Vietnam

[512dude]

Does anyone have info on climbing in Vietnam? I can't find very much on it via the net. Thanks for your help.

[Uncle_Tricky]

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely god damn right. Unless you're going all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program.

The horror. The horror...

[Charlie]

I'll ask my Dad if he found any good places to climb while he was there. I think he may have been a little busy jumping out of helicopters and shooting at people, though.

[Noway]

http://www.worldsexguide.com/guide/Asia/Vietnam/

Climb on!

[mtnrgr]

Charlie don't surf!

[roger_johnson]

I was in country in the late sixties and did some climbing in the Highlands near Kontum and Bien Het. Pretty good rock but not huge,had to solo everything, no gear but the motivation to keep moving was high. There was a little rock climbing on some hill tops near Pleiku and AnKay Pass. It has been so long ago my spelling is fuzzy...

[Zenolith]

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.

[Uncle_Tricky]

Do you know what the man is saying? Do you? This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions. What are you going to land on, one quarter, three-eighths, what are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something -- that's dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there's only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them.

[Andy_Bourne]

I spent two weeks climbing in the Halong Bay area of northern Vietnam in the winter of '99. Getting info, for us, was also very difficult or impossible. We tried to find Lynn Hill's and Todd Skinner's bolted routes based on a photocopied magazine article, but we never found them.

We put up several traditional routes near the island of Cat Ba, I'd be happy to share info on.

It was a very interesting experience, definitely be ready for some surreal terrain, very similar to Krabi but a little cooler and no people what so ever. No established routes. Boats, hotels, food, and transportation were very sketchy. Definitely some of the nicest, most hospitable people in the world.

If I had any advice on gear, it would be to bring a lot of tape (to protect edges; the non-overhanging rock can be as sharp as broken glass in some places) and a good rack with sufficient Lowe tri-cams for the pockets. Get info from someone who has bolted sea-side rock before bolting anything.

I would visit Krabi before going. You'll have a better sense of what type of rock to expect and therefore, better decision making abilities when scoping routes from a distance or from the boat.

One other thing I would tell someone going off the beaten path over there is learn the language. I got myself out of some sticky situations and I got a shitload of respect and a lot of laughs for doing it. It isn't hard and you don't have to learn a new alphabet.

Send me an email if you need other stuff.