This Is A Lake - A travel blog

I caught thr sun ONE MORNING and I immediately put on a cap and sunglasses, applied sunscreen on my face and neck, wore long sleeves and long trousers... And STILL I managed to get sunburnt on the sides of my neck (only the sides!) and the backs of my hands. I look like a walking candy cane. SO ANYWAY, I spent much of today in transit and very little in the way of sightseeing, so for a quick recap... I got back from Sapa via the overnight train and arrived in Hanoi really early, like 4:30. I got back to the hotel, where luckily they had a room available for a shower and a quick nap. I had plenty of time to spare before I had to catch my flight, so I took a power walk to the tem of Tran Quoc, a tiny Buddhist temple with a pagoda. This had the added benefit of taking me to The Bookworm, a nice English-language bookstore where I stocked up on some reading material for the flight. It takes like half an hour to walk there from the Old Quarter and another half to get back, but I welcomed the

Amazing news: it's sunny today! It happened! I saw the sun today for the first time since that one day in Versailles when we had a nice morning. When I opened the window today, instead of a solid white wall of fog I could actually see the entire valley sprawling in front of me. I dashed downstairs, had breakfast as quickly as possible -not difficult to do since it's so unappetizing- and went out for a walk before our trekking started. I wanted to see at least a glimpse of the town without the fog, and indeed today it was a lively and cheery mountain town instead of an eerie forest settlement. We met our guide at the hotel lobby at 9:30, and went on our way! She came escorted by a group of H'mong women, one with a baby on her back, and chatted merrily with them while we followed them as best we could. Our destinations were the towns of Lao Chai (not to be confused with Lao Cai, where the train station is) and Ta Van. If yesterday's trek was a very easy walk

It's Sapa time! Sapa is a village in the northeast of Vietnam, known for its views of the valleys below and its proximity to the Fansipan, Vietnam's highest peak at just over 3,000 m. It's also very close to the hometowns of one of Vietnam's ethnic minorities, the Black H'mong (so called because they dye their clothes black). There's no direct route from Hanoi to Sapa; there are trains to Lao Cai, a town within one hour's drive of Sapa. The train ride takes a really long time, so what most people do is book an overnight train, which leaves Hanoi at around 21:45 and arrives in Lao Cai at around 05:30 the next morning, and that's what I did. I booked a packaged trip for this part of my holidays, because there are a lot of moving parts (trains, transport to and from stations to hotels, then trekking tours...) and I was just about done with booking the rest of the trip. So I'm booked for return-trio overnight trains, one hotel night, transport, and two g

So, after the adventure of actually getting here, I  was dropped off at the Sapa Lodge hotel, which looks fine, and was given a fairly terrible breakfast while they processed my check-in. At around 9AM, our guide arrived and we left on our first tour. It was raining heavily outside -more than when I arrived- so I had my umbrella out and my rain poncho on. I thought my sneakers would be all right in the rain, and perhaps they might have been, but what I wasn't expecting were the torrential rivers pouring down every street, with no safe place to step on. There would be waves that splashed up to our ankles, so that our feet were fully soaked within minutes. (I had tried to get rainboats at a store but they didn't have my size...) It got better later on, but of course by then we already had puddles inside our shoes. The scenery really is beautiful. It speaks to the beauty of the place that I found some sights impressive even in the cold, rainy, foggy slosh of a walk th

When I got up today at SCST (my new acronym for Soul-Crushing Six Thirty) the view was definitely clearer. It was still misty and overcast, but you could see further along in the distance. When you can actually see what's around you, the landscape is magnificent: we sailed all morning and as far as the eye could see were only rock formations and the occasional cruise ship. It's hard to overstate just how vast this whole area is. We started the day with a Tai Chi class on deck, followed by breakfast (Vietnamese soup or eggs, at seven in the morning; thank my lucky stars that I was able to get some toast). I went up on the deck and took some pictures of the view. The mist was rolling away on the surface of the water, and the birds chirped unseen, like you would expect from a Chinese myth. Our main and last activity for the morning was to disembark at a small beach (most formations are just rocks jutting out from the water, so seeing a beach is pretty rare). Wh

