Tam Dao

Before I moved on from Hanoi to Sri Lanka I was greeted by one more visitor, my former step-mum, Jos, who I have always got along very well with. We had time to fit in a one-night adventure out of the city and we chose to head to Tam Dao. This is somewhere a little off the beaten track for Western tourists that I’d never been to before. We set off thinking our destination could be reached in around two hours but it ended up being closer to four or five!

Having decided to try and avoid the expensive but easy way of reaching the mountain town, an old Station Hill from French Colonial times, we instead opted to take the public bus. This seemed easy enough, and we boarded at the Long Bien bus station in Hanoi. After a short wait we were on our way.

Everything went well until we reached Vinh Yen (the nearest big city to Tam Dao), and began our search for transport up the hill. Taxis were expensive, and though we found a reasonable price on the Grab taxi app, it seemed there were no Grab cars to be found anywhere nearby! With taxi drivers refusing to budge on price we went off in search of the bus stop, which was unfortunately a little more tricky than hoped for as we tried to match map to road with about six possible options off the round-about we were currently at, and few visible road names. Eventually, possibly out of pity, a taxi driver drove to us, agreed the price we’d been hoping for and we continued on our way. As we wove further and further up a long, sometimes narrow road, we became rather thankful we hadn’t ended up taking that bus after all!

Tam Dao is, to me at least, a strange and curious little place in the mountains. It is very much a Vietnamese holiday destination, many new colourful and extravagant buildings giving an almost Disney feel to the place, a sharp contrast to the numerous tall cement structures it stood beside.

Being a traditional Vietnamese destination gave us a problem on two counts. One, there was very little option in the way of vegan food, and two, no one really spoke English for us to be able to explain the kind of food we wanted. With the aid of Google translate we eventually sat down to a plate of salad (a cooked spinach and garlic dish) and rice, grateful really at that point for anything to eat! We did have a little more success when we had revived energy and were able to explore further, finding a street seller who offered what looked like roasted purple sweet potato (and I think may have been taro).

By far the best part of our mini adventure, was the storm that rolled in that evening. As we walked through the central part of the town – a pleasant garden made purely for strolling – mists began to eerily creep towards us, warning of what was to come. We settled into a bar and took up seats next to some of the many windows just in time, as the rain began to pour. From our excellent viewing point we watched as the skies opened and water tumbled down, followed by brilliant white flashes of lightning and cracks of thunder, sometimes so loud the ground shook! For the next few hours this continued, the mists intermittently appearing while the rain continued its torrent. Up there in the mountains, it was quite a spectacular sight to behold.

The following morning we ventured up to the temple, mostly in search of the bamboo forest which came with it. The route took us up narrow steps lined with market sellers, the smell of roasted chestnuts reminding us both of England at Christmas time (and because of which Jos decided to treat us to some on our way back down). A little further along, a left turn took us up through the forest and to the temple. It was not quite the escape into nature we’d hoped for – a steady flow of people travelled in each direction, and access to the rather sparse forest was cut off by a rail on either side of the steps – but it was better than none at all.

Our journey back to Hanoi was much less eventful, the staff at the hostel helped us to book a minibus at a very reasonable price – around the same price as our bus and taxi journey up to Tam Dao, while also being much more comfortable and convenient.

A couple of months into her own travels through Asia, Jos was happy to just laze about Hanoi so we did little tourist related things. Our one trip to the Old Quarter for an afternoon nearly wiped me out for the next few days, just a few hours in the noise and air pollution and I woke the next day with puffy eyes feeling exhausted, a stark reminder that it was very much time to leave the city!