Day 138, Kyle and Leanne joint blog.

Thank you for reading!  It’s November, the month of gratitude, and we would first like to say we are so thankful to those that read about our stories of travelling the world with our five teenagers.  Sometimes we feel we are living our own reality show far from the comforts of home so it’s nice to share this experience with our family and friends! Thank you for your support in reading this blog. 

Today we leave beautiful Hanoi.  Our overall assessment was despite the crowds and mopeds, it was well worth visiting this incredibly vibrant city with its history, tree lined streets, parks, serene sacred lake, French early 20th century architecture, Vietnamese “tube” buildings and kinetic streets just full of the hustle and bustle of life. The Vietnamese are thriving today, growing beyond the past and forging into the future.  

We are surrounded by millennial tourists partly because traveling is inexpensive here - 30 cents for a water, $2 for a glass of wine.  Heck we can feed the whole family a nice meal out for about $50. We always like travelling where the dollar is strong, the food is delicious and the people are kind. So far that’s been most of the places we have been. 

Our transport arrives at 10 am for the 3.5 hour drive to Halong Bay.  We say goodbye to kind hotel manager Maggie — as she stands outside to wave us goodbye with the sincerest look. “Goodbye to our queen, our Viking, our knight....!” shares a smiling Maggie remembering all our Halloween costumes from yesterday. 

Its personalized remarks like that that distinguish a good accommodation from a great accommodation. That human connection matters. Especially to us now in our fifth month of travel a half a world away from friends and family. Oh we will miss the Essence Hotel - even with the unfortunate but not laughable naked guy incident (see 10/28 blog)— with its stellar customer service, intimate size and ideal central location.  

Off to Halong Bay. The rainy morning gives a fresh morning cleanse over the city streets as the ever-present fruit sellers navigate a far less busy street.  The motorcyclists that do brave the weather adorn colorful rain slickers that whip in their self-generated wind. Traffic is noticeably less and the makeshift pho restaurants are all in hiding now.  

Outside the busy city, we see agricultural Vietnam with its big wide rice paddies soaking in watery fields.  It’s hard to believe these peaceful scenes were fierce battlefields just fifty years ago within our lifetime.  The rain keeps the fields empty of people and equipment giving the land an allure of early morning here at 11 am. 

The teens are eerily silent in the van either working on their studies or appearing to be working on their studies. Hard to tell from the front seat. Kyle fiercely pecks at his MacBook working on the Thailand blogs sharing, “we are getting behind” while Leanne just takes in the rainy morning views of banana trees, rice paddies and endless beautifully crafted blacktop road which we now consider a luxury item after Nepal. 

We have one scheduled bathroom break.  The driveway is lined with gorgeous marble statues of Buddhas, animals, dragons, and gigantic contemporary angels that resemble the figurines sold exclusively at the Hallmark store.   Don’t tell Hallmark. The bathroom is absolutely gorgeous too with thirty beautiful, clean, fragrant smelling, freshly painted stalls with western toilets filled with ample toilet paper, recently flushed and (dare I share as you may get jealous here) a full bottle of hand gel.  Ah, the joy of going to the really nice public bathroom; another luxury item we have come to FULLY appreciate when we can find one.

Yes you read a bit of sarcasm here (humor helps on a trip like this) but a few bathroom stops along the way in our journey over the last month plus have been .... well, experiences we would rather forget but just can’t.  As you might tell from our adjectives above, we have encountered some bathrooms that were the opposite.  One pungent smell immediately permeates my nose memory from the mere mention of the location name.  And let’s leave it at that. But if we have one wish for the world beyond peace and a saved climate, it’s the joy of clean bathrooms for all.  Our friend Dawn wished this for us at our June Bon Voyage party and that wish was granted today. 

Unfortunately though, these clean bathrooms comes with a “price.”  The van parking is way on the other side of the adjacent building. Those avid readers will predict what’s next. The dreaded tourist trap called a handicrafts center or a demonstration center which is really just endless rooms of shopping for a bunch of stuff no one really needs. Yup! Even Vietnam is into these centers. “I will not fall victim today.  I will not fall victim today.” Leanne quietly chants to herself. “Stay strong and just look at the floor and follow the path directly to the exit on the opposite side,” Kyle encourages her.

This time the “draw” are human-sized beautiful handmade stone carved statues made for and by disabled persons. There’s several artists right at the entrance (although none seem obviously disabled at first glance).  Kyle and I quickly skirt by not making eye contact with any of the 10 or so hovering sales folks.  If it was just the statues, we’d be okay as we actually DON’T need a two-ton marble fountain of a boy peeing into a bowl not mention shipping it back home halfway across the world.  The problem is that that it turns out this handicrafts center is the Super Walmart of handicrafts centers with room and after room of every handicraft, large and small, apparently ever made in Vietnam the past ten years.

We are now fully-fledged Tourist Trap Avoiders.  If we could earn a Certificate in Awareness, Avoidance and Survival of Global Tourist Traps, we are at least 75 percent towards completion of this non-existing certification. But… we can’t find the teens anywhere. 

A mild panic falls over Leanne’s face but Kyle is not phased one bit.  Leanne is convinced they fell into one of the shady corners of the smiling salespeople’s webs.  We even get lost together trying to find the hidden exit to the parking on our own — surely the kids did too. Now Leanne is worried and suggests backtracking the six rooms we’ve come so far to the bathroom and starting our search all over as she’s absolutely sure at least a couple of them fell “hook, line and sink-her” into this Olympian-sized tourist trap. 

“Ah, they will be fine Leanne, don’t worry,” assures Kyle, “why would they want to buy a three foot Jade elephant that won’t fit in their bag?”

We finally find out way out and approach our van.  Through the windows, Leanne quickly counts heads, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 teens. Good!” exclaims Leanne. It’s a counting process engrained in her head since her days as chaperone on the kids’ school trips. Ok there was that one aquarium field trip with John where she lost a wandering kindergartner in the dark and he came out bawling, but outside of that, she’s been on it. 

She gets back in the van, jokes about having bought a marble fountain which the kids don’t even remotely fall for.  Quite relieved, Leanne realizes that the teens are much better at handling these tourist traps than a 51 year-old PTA mom. Apparently they earned their Certificate about three countries ago. 

As we arrive in Halong Bay, the van rolls into a town that resembles nothing of what Leanne enjoyed here 28 years ago.  She recalls it as “off the beaten track” but today this path has been beaten, hammered and cemented over. There’s a new hotel on every block and more cruise boats on the bay than Hawkers in Jaipur. 

Halong Bay contains over 3,000 mini islands that are covered in lush green and darted right out from the sea.  As Vietnam continues to grow its tourism industry, Halong Bay has been developed alongside it.  And for good reason. It’s gorgeous here. 

The hotel is actually on an island in the bay so we have to take a water shuttle across to check-in. When we get to the hotel, it’s still raining but the pool calls. Well actually, the pool bar calls as it’s the only place that is still serving food at 2:30pm. We need lunch and so we get to the pool and try to find dry spots under the pool bar overhang.  Since the hotel is built on a man-made island only designed for the hotel, one pretty much has no choice to eat but at this sole hotel option.  It’s the “We are a sweet resort, why leave the island just to eat?” Hotel Design Strategy.