible while still staying on our bikes. The mist had pretty much made a home here and the eery, mythical view was a welcome sight, even if it did block out the views from the mountain slope. Although there was a walking trail to the very peak of the mountain, everyone was beginning to feel the exhaustion of the day and the time was approaching late afternoon. Navigating in the rain, after dark, is not an enjoyable experience unless you are one for misery and stress.

It’s All Downhill From Here

The most pointless action that I undertook on the journey down was turning my engine on. After all my worries about fuel consumption (as there was nowhere to refuel on the slope) the gradients of the switchbacks and straights meant that the only thing needed to propel you along was gravity and a firm grip on the brakes. The automatic clutch on my bike turned out to be fairly confused by my slight acceleration whilst already moving at 30km/hr.

Passing a resort on the way down the mountain, we stopped for a quick toilet break and rest before disembarking back to the flats outside the park. Now with more bustling traffic and a fresh tank of climate-destroyer, we disgruntingly zoomed back towards Hanoi. As there was a military base in the area, there were plenty of soldiers running at the sides of the road and further on there was a group of soldiers armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and RPG launchers marching by the road. If there is anything more intimidating than a large group of soldiers with rambo-like loadouts, I’ve yet to see it here in Vietnam.

Good fortune had given us quite a dry journey for the first hour of our ride back, but as the sun came down, so did even more rain. The second hours was a rather dismal affair that brought little to no joy. It can’t be all bad, I hear you say? Once we had arrived in the south of the city after about 2 hours of riding, we had the welcome of peak rush hour traffic with some of the worst examples of riding and driving I have ever seen. The workmate leading the group, as a navigator, had an SUV driver reverse back onto his bike, getting the rear bumper of his car wedged onto the front guard of my friend’s wheel. Despite shouts of Vietnamese from locals who could see what was going on and several loud bangs on the back windshield, the driver continued to try slowly reversing before getting out, looking a the situation and moving forward. Adding to that, the cutting up, speeding on the wrong side of the road a mere few inches from you and tight gaps – it was a tough hour of battling through vehicles and pedestrians. Another workmate almost came off her bike at least twice and was party to most of the incoming suicide riders – here in Hanoi, you go hard or you go nowhere.

Once safely in the confines of an over-priced, Tay (foreigner) restaurant named ‘New Day’ in the old quarter it was drinks all around and disappointing sweet and sour pork. The joy of the day was well and truly over and all that remained was to travel home and rest up before the inevitably mundane beast of work would bite away on the next day.

Overall?

The trip was definitely worth doing, although perhaps not with a forecast of consistent and torrential rain. Despite being only 50km away according to Google maps, the journey was a good few hours’ ride away (although it may have been errors in navigating which helped inflate the time.) Compared to a normal day inside the city, this was a welcome foray into a small bit of adventure and a good reminder that I am here to explore as well as become ingrained into a humdrum routine of work and then drinks. One trip a month like this will see me right. I hope.

The warrior that is my scooter, named: Attila the Hunk…. of shit.

London; Eye On You.

Eyes Are a Window to the Soul.

Due to an imminent departure from England looming and a friend from abroad visiting the country, I decided that it was high-time I took a look at the landmark that is the London Eye. Since its construction in 2000 I’ve always wanted to ride on the Eye and see out across the scapes of London and I was a little surprised, yet lacking in shock, to now see that Coca-Cola had plastered their branding across it. Checking out the website, it was nice to see that even in the logo, the name of the landmark was physically smaller than the company making money from it. Yes, money makes the world go round, but this wheel was literally a cog in the works of some hefty profit-making.

Fortunately for me, ticket booking wasn’t nearly as wallet-raiding as I had expected it to be; after looking up the prices for online booking: 1 adult ticket for a midday slot and entry to a 4DX Experience was £20.70 – or the equivalent of a meal and drinks after a day at the British Museum, or Tate Britain Gallery. With a journey time of 30 minutes, this definitely wasn’t the best cost-to-time ratio of a good thrill, but didn’t quite have the shame of more loin-based services. The purchasing experience was pretty painless and I chose to have my receipt e-mailed to me so I could grab a ticket on arrival, the same day. To collect my ticket, I was told that I would require my card used for payment; the e-mail receipt of purchase and a photo ID. I also wondered if they would want my National Insurance Number, fingerprints, blood sample and favourite colour. Yes, this was of course probably for security reasons, but by being just a little bit of evidence short of a background check, it was a little annoying; gee, thanks, terrorism.

