Chúc mừng năm mới

Yes indeed the day has finally arrived. Happy lunar new year. And what a wet start it was. Me and the two Aussies huddled under a bridge along with a few tens of locals to watch a firework display happening on the other bank, from around the Imperial City.

It was a good fifteen minutes long, but despite the stiff wind and rain, the smoke really obscured about two-thirds of the effects from our viewpoint. And then it was 00:15 and everyone went home.

SE1: Huế to Đà Nẵng

Up at some ungodly hour (09:00) to get breakfast and to the station to catch the 10:39 SE1 service. To my slight astonishment it arrived bang on time.

The journey to Đà Nẵng is mostly uneventful until the track navigates a pinch point where Huế province becomes Đã Nâng province. The track grips onto a mountainside to the west, falling away to the sea in the east. There are tight bends, some tunnels and quite amazing views as headlands come and go.

Sadly my seat was on the “wrong” side of the carriage so I had to take photos and videos through the half-open window in the vestibule. For sure, one unexpected lurch and that would be the end of my phone.

Built by the French Colonial Administration, it’s a remarkable piece of engineering. Usually only a handful of trains per day make the journey from Hà Nội to Ho Chi Minh City, but during Tết there’s something like eighty services per day.

Each one must lumber up one side and slide back down the other. The linkages between carriages squeak and groan, the wheels squeal on the rails as they are hauled slowly, painfully slowly to the apex before the relief of gravity takes over and the brakes take on the squeaking role.

As a minor train nerd, I loved it.

I’ll add some videos when I get a chance to upload them. Best turn the volume down before watching…

Hội An: it’s sunny

You’ll have spotted from the photos that the clouds dissipated on the journey. Here in Hội An, it’s pretty sunny. I’ll have to buy sun cream, which makes a nice change from, well, the entire journey up to now.

7: Hà Nội to Huế

Sunday was a travel day. Nothing much to report except a 14-hour train ride from Hà Nội to Huế, arriving at nearly 11pm. If nothing else, it highlights just how slow transport – other than flying – is in Vietnam. This is on top of the 8-9 hours back from Ha Giáng the day before so I’m kinda transported-out.

8: The Citadel in Huế

It’s a grey, breezy, drizzly day in Huế and I walked from my hotel towards the only game in town, the Imperial City, former home of the Royal Families of Vietnam.

I stopped for breakfast and talked to another British guy who was cycling north to south. He lives in Hà Nội but is moving to Paris and spending some time cycling the country beforehand.

I crossed the Perfume River, where there were zero tourist boats in operation. It’s so close to new year that a lot of businesses are already closed.

Into the Imperial City

I’ll admit that I didn’t get the audio guide, which may have been a mistake because there’s not a whole lot of explanation at each site within the city of what was there or what’s been restored.

Much of what was there was destroyed in various wars, notably the American War as it’s known here, but also the French had a good go at it too.

Far better that you go look things up on Wikipedia than I try to explain what I saw, but in short, the dynasty ran for a couple of centuries until 1975 when I was born. I assume that’s a coincidence. During that time, various kings and queens and concubines lived here and developed their own houses and palaces.

Most of what remains has or is being restored, with, I have to say, mixed results. The grand entrance gates and palaces look like new:

But other areas, while dotted with boards celebrating their restoration, have already been left to deteriorate again:

It’s rather sad that so much effort has gone into these areas and then they’re left. Especially given that the hard tennis court of the last king has been entirely refurbished for reasons that are unclear.

Still. It was an interesting half day of wandering around what is a huge site. If you go: make it a drier day, and get the audio guide…

By the way: I took a lot of photos on my big boy camera, the ones here are iPhone images. Maybe the others look a little better but in the dreary circumstances, this is what’s available right now to post.

(Spoiler alert, I’m writing this on day 6, after already crafting a whiny day 6 post, so here will just be the fun stuff).

Tết essentials

To properly prepare for Tết, you need at least three things:

Museum

Ha Giang has a neat little museum documenting the many indigenous cultures that make up the region. Most of the exhibits are in Vietnamese and English, but the first series of photos were not so I did a lot of phone translating, sometimes with less than stellar results:

I especially liked the grass ghosts who will worship ancestors or the recently departed.

And though I initially read the heading incorrectly, I am all for the idea of my wedding involving 50kg of wine, masses of rice and cold hard cash.