I woke up at a soul-crushing 6:30 today to be picked up for my Halong Bay cruise! Halong Bay is this amazing site with all the limestone rocks jutting out of the water that you've probably seen a million times in magazines or movies. It's 180 km from Hanoi, which in Vietnam takes at least four hours (!!) by car. It's not really viable as a day trip, so most people opt to book cruises with one night or two on board. That way you can do one road trip one day and the other on the next. I booked the 2 day/1 night cruise with the Dragon Legend, which goes around Bai Tu Long Bay, a less transited area of Halong Bay. I was picked up at my hotel by a large van with very comfortable seats (important, because it's a long trip ahead!). I was able to leave my bag at the hotel when I checked out, so I'm travelling just with my backpack for the day. You don't need many things for one night and it's not fun to carry large bags around a boat! The road trip

After overextending yesterday, I slept in today and took it slow over breakfast. Today's my last day in Hanoi, and I used it to visit the last few items on my list. I got out at about 10 and walked along Hoan Kiem lake, all the way until the French Quarter. It's still gray and misty, but less muggy than yesterday. Google forecasts rain for my whole Halong Bay cruise tomorrow and my trip to Sapa after that, and even in allegedly sunny Hue it's raining, so I guess I should just resign myself to wet holidays... The French Quarter is certainly different from the Old Quarter, with bigger buildings of Western styles, albeit often with the yellow colours you see so often in French colonial houses. The most recognisable sight in the quarter is the Hanoi Opera House (above), which is like a miniature, tropical Opéra Garnier. Right next to it is the National Museum of Vietnamese History, a big yellow building more grandiose perhaps than its collection might me

Sleep is awesome, you guys! You should totes try it! Last night I fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow at around 20:30 -I woke up wide awake at 2AM, thinking the jet lag was going to screw me over, but next thing I know my alarm is waking me up at 7AM. The early start was because I planned to go the Ho Chi Minh memorial complex, and the Mausoleum inside only opens from 08:00 to 11:00. I took a taxi there and found the longest queue I've ever seen. Hundreds and hundreds of people, only about 5% westerners, and it did that Disneyworld thing where you see a massive queue outside, but then you get in and there's another massive queue inside. It actually moved relatively fast, but to give you an idea, I joined the queue at 8:30 and only entered the mausoleum at 10:00!! After all the queuing, you arrive at a rather small cement building guarded by lots of uniformed officers. They make you leave your bags outside and instruct you to not speak, point at thin

So we left off when I left the cozy hotel at what must have amounted like 5AM my time on no sleep to delve into the chaos that is the Old Quarter of Hanoi. I figured I would just walk around the area for a bit until I became tired again -I took the Lonely Planet 2h itinerary as a starting point but ended up doing all of it! It's been a culture shock for sure, this being my first time in South-East Asia, second time in Asia after Japan a few years ago. Everything I'd read, every video I'd seen, every story I'd been told proved true. Walking down the streets here is an assault on all your senses. There are motorcycles going in every direction, on the road or on the sidewalk, cars and vans as well, honking constantly at every turn. Back home a honk normally means "You're going to die now", so I jump every time, but here it's a substitute for blinkers, or a threat, or a warning. They honk, therefore they are. The streets of the Old Quarter ar

Another year, another adventure: this time I came to Vietnam! I took on a direct Vietnam Airlines flight that turned out not to be so direct when, after more than 10h in the air, we received the news that visibility was insufficient in Hanoi. They diverted us to Da Nang (which added an hour on the plane), where we had to wait for Hanoi to clear up (another hour) and then we had to take off and fly there again (another hour). A three hour delay for a total of 14 hours on board! I was bouncing off the walls by the time I got off the plane. It didn't help that the selection of in-flight movies was awful... Once in Hanoi, I still had to queue to get my visa. The way it works is, if you live in one of a few countries (including the UK, Spain, France and Japan, but not the US) you don't need a visa for stays shorter than 15 days. Mine is 16 days, so I had to request a visa via my hotel, which I then had to validate at Noi Bai airport. You fill in a form, attach a picture, and fork ov