{"id":6880,"date":"2026-01-12T11:07:58","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T11:07:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6880"},"modified":"2026-01-12T11:07:58","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T11:07:58","slug":"4-gone-cruising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=6880","title":{"rendered":"4. GONE CRUISING!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Xin Chao!<\/p>\n

Our “only Vietnamese expression”\u00a0 – Hello!<\/p>\n

The staff of the Silk Path Hotel booked us a taxi to transfer us to the cruise pick-up point, the Pan Pacific Hotel.\u00a0 Because we are in a traffic-free zone, they walked us and our luggage to the end of the street.\u00a0 The first taxi didn’t appear, so another was booked and we have to trundle another block south.\u00a0 The 10 minute taxi ride took 25 minutes because of traffic and, for three of us, it cost a staggering 49,000 dong, about \u00a31.50!<\/p>\n

There are 20 of us on this trip, we discover.\u00a0 Sixteen made the pick up time at the Pan Pacific Hotel.\u00a0 Two Swedes are arriving direct to the boat later that day and two Irish are stuck in Dublin with visa problems!<\/p>\n

Tifo, is to be our guide for the next ten days.<\/p>\n

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… and Angkor Pandaw our home for the duration.<\/p>\n

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… and this is our communist party official who will be with us for the first two days to make sure we all behave!<\/p>\n

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First stop – a temple – or is it a pagoda?\u00a0 We are going to have to understand the difference.\u00a0 Anyway, steps are always in sets of 3, 5 or 7.\u00a0 All to do with symbolism.\u00a0 More to learn and understand.\u00a0 We heard about traditions of leaving offerings inside the temple (this one is definitely a temple – The Hung Temple) and the burning incense and pretend money outside.\u00a0 Here Tifo is piling bundles of, hopefully fake, US $100 notes onto the fire.<\/p>\n

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We learnt about the fable of the stork and tortoise.\u00a0 In extreme summary, (and I later discover there are lots of alternative plots) the stork rescued the tortoise by flying him quickly out of danger.\u00a0 The tortoise then allowed the stork to stand on his back when the water was too deep.\u00a0 \u00a0Hence the statues seen all over the place…\u00a0 Another version is that two storks carried their friend away from a dried out river.\u00a0 The tortoise gripped a stick in his mouth.\u00a0 The two birds held the stick between them and flew him to a better place.\u00a0 But on the way, the tortoise got angry with people mocking him in his predicament.\u00a0 He opened is mouth to shout back – and fell to earth.\u00a0 The moral of this version is: “Saying words of anger can cause a lot of trouble”.<\/p>\n

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Either way, all temples hereabouts have at least two of the statues!<\/p>\n

Here is Myo, the ship’s purser, praying at one of the “altars”…<\/p>\n

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Some ladies like big hats.\u00a0 This one would double as a shopping basket in Tesco!<\/p>\n

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At night we tangled with thousands of barges.\u00a0 All with related tasks.\u00a0 There were numerous large dredgers hauling mucky sand from the bottom of the Red River.\u00a0 Alongside them, others were focused on rinsing and cleaning the sand.\u00a0 Then there were the loading barges each with a large long-reach diggers or cranes with buckets.\u00a0 Finally, there were the transport barges.\u00a0 They come in high out of the water and leave with water lapping at the gunwhales.\u00a0 Then off down stream with their valuable cargo of building sand.<\/p>\n

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During our time on the river, we almost never had no barges in sight.\u00a0 Usually seven or eight.\u00a0 Empty upstream and full down towards Hanoi and onward.\u00a0 And, while in European waters ships pass port to port (left side to left side), here we find a different system.\u00a0 As ships approach each other, they indicate their intended passing sides with light signals on the front of the vessels.\u00a0 We just have to hope both parties can agree before they collide!<\/p>\n

Day two dawns equally murky and even a bit wet.\u00a0 Not ideal.\u00a0 But today it’s another temple.\u00a0 The Hung Lo Temple.\u00a0 Not a million miles from yesterday’s visit.\u00a0 But first, a walk through the local market.\u00a0 Fruit and veg, fish, crabs, prawns and meat.<\/p>\n

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To be fair, most markets are not too exciting.\u00a0 We don’t need to buy fresh produce, we can’t communicate with the vendors, we are none too thrilled at the general ambience and also “quite” worried about the levels of hygiene.\u00a0 But some of our fellow travellers seem to revel in them.\u00a0 Everyone’s different!\u00a0 Fortunately!<\/p>\n

Moving on, we discovered that this town specialises in the manufacture of rice noodles!<\/p>\n

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Just mix rice flour with water, add salt and boil.\u00a0 The gloupy mixture is then extruded under gravity through what looks like a watering can rose.\u00a0 It’s then just a matter of cutting off in standard lengths and hanging over rails to dry.<\/p>\n

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Noodles are big business in this town.\u00a0 Everyone seems to be involved.\u00a0 Apart, that is, from an entrepreneur we pass.\u00a0 He’s running a local recycling and cannibalistic centre.\u00a0 ” I know I’ve got something suitable for your job here – somewhere!” …<\/p>\n

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Anyway, we arrived at our second temple of the tour …<\/p>\n

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After inspecting the snazzy, colourful altars complete with storks, the singing and dancing started.<\/p>\n

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Traditional welcome songs with much chanting and bashing of the drum ended with an “invitation” to join in …<\/p>\n

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Finally, we got to sample the local sticky rice wine – hooch, basically.\u00a0 And as we left, the performers paraded past us on their motorbikes in everyday clothes as they all went back to normal everyday village life!\u00a0 Sureal!<\/p>\n

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After lunch on board, we head to Ly Nhan, a traditional blacksmith village.\u00a0 And the thing about these specialist villages is that EVERYBODY in town is part of the same activity.\u00a0 Here it’s blacksmithery.\u00a0 It was rice noodlerey this morning.\u00a0 The whole village reverberated to the sound of heavy hammering\u00a0 and grindstone sharpening.\u00a0 \u00a0Pieces of iron are melded with steel and converted to knives and scythes of all sizes and dimensions.<\/p>\n

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By hand or by huge, powered, mechanical “hammers”.<\/p>\n

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The finished product on the scythe “production line”.<\/p>\n

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The lack of health and safety here is stunning.\u00a0 No eye protection, no ear defenders, no face masks.\u00a0 The workers are wearing minimal footwear, there are countless trip hazards and there are hot and\/or sharp things all over the place.\u00a0 Then they let visitors close to the action!<\/p>\n

The village faces a problem in that competition from automated, industrial-scale production will become increasingly hard to out-do.\u00a0 These cottage industry activities are threatened.\u00a0 The livelihoods of everyone in the village is at risk.\u00a0 Probably.<\/p>\n

More temples, villages and activities to report on.\u00a0 Later!<\/p>\n

Our second “only Vietnamese expression” is Good Bye!<\/p>\n

Tam Biet!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Xin Chao! Our “only Vietnamese expression”\u00a0 – Hello! The staff of the Silk Path Hotel booked us a taxi to transfer us to the cruise pick-up point, the Pan Pacific Hotel.\u00a0 Because we are in a traffic-free zone, they walked… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vietnam-and-australia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6880"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6913,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6880\/revisions\/6913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}