Cu Lao Cham - a wonderful maritime paradise

Cu Lao Cham (Cham Island) is a must-see destination for visitors to Hoi An City in the central region. 

If tourists do not buy a tour at a travel firm, they can depart from the ancient town of Hoi An and head for Cua Dai Beach where they take a 20-minute motor boat ride to Cu Lao Island, or a wooden boat ride which costs less but lasts an hour.

Cu Lao Cham covers 500 hectares and has eight islets – Hon Lao, Hon Dai, Hon Mo, big and small Hon Kho, Hon La, Hon Tai, and Hon Ong. It is home to around 3,000 people.

The two most beautiful beaches on the island are Xep and Chong. If travelling in groups, tourists can set up a camping site, a fire and enjoy barbecued seafood on the beach. At night, the island is very peaceful and safe for visitors.

Those who want to learn about the daily chores of islanders should choose to stay at a local family at a cost of VND50,000 (US$2.23) per person per night. Tourists can get up early in the morning to buy fresh seafood which can be cooked by themselves or the home owner.

Life on Cham Island is tranquil and slow while local people are friendly. Especially, they are aware of environmental protection. 

No nylon bags can be found on the island, so banana leaves, newspaper and carton paper are used for wrapping instead.

The ideal time for visiting Cham Island is summer when tourists can dive and snorkel to admire coral reefs and take a boat tour of beaches and fishing villages around the island.

Another destination that tourists should not miss on Cham Island is Bai Lang archaeological site where tourists can admire pottery and glass artifacts. 

It is an important site in the relic system of Cham ethnic people in Hoi An City and the central region.

Source: saigontimes

Four days in Sapa, Vietnam - an unforgetable trip

To end our time in Vietnam, we booked a four-day tour into the north of the country, to see how the country's ethnic minorities live. We booked with an adventure company called Handspan, and they place an emphasis on cultural and outdoorsy activities. The trip was a-maz-ing for many reasons, but the fact that we were the only two on the tour really made it "special". 

Day One: Hanoi to Lao Cai to Bac Ha

We took an overnight train from Hanoi to Lao Cai on July 30th and hit the highland ground running. Bleary-eyed, we were picked up at the Lao Cai train station by our guide, Quy (pronounced k-way). He explained that we were heading straight to the exotic Bac Ha Sunday Market after breakfast, and that we should get ready to see some weird stuff, such as Hmông Offal Soup, bunches of hanging kittens for sale, and bright purple rice. We were quickly jolted out of our sleepy states as the Handspan minivan began climbing hundreds and hundreds of feet into the lush, wild mountains of north Vietnam. With rice terraces covering all surfaces of the steep hillsides and water buffalo creating tense obstacles on the single-lane highway up to Bac Ha, the trip was (literally) breathtaking in and of itself. We arrived into Bac Ha very early, at 8AM, and the market had barely started up...so we checked into our small hotel and had a shower. 

After some much needed refreshing, our guide took us around the large market and explained some of the more unusual sites and products. He was also really helpful in describing the hilltribe groups that were selling at the market: the Hmông, the Tay, and the Dao. Kate bought some engraved Hmông earrings. Nice! After lunch, we went for a trek into the surrounding hills, and we were invited into a Hmông family's house. This was one of the highlights of the tour: we were invited to sit with the family's grandmother, we sampled some of their household corn wine (every family makes this sweet moonshine, to both drink themselves and sell at the market), and we bought a small purse that Granny had embroidered. Soooooo different from the rest of Vietnam.

Day Two: Bac Ha to Muong Khuong to Cao Son  

We began our second day mountain biking down the Hmon-gous road that we had driven up the day before. Have you ever driven up/down a road and thought to yourself "Man...this would be so so so much fun to bike or skateboard or go-kart down!" Well, this was one of those roads. The bike ride not only allowed us to soak-up the scenery, it also enabled us to glide for 40 minutes without peddling once. The minivan was waiting for us at the bottom, and we headed for the town of Muong Khuong for lunch. We only stopped here briefly, but is was memorable because Kate asked to buy some of the house "happy water" from the proprietor. Our guide thought this request was pretty funny, but it was no problem for him to snag an Aquafina waterbottle full of the restaurant's own corn wine. After lunch we headed to the remote village of Cao Son, population 2,000. Surrounded by tiny hills covered in corn and rice, our lodging was a simple bamboo house, complete with dirt floor, Hmong hosts, and stone fireplace. 