Suffice to say though, that Ha Giang is not the prettiest city you’ll ever visit, especially when shrouded in cloud (a topic for that day 6 post…)

Yesterday was chill. I got up, had breakfast, had coffee, got a haircut, had two more coffees, watched a train pass within half a metre of my nose, went to a skyscraper and looked across a cloudy and polluted Hanoi, looked straight down at the ground 65 floors below, saw a cat, drank a coffee, ate Bahn Mi, drank a coffee, had a nap, had a crisis, had Pho, had a margarita, had a beer, met a guy cycling around the world, had some more beers, went to bed, couldn’t sleep, shouted at drunk Americans and now I’m on a bus waiting for it to move to Ha Giang.

I think I’d had my fill of Hanoi by yesterday. It’s relentless: noise, fumes, horns, motorcycles, horns, cars, horns. There was a point where I was checking if I should just pack it all in and go somewhere quiet, like Bangkok. Then I realised I should probably eat and things got better.

Train Street

Hanoi has a thing where some streets are kind of dedicated to one thing: books, sweets, whisk(e)y, paper.

Train Street is perhaps a little different because it’s not a real street but a train track where a whole bunch of coffee shops have set up right next to it. Since trains are infrequent, it’s a thing to do to sit with a coffee and watch a train rumble past your table.

This is perhaps where my problems started because I had two incredibly strong coffees while all this went on. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t really drink coffee (and might therefore wonder why I’m in Vietnam).

The view from above

I am low-key obsessed with skyscrapers and their viewing platforms. When possible, in each new city I go to, I try to go up.

In Hanoi, that means the Lotte Tower. At a little under 300 metres, it’s not a super tall, but it’s got a viewing floor and two glass floors to test your mettle.

The ticket lady warned me – and showed a picture – that the view was pretty limited, but I’m committed so up I go. And, uh, yeah. Nobody is going to take spectacular pictures today.

Moar kwaffs

Back to the old quarter for lunch and more coffee. That’s six now, and – who knew? – a recipe for sleep disaster. Still: there’s a cat.

Minor crisis and Michelin Pho

Surprisingly, I managed a mid-afternoon nap and then woke up all jittery grouchy. This, I decided, was all Vietnam’s fault and I’d be better off somewhere familiar like Thailand. Cue a wasted hour or so looking to see what I should or could cancel to make that happen.

Then I decided to get pho from the place I was recommended on Monday evening. The store is extremely unassuming, given that while it doesn’t have a Michelin star, it’s been commended by them in 2023 and 2024. Personally I couldn’t tell you the difference between Michelin-level pho and regular pho but it was tasty all the same.

Serious backpacking

To round off the evening I went back to a little bia place near my hotel. I got talking to a guy called Fred, who’s 27 and has spent the last eight months cycling from the UK to (so far) Vietnam. He’d just spent three months travelling across China and I was the fourth English-speaker he’d talked to in all that time.

Cycling. Cycling. Like, on a bicycle, with a tent, for eight months. It sounded like a lot of fun but I think there are people who thrive on that and people (like me) who’d catastrophise the fuck out of it by Calais.

And after all that coffee:

I slept like ass. Lesson learned.

I slept for about ten hours last night and stilll needed a nap this afternoon. But I’m nearly synced.

I think Hanoi lives off chaos. It’s a city for turning chaos into air pollution. How people get from A to B is just a factor of staying exactly on the line between chaos and calamity. At the same time there’s a literal balancing act going on with the 80 litres of wine or 120cm maxi-bonsai tree or four cubic metres of socks being carried on the back of each moped.

I saw it go wrong. Nothing serious, maybe a busted indicator and a grazed hand. Fortunately the bus behind the guy who came off stopped. But since it generally feels faster to walk places, it’s clear nobody is going that fast in the first place.

Tết 2025

Maybe I mentioned it already. The lunar new year happens 29th January, and everybody is preparing. Most noticeably, young Vietnamese are taking a lot of photos in traditional dress. It’s fun to watch and they take it very seriously.

Elsewhere loads of places are decorated (red, obviously) and the streets of the old town are doing rapid business.

I was talking to the guy running a bar near my hotel and he said that since the pandemic, Tết has become a bit more insular or closed off. Where before people would spend the days visiting absolutely everyone they know, now they just do relatives.

One anecdote does not make the truth, and I’ll be in a much smaller city when it happens, so let’s see.

Photo dump