After a few days exploring Hanoi, we traveled by bus northeast to check out Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin.  Ha Long Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site, home to thousands of small cone-shaped islands set in a blue-green sea…it’s one of the iconic Vietnam vistas you may have seen online.

Ha Long Bay is hardly undiscovered—thousands of tourists were vacationing along with us in the hundreds of boats dotting the bay.  Still, it’s a big bay and we were able to see the natural beauty (even in the fog that was present during our entire visit!) while staying overnight on a junk boat with nice cabins.  We got out onto the bay on kayaks, stopping to hike through a large cave, then paddled back at dusk to celebrate Christmas Eve with our new friends.  Come Christmas day (in case you were wondering, yes Santa did come for those teenage boys…amazing), we toured a gigantic cave then took the long bus ride back to Hanoi where we enjoyed a nice banh mi with the boys in the Old Quarter before meeting with the group to board an overnight train to Huế.

The words “overnight train” can mean one of two things: something romantic and memorable…or something you have to just have to endure.  Well, this was much more the former.  We lucked out by getting a modern and clean train with pretty comfortable sleeping compartments.  Those old train tracks, however, make Metro-North seem like a bullet train!  Due to jet lag, all the adults were up by 4am.  We had a great time hanging out with the other parents in the hallway, getting drinks from the women selling coffee on the passing stations’ platforms.

Huế

In the morning we arrived at Huế, which sits astride the Perfume River with its Citadel situated on the north bank.   Huế was the capital of Vietnam in the 18th century.  The ao dai, the classic women’s outfit originated in Huế (that’s what the three women below are wearing).

During the Tet Offensive starting  January 31, 1968, American forces and the Vietcong fought right in the citadel…there are hundreds of pock marks on the citadel walls from small arms fire in close urban fighting.  We watched a number of Vietnam movies before our trip and the Stanley Kubrick movie Full Metal Jacket depicts the Battle of Huế.

The next day we opted for the motor bike tour (a high point for all of us…we just sat on the back hugging our very safe drivers!) exploring the alleys and outskirts of Huế.  We stopped at a strategic lookout high above a fork in the Perfume River where an American bunker now sits in the middle of a quiet park.  Later on we stopped at a nón lá (conical hat) weaver and then to a museum of rice, where we learned all kinds of things about rice: how the bran is separated from the rice by tossing in the air from a round woven plate, and how to mill rice to make noodles.

Leaving Huế you climb steeply up the mountains en route to Da Nang, where US Marines first came ashore in 1965.  We stopped at Hải Vân pass on National Route 1A overlooking Danang, with its derelict American bunkers facing north and south—this was the strategic barrier separating the north from the south of Vietnam.  I was reading the famous (and excellent) book that came out in 1977, A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo who was with the US Marine Expeditionary Force that landed in ’65.  As we climbed up to the Hai Van pass I realized that the passage I was reading detailed his own platoon’s travels through the Hai Van pass in between firefights.