I’ve been putting off posting for awhile. Life is kind of chaotic right now and I just didn’t have it in me to sit down and get the words out. But I know if I don’t post soon, and share these moments, the time may never come.
So, here is a slightly uninspired blog post about some weekends away from the daily grind of Hanoi, out in the Vietnamese mountains and countryside of Ba Vi and Mai Chau.
Ba Vi is technically still part of Hanoi, just 45 minutes out of the city center. We visited the National Park on Ba Vi mountain which was originally developed as a French Hill Station. Hill Stations were established by colonists as summer retreats in an attempt to escape the heat in tropical and sub tropical regions of the world. Many Hill Stations exist in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, Africa and India. The ability to beat the heat in Ba Vi seems debatable to me. While we were there it was pretty hot. We did some exploring and hiked a bit. We were able to find the old summer camp and the ruins of a church used by the French colonists.
We were also able to walk thousands of stairs to the top of Ba Vi mountain–where a temple, a pagoda, and gorgeous views can be found. Luckily, the stairs are in the shade and the kids had an ice cream at the start to get a sugar fix in preparation for a very long walk. Even Quentin was able to walk up the stairs to the peak all on his own!
We were able to spend the night in a resort with a pool, which is all the children were really interested in.
Our second weekend away was Mai Chau. Mai Chau is about 3.5 hours away from Hanoi in a mountainous region to the Northwest. In Mai Chau city there are a number of small villages which historically belonged to the Ban Lac, a tribe from Thailand which settled in northern Vietnam. We stayed at the Eco Lodge which is nestled at the base of a large limestone mountain range and surrounded by rice paddies. We could swim and bike all over the paddies to the small surrounding villages, and shop at the small local flea market stalls.
This best part about this vacation was that we got to go with friends, which, of course, made it way more fun; especially for the kids!
I am glad we were able to get out of the city. After these trips, things started to go poorly with COVID in Vietnam. Cases in Ho Chi Minh City began to rise rapidly, the government began taking drastic actions to try to curb the spread, enacting strict social distancing and stay at home provisions in the South and taking aggressive action in and around Hanoi to keep people out of the capital prevent unmitigated transmission in the North, which has remained relatively safe.
It has been a strange move to say the least. We are hopeful that at some point over the next three years COVID will be under control and we might be able to show our kids the beautiful sights of the rest of Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
Will Travel with Toddlers 