After dropping our bags, we went for a two-hour trek...or what we thought would be a two-hour trek. The hike began well, on a dirt road with blue skies, but the dirt road quickly turned into a narrow path, and the blue skies disappeared behind dark rain clouds. We brought ponchos with us, but the torrential rains that developed an hour into the trek were just too much for these thin plastic body condoms. The heavy rain and the first few slips onto our butts were funny and exciting at first, but we both began to worry after our guide stated that he was having trouble finding the last part of the path back home. With the sun beginning to set, the rain continuing to fall, and our guide frantically calling people for directions, we began to wonder whether we would be spending the night in a water buffalo shack in the mountains. Eventually, Quy came to the conclusion that it would be best to just return the way we came, thus turning our light two-hour trek into a crazy, wet, four-hour adventure. Hot showers never felt so good!   

Day Three: Cao Son to Coc Ly Market to Sa Pa 

We woke up again at 7am after a sketchy sleep in our little hut to begin our bikeride down Cao Son mountain. This time the bike trail was a bit narrower, a tad bumpier and alot more adventurous (yes, this is a list but no, Alex is not writing this section). The sun soon turned into cloud and we were quickly descending into what seemed to be white oblivion for a matter of miles before we reached half way down the summit and took a break so I could pet a brand new baby horse and Al could take off his sweaty shirt. It took us about 3 hours but we reached Coc Ly at about mid-day after a sweat filled, uphill battle beside the Coc Ly Dam. Coc Ly was nice but not even close to the size of Bac Ha market and I managed to pick up an authentic Black Hmong scarf for my travels. 

After the short visit it was back in the van and heading to Sa Pa, our final, most relaxing stop yet. Our view from the hotel was killer! Surrounded by mountains and villages, it was by far the nicest place we've stayed on our travels so far. Even though it was a bit more touristy than we were used to in the Hills, it was still absolutely beautiful. We wandered down the 5km Sa Pa mountain to the cute village of Cat Cat and took some pictures of the waterfall and corn fields and gave two Hmong children our recently purchased plastic ball. They were totally obsessing over it. After a walk and a beer by the lake, it was time to depart from the Hill Tribes and head back into Hanoi for a much needed shower and laundry sesh.

Source: dawksabroad2011.blogspot.com

Shopping at Hanoi Old Quarter

A trip to the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam is a must for any first-time visitor to Vietnam’s capital. Set just a few minutes’ walk from Hoan Kiem Lake, the Old Quarter is an intricate warren of streets laid out in a millennium-old plan, selling almost everything under the sun.

The Old Quarter’s narrow streets are packed with family-owned shops selling silks, stuffed toys, artwork, embroidery, food, coffee, watches, and silk ties.

There are plenty of great bargains to be had in the Old Quarter: you simply need to haggle the price down.

The Old Quarter’s shops attract tourists and locals alike, making this place a great destination to see the local color.

The high tourist traffic has also developed a high concentration of travel agencies and hotels as well.

Shopping in the Old Quarter

Silks. Vietnam in general offers great value on silk. Lower prices and cheap labor go hand in hand to offer unbeatable bargains on meticulously-crafted silk dresses, trousers, even shoes.

Hang Gai Street is the best place in the Old Quarter to scratch your silk itch, especially Kenly Silk on 108 Hang Gai (Phone: +84 4 8267236; official website). Its shop in the Old Quarter has three floors offering a wild variety of silk goods, including ao dai, dresses, throw scarves, pajamas, suits, and shoes.

Embroidery. Embroidery is a common cottage industry in Vietnam, which means you’ll find plenty of bad embroidery.

For the absolute best of the craft, I can only recommend you visit Quoc Su on 2C Ly Quoc Su Street. Established in 1958, the company was founded by embroidery artist Nguyen Quoc Su, and now runs with more than 200 skilled embroiderers turning out almost photo-perfect stitched artwork.

