December '08 - January '09 |
Hot Rock: Climbing in Vietnam |
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Vietnam is really nothing more than a narrow strip of fertile, coastal land running down the Eastern edge of the SE Asian peninsular. It is a country dominated by a couple of rivers and their associated cities (the Red River flowing through Hanoi, and the mighty Mekong River whose Delta is home to Ho Chi Minh City – or HCMC.) It is staggering to consider how this small country was once the epicentre of world political power struggles. As we cross the DMZ we’ll see ample evidence of this destructive past.
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Happily, modern Vietnam has – perhaps surprisingly – embraced tourism and we can expect warm welcomes wherever we turn. And we turn first to the extraordinarily beautiful Ha Long Bay
Here,
limestone pinnacles jut out of the South China Sea like dragons teeth. A short
boat ride takes you to any one of them and, armed with sport or DWS gear according
to preference, we’ll play hard for several days. Here’s what two
of Britain’s better climbers reckoned to it:
Neil Gresham and Tim Emmett:
“There are over 3000 limestone islands in the Ha Long bay region of Vietnam and we hardly scratched the surface in our two week quest to explore them. It's unusual to spend an entire climbing trip on a boat, but then it's unusual to do over 40 new routes without using a rope. It seemed pointless to mess around with a drill when we'd just found Deep Water Soloing paradise. ‘Ho Chi Minh’ crosses the ceiling of a remarkable stalactite infested through-cave and I climbed it from the bottom up, over two days of effort. Take plenty of pairs of rock shoes and chalk if you go to Ha Long Bay and watch out for pirates - there are more of them in this part of the South China Sea than any other of the World's oceans!”
Leaving
Ha Long Bay, we’ll pay a short visit to Huong Tich Mountain. An important
religious destination for the Vietnamese, the mountain boasts a series of
pagodas set into the sides of limestone cliffs along the River Yen. It is
a very picturesque area and part of the journey is by boat through the limestone
outcroppings. The scenery is similar to that of Yangshuo but on a smaller
scale, and Budda will tell you your future at the entrance to the main grotto!
Heading
on south, past the demilitarized zone on the 17th parallel, we may stop to
see the tunnels dug by the Viet Cong at Vinh Moc. We’ll spend a night
at Hue, a World Heritage site on the Perfume River, before heading on to the
hill station of Dalat, Vietnam’s favourite honeymoon spot (just in case
any serious romance has blossomed on the truck!)
There is plenty of climbing in Dalat, and it’s a refreshing temperature after the tropical coast, so we’ll spend a day or two chilling out here before moving on to HCMC (previously Saigon) and the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s breadbasket, before heading to the border and up into Cambodia.