Arriving at Waterloo Station on a Friday before a bank holiday weekend and whilst in the midst of the school summer holidays, I used the tourist information maps en-route to find my way towards the waterfront of the Thames. Wading through the crowds of families, tourists and young people I eventually found my way to the ticket building that lay opposite the Eye itself and, accessing the array of queues for ticket booking/collection/payment, chose the lane that corralled me to the collection counter. I was offered a map of the skyscape for £1 and thought: ‘Yeah, that sounds useful.’ Essentially, I paid for a physically disabled frisbee. At least one small light in the darkness helped to add some cheer – the toilets in the building were free and I felt obliged to go and receive my money’s worth.

So pretty and yet, so disappointing. The reverse side shows the sky at night.

The time slot for my friend and I was 12pm, which we managed to make, even with the inflated queue size and to be honest, regardless of the time on the ticket, it seemed that the slots were more of a crowd staggering device than a hard-and-fast binding.

The queue started in the background and crossed a walkway to the foreground of the picture. School holidays can be hell for an introvert.

The website stated that being on-site at least 30 minutes before your allotted time would be required and it actually was pretty spot-on. Waiting in the shadow of the Eye gave us time to admire the flags that appeared underneath the belly of each capsule – adding plenty of colour to the otherwise monotone structure.

Before we could taste the air inside a capsule, there was a bag check and my friend had the pleasure of getting her backpack x-rayed before having to collect it back herself so that we could move on with the queue. A small shack provided last-minute snacks for the journey and then it was onto the loading platform to ride the great wheel of marketing.

Loading into the capsule was the easiest part of the preliminary process and sure as hell gave the London Underground platforms something to aspire to. The capsule had about 20 people inside when the doors shut and we began the circuitous journey back to the starting position.

The gradual incline of the pod is slight for the most part and unless you catch a breeze, your feet aren’t too troubled by the movement of the floor beneath you. Inside the capsule, you have a 360 degree view to the outside; an oval bench in the middle of the floor; a metal rail around the sides; computer terminal displays and air conditioning which actually make the whole experience quite comfortable as long as you aren’t afraid of heights, or claustrophobic,

 

 

 

 

The London Eye gives you great views across the city and especially of Westminster and Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben) but for the most part I found the view a little lacklustre compared to some of the cityscapes I’ve experienced from abroad. It may just be the envy of having the Shard looking down at me even at the peak of the capsule’s rotation, but I was underwhelmed from the variety of buildings and found trying to shuffle between tourists a little tiresome after the first few attempts to photograph through the glass of our enclosure. The curved glass makes for a great look but when trying to photograph through it, the level of reflection is infuriating, unless of course you can get a camera lens to smooch the window.

The Houses of Parliament with the Elizabeth Tower clockface on the right.

Profile of the wheel.

Once down from the wheel, the fill of tourists and crowded places had been had and the 4DX experience was skipped for the less-travelled path towards the Tate Britain, to see free exhibits and to have something to explore and marvel at.

Overall…?

If I had been new to England and unaware of the delights that lay in far-flung cities, I’d have loved to be riding on a giant carousel wheel in the middle of London, however, I wasn’t an attraction-craving, temporary tourist to the city and I’ve seen a handful of capitals in various corners of the globe. Despite the costs of the tickets, the crowds that swarmed its base and the lack of intrigue when reaching its apex, the wheel was worth seeing. Not for the ride, or air-conditioned chambers, but for the sheer fact that the London Eye itself is a beautiful structure that makes for some great photographs and at least has green areas where you could sit – enjoying a picnic to the sight of its rotation during a sunny day is a rather calming prospect. So what can the Eye tell you about the soul of London? It is overpriced, tourist-filled and has a questionable effectiveness to its functionality; however, deeply ingrained in its core is a sense of astounding beauty, that cannot be denied or diminished.

