Chapter 39 - Vietnam - Part 1 of 4 - Hanoi and Bai Chay Beach - Scooter Chaos to Man-Made Fun

Welcome to Chapter 39 of Crabby & Chipper Travels!

After a fall spent cutting, splitting, and stacking 43 cords of wood with my mom (yes, forty-three), it was definitely time for a getaway.

So on November 3, we packed up for a last-minute six-week trip to Vietnam.

Since we were staying more than 30 days, we both needed an e-visa. What a challenging process!  Vietnam really makes you work for that stamp. But they were finally got approved the morning we left, so we felt a huge sigh of relief when we left home.  

The Journey to Hanoi

From our front door to our hotel in Hanoi: almost 37 hours with two layovers (San Francisco and Taipei, Taiwan). 

Our very first impression when driving to our hotel?  Scooters. SO MANY SCOOTERS.

Hanoi has over 9 million people and about 7 million motorbikes, and I’m convinced we saw all of them within the first hour. 

In some places, they even have their own traffic lane.  And they are always honking.  

Things We Didn’t Love About Hanoi

• Scooters… on the streets, on the sidewalks, on the places where sidewalks should be.

• Mold — humidity is high so the outsides of the buildings are very moldy.

• Crossing the street: like the 80's video game Frogger, but with your actual life.

But on our very first night, we tried street-vendor pho and sat on tiny toddler chairs. 

 We laughed because we felt like Godzilla on those little chairs.

November 6–7 – The Great Flu Shutdown

Corp got hit with the flu when we arrived, so we quarantined ourselves in the hotel. Two days of electrolytes and he was good as new.  It was not a glamorous start to our trip.

November 8 – Back in Action

After being sick, Corp was ready to explore, so we packed in a lot of sightseeing that day. 

This is typical street scene outside the tourist areas of Hanoi.

Ho Chi Minh’s Mausoleum — no photos/video allowed, quiet voices, and Uncle Ho (the reverent name the Vietnamese call him) resting behind glass since 1975.  Ho Chi Minh was the leader who founded modern Vietnam and fought for its independence.  You could feel that he is highly revered by the Vietnamese people.

We waited in this long snaking line for quite a while.  It was weird seeing him lying down behind glass.  Again, no photos/video allowed and there were lots of guards around. 
Photo credit: Atlas Obscura

One Pillar Pagoda — This is one of Hanoi’s most meaningful landmarks—simple, symbolic, and quietly powerful. Built in the 11th century, it rises from a single stone pillar in a lotus pond, representing purity and renewal. Small in size but rich in history, it offers a rare moment of calm in the middle of the city’s constant motion.

Crabby the mascot got a photo op.

Imperial Citadel of Thang Long — Founded in the 11th century, its gates, courtyards, and ruins reveal layers of royal and military history. It was a quiet and understated place in the heart of modern Hanoi.

This is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the historic center of Vietnam’s political life for nearly 1,000 years.

I found this turtle sculpture interesting.  Not sure about the story behind it.

We visited just at the end of a large children's festival so there were still lots of decorations up.

Lots of decorations from the children's festival.

Beneath the Imperial Citadel lies a stark reminder of modern history: a 1960s underground bunker built during the Vietnam War.  With its thick blast doors, narrow corridors, and original radios and maps, the bunker powerfully contrasts with the centuries-old citadel above—layering Vietnam’s imperial past with its wartime resilience.

Hidden below the ancient royal grounds, the underground bunker served as a command center where military leaders in the Vietnam War planned strategy while U.S. bombs fell above.

Hanoi Train Street — We grabbed a mango smoothie and peach tea and watched a train travel past us literally inches from our kneecaps.  Another Godzilla moment...there were a lot of those during this trip. 

My legs have never felt so excessively long when the train was going by.  

Corp asked the waitress if she had a few bottle caps he could place on the tracks so the passing train would flatten them.

We were pretty excited to find the train-flattened bottle caps.  Great souvenirs!

By that evening, the air pollution had given Corp a sore throat, and we both agreed Hanoi is… a lot to take in.

November 9 – New Hotel, New Neighborhood

We moved to the Old Quarter to be closer to the tourist sights. Before heading out, we booked car transportation to our next destination: Bai Chay Beach, about 2.5 hours from Hanoi.  It was pretty easy to book it on 12go.asia.com.

We wandered the Old Quarter in the rain.  Hanoi’s Old Town is a maze of narrow streets filled with scooters, street vendors, ancient shop houses, coffee stalls, markets, and nonstop energy. It’s the historic heart of the city and the best place to feel its culture and chaos up close.

Because it was raining it was hard to get photos, so here is a collection of pics from Google.

We explored Dong Xuan Market.  It felt like any other Asian market—rows of vendors selling everything from street food and coffee to clothes, purses, shoes, fabric, toys, and all the everyday treasures you stumble upon while wandering. Tucked among the stalls, I found the most charming pop-up Christmas cards and couldn’t resist buying a few. Naturally, once I walked away, I wished I’d bought more. I assumed I’d see them everywhere. I was wrong. 

We only found these pop-up greeting cards in Hanoi and Saigon, making them an unexpected souvenir I’m glad I didn’t pass up.