Lacquerware. “Son mai” is the art of applying resin coating to wooden or bamboo objects, then polishing them to a deep shine. Many of them are also inlaid with eggshells or mother of pearl. These objects can come in the form of bowls, vases, boxes, and trays.

The streets of the Old Quarter offer plenty of examples of the art, not all of them good – you’ll need a good eye (and nose) to spot excellent handiwork from the abundant dross in the market.

Propaganda Art. The Vietnamese aren’t above capitalizing on Communist propaganda, and several shops in the Old Quarter are particularly renowned for their Red media material. Old propaganda reproductions are sold on Hang Bac Street.

You certainly don’t need to explore all 70-odd streets of the Old District to get the complete shopping experience – you can limit yourself to making a circuit of Hang Be, Hang Bac, Dinh Liet, and Cau Go. If you’re looking for specific merchandise, some Old Quarter streets may specialize in your object of desire:

Hang Can for stationery

Hang Dau for shoes

Hang Buom for candies and wine

Thuoc Bac for tools

Cau Go for women's accessories.

Hang Gai for silk

Hang Hom for lacquerware and bamboo

The Old Quarter’s “36 Streets”

The Old Quarter is a reminder of Hanoi’s storied past – its history has long been tied to the ebb and flow of conquerors and traders over the past thousand years.

When the Emperor Ly Thai To moved his capital to Hanoi in the year 1010, a community of craftsmen followed the imperial entourage to the new city. The craftsmen were organized into guilds, whose members tended to stick together to protect their livelihoods.

Thus the streets of the Old Quarter evolved to reflect the different guilds that called the area home: each guild concentrated their business along an individual street, and the streets’ names reflected the business of the guilds that lived there. Thus are the Old Quarter’s streets named to this day: Hang Bac (Silver Street), Hang Ma (Paper Offerings Street), Hang Nam (Gravestone Street), and Hang Gai (silk and paintings), among others.

Folklore pegs the number of these streets at 36 – therefore you’ll hear about the Old Quarter’s “36 streets”, when there are certainly far more than this number criss-crossing the area. The number “36” may just be a metaphorical way of saying “plenty”, i.e. “plenty of streets here!”

The neighborhood is no stranger to change. Most of the craftsmen have left, leaving the shop spaces to the restaurants, hotels, bazaars, and specialty shops that now line the ancient roads. Other, newer merchandise has taken over, too – the street called Ly Nam De is now the Old Quarter’s de facto “Computer Street”, offering cheap items and repairs.

The shophouses in the Old Quarter are long and narrow, owing to an ancient tax that charged shopowners for the width of their storefronts. Thus homeowners did a work-around – keeping storefronts as narrow as possible, while maximizing space in the back. Today these are called “tube houses” owing to their shape.

Getting to the Old Quarter

If you’re not staying in one of the Old Quarter’s hotels, you can easily get a cab to take you there – you can simply ask to be let down at at Hoan Kiem Lake, preferably close to the red bridge. From there, you can cross the street north to Hang Be, and begin your voyage through the Old Quarter by foot.

Use Hoan Kiem Lake as a point of reference – if you feel lost, ask a local where Hoan Kiem Lake is.

By Michael Aquino - goseasia.about.com

Introduce special and unique dishes at Food Week in Hanoi

A Food Week showcasing the specialties typical of three regions in Viet Nam will open at Vinhomes Riverside, Long Bien district, Ha Noi, from November 7-15.

The event aims to introduce special and unique dishes from North, Central and South Viet Nam.

Also, a cooking contest titled Honour Vietnamese Cuisine will be held to honour chefs. Leading Vietnamese chefs such as Tran Ba Dung, Tran Van Lap, Nguyen Van Bong and Le Thi Lan will compete for the title of master-chef of the event.

Visitors decide the result of the contest by voting for the dishes they like.

To enjoy the food, visitors need to pay a package fare of 500,000 VND (about 22 USD) per adult and 250,000 VND (about 11 USD) per child for a lunch or a dinner.

Source: vietnamtourism.com