Take a Photo, it Lasts Longer – World Press Photo ’15

Imagine if You Can; Picture This.

During my short stay in Amsterdam, I had the fortune of visiting the World Press Photo 2015 photo exhibit that displayed winning entries, taken and submitted, from around the world. The photos were judged by various panels of judges through multiple stages/rounds until winners in different categories could be decided upon. The process took place in Amsterdam itself and hearing about the selection process was almost as interesting as the photographs themselves.

I happened to catch the exhibit during its first display in the Nieuwe Kerk on Dam Square, from the 18th of April to the 5th of July 2015. The exhibit will be travelling worldwide and showcasing the most affecting photographs entered into the contest. Entry to the exhibit was only 10 Euros and without quite knowing what to expect, I took a curious gamble and ventured inside.

The New Church certainly has an impressive face on it.

I was pretty sure that I had heard the name of the organisation before, but I could not recall the context or time that the memory was created, nonetheless, upon being graced by the grandeur inside the church and greeted with a wall displaying the history of winning selections; I was lost inside a new world.

The world may be beautiful, but its history often isn’t.

In this world, hope wasn’t always apparent and the sheer volumes of photos that reared the uglier head of humanity were all too clear to see. From war and civilian death in the Ukraine to strangers eating at fast food restaurants, the range and variety of styles, subjects and techniques were an awe-inspiring experience for a plebian novice such as myself. Matching the oft gruesome photographs with the majesty of the building that housed them was almost a juxtaposition too far, for my brain to handle.

The House of Angels displaying the evils of men.

One of the more immediately striking photographs was taken during riots in Turkey in response to the death of a young lad who had been hit in the head with a tear gas canister. Everything from the colour present to the girl’s expression forms a powerful effect and leaves an instant impact upon the viewer.

Although still a relatively small exhibit, there was a great variety of media available to digest: winners from each category were displayed on boards giving a short story behind the entry and providing a QR code that could link you directly the photo page on the website (useless for myself, but no doubt appreciated by others); there was a small off-set room that ran interviews with members of the judging panel detailing the selection process and their thoughts behind some of the main winners and lastly, a room dedicated to video documentaries.

The documentaries were displayed on large screen projections with tendrils of earphone cables hanging from suspended racks. Given the topics and subject matter of the films, the strength of silence, when not connected to any headphones, was almost deafening. I managed to watch documentaries on cubicle living in Japan; Ebola outbreaks in Monrovia; illegal entry into Europe and police violence in America before I had to just move on. Without a doubt, the video of Eric Garner’s death was a lot to deal with and it was hard to process the cocktail of anger, sadness and disappointment that it drew from within.

Fortunately, before leaving the multimedia area I encountered the interactive documentary {The And} that took a simple premise and turned it into something that was hugely effective. 30 different couples were asked to sit and face each other whilst asking and answering questions that had been written onto cards for them. Three stationary cameras then recorded their interactions and the pieces were edited together to make a personalised and personable response to how the viewer had answered a series of questions at the computer terminal, beforehand. After watching the tailored sample, you were then free to browse through any of the couples that had taken part in the documentary. In my humble and honest opinion, it was both parts of Ali {AND} Andrew that were the best to watch – if you so desire, the couples’ gallery can be found at theand.us website after watching your tailored film segment. Just the honesty and the emotion between these two was heartbreaking yet hilarious and warming. Relationships are often messy and none of that quagmire of experience is lost on these exes.

The one item I made sure to purchase from the exhibit gift store, for 25 Euros, was a copy of the book detailing the photographs and their stories. The overall winning entry to claim ‘Photograph of the Year’ was displayed on the cover – this year it was a portrait of a gay, Russian couple on the floor next to a fireplace. Simple, yet beautiful the picture displayed true love in a country where oppression was rampant. The world may not be filled with overly apparent hope, but beauty can still be found in the tiniest of corners.

Should I Visit an Exhibit?

Yes. Take an open mind and a fortitude of mental mettle; your world will be challenged and your eyes will feel the sting of what you see.