We drank a few beers on Beer Street, met Steve & Annette (UK + South Africa, now in Thailand), and tried two bánh mì sandwiches: one delicious, one… not so much.  Wondering what bahn mi is?  It is a Vietnamese sandwich made on a crispy French-style baguette and filled with delicious things like grilled meat, pâté, pickled veggies, carrots, cucumbers, fresh herbs, and sauces. 

The sandwich is crunchy, savory, slightly sweet, and we enjoyed a lot of them in Vietnam.  

I’ve decided bánh mì sandwiches are like tater tot hotdish at home: everybody makes them different, sometimes they are amazing, sometimes not so much.

November 10 – Water Puppets & Wrong Turns

We saw the famous Thang Long Water Puppet Show.  It's a traditional Vietnamese show where wooden puppets dance, splash, and glide across a water-filled stage. Puppeteers stand hidden behind a screen, controlling the puppets with long rods under the water. The show includes folk music, drums, singing, and short stories about village life, legends, and mythical creatures.

It’s colorful, cultural, and a bit quirky.  Historic? Yes. Unique? Yes. Something we need to see again? No.

We tried to visit the Hanoi Hilton—the notorious prison used by the French and later during the Vietnam War to hold U.S. POWs, now partially preserved as a museum. Unfortunately, I botched the Google Maps directions and we ended up nowhere near it. By the time we realized the mistake, it would’ve been closed, so that visit never happened.

Corp bought insoles from a very convincing street vendor. Price started at 30k dong, ended at 80k dong. Classic bait-and-switch. Still under $3, so we laughed it off.

He tried on a lot of insoles until he found the right one.

November 11 – Onward to Bai Chay Beach

The 3-hour van ride was unexpectedly glorious: it had heated massage seats.

Three straight hours of butt and back massages felt really good.

But Bai Chay Beach?  The weirdest beach town we’ve ever visited.  Very wide and clean beach. New roads. Tons of hotels.  And absolutely no people.  It felt like walking through a staged movie set after everyone went home. Even the beach is man-made. So weird.

Bai Chay is full of new hotels, resorts, and attractions aimed at boosting tourism in the early 2000's, but much of it was built quickly for investment rather than daily life. We were there outside peak season, so  with few residents and mostly day-trippers passing through, the area felt empty.

Then came the hotel saga:

• Booked a bayside room — great view

• Surprise! Giant nightclub next door blasting music until 2 AM

• Asked for a quieter room

• They sent Corp to a room… that someone was still staying in

• Front desk panic

• Finally got another room, which had a much less comfy bed, but at that point we were too tired to care.

Video from our hotel balcony of the giant nightclub that played until 2 AM.  We visited a few nights later and there was pretty much no one there.

November 12 – Decision Time & Ha Long Bay

We hoped to go down the coast from beach town to beach town, but transportation between them was so disorganized we scrapped our beach-hopping plans and booked a flight straight to Da Nang.

Then our tour guy Alex offered a full day cruise on Ha Long Bay for $45 each — sold!  It was our first full day of sun and warmth in Vietnam and it felt great after 8 days of rain.

This is not our boat, but ours was very similar in size.  Definitely the nicest boat we have ever been on for a day trip in our travels.

The cruise began with a large buffet lunch and making new friends from Brazil and California.

First stop - a walk through Hang Sung Sot cave.

This is the largest cave we’ve ever seen.

Photos just don't give the feeling of how big this cave was.

Those are people way in the distance.

Next, we kayaked into a hidden cove.

Kayaking out of the hidden cove.

Then we were on our way to do some hiking.

The tour boats really know how to nudge themselves into tight spaces.

Then we were on our way to hike up a karst for a postcard-worthy photo.

On the way hike down, Corp caught an elderly woman who slipped while hiking — she would have taken a terrible tumble if Corp hadn't been there!

This was one of the most stunning sunsets of our trip.  

November 13 – Beach Day

Relaxed on the beach and chatted with a friendly guy from Finland. Easy, relaxing day.

November 14 – Left for Da Nang

At the Van Don International Airport, we saw something truly bizarre: a woman plucking a man's gray hairs on his head right at the gate. Not just one or two—she went at it for a solid 30 minutes. 

Watching this woman plucking the man's gray hairs was gross, strange, and impossible not to watch.

Miscellaneous random cute/funny/interesting/weird pics/videos below…

Little did we know pickleball courts were in all the places we visited in Vietnam.

I don't know how this pedal biker could bike with all those balloons.

The floral shops displayed stunning bouquets, and the floral scent made you pause as you walked by.

Not sure why that was on the electrical box, but someone thought they were being funny.

Vietnam is a communist country so it took some time to get use to the communist presence.

Here is a statue of Vladimir Lenin, a former communist leader in the Soviet Union that the Vietnamese people commemorate. 

Corp enjoying his favorite Vietnamese beer.

It rained a lot so we were forced to buy ponchos...mine was green and Corp's was red. 

We hope you enjoyed Chapter 39. Up next in Chapter 40, we moved south to continue our adventure in Da Nang, Vietnam.

Until next time - happy adventures!

Corp and Tammy