Hanoi and Halong Bay

After Hue we got a sleeper bus to Hanoi, this wasn't an enjoyable journey. We were nearly the last to get on so had the worst seats, right at the very back of the bus, no headroom and 3 beds in a row, to top it off the 3 bed, next to me, was occupied by a smelly fat man. The journey was 12 hours and we arrived in Hanoi at 6.30 am. The walk to our hotel from the bus stop took us though some parks that surrounded some of Hanoi's many lakes. Despite it being so early in the morning the park was full of local people doing their morning exercise, playing badminton, running, Tai Chi, dancing and other more obscure routines. It was unusual to see but a nice walk through the park.

We spent two days in Hanoi before we went to visit Halong Bay. Hanoi is so busy it is crazy, it might not have the voume of traffic as HCMC but in the old quarter the streets are narrow so it feels a lot busier. During our two days we visited a water puppet show which was surpisingly good, walked around some of the lakes, visited the Temple of Literature and the Ho Chi Minh museum.

The water puppet show



Hoan Kiem Lake in the centre of Hanoi old quarter

 The museum was a bit of a disappointment it didn't really have many exhibts just propergander photos and information, but the Temple of Literature was better than expected. It was really peaceful in the gardens, it was also close to a restaurant called KOTO where we had some amazing noodles.

A month or so before travelling my dad found an article in the paper about Hanoi which recommended a few places to eat so we got to try these out, the highlight was some fried crab spring rolls, Leanne can't stop talking about them still! (If anyone else has any tips or places to go then feel free to let us know)

The weather was pretty wet, dull and cold when we were there, we miss the sunshine! All of this added to the traffic and chaos of the city made us enjoy the peace of Halong Bay a lot more. Halong Bay is about 3 hours east of Hanoi and is made up of about 1969 limestone islands which rise from the emerald water.

We both don't like this photo but it is a rare one of us together!

We chose to do a 3 day 2 night trip with one night spent on a junk (boat) and one on Cat Ba island which is the largest of the islands in Halong.

Sailing around and through the islands was incredible, it was winter time however which meant it was again a bit rainy and misty but the mist made it feel a bit more mysterious. This ranks up with the Angkor Temples with the best thing we have done/seen so far.

(At this point we would have liked to put one of our videos showing us sailing around but the internet in Laos is painfully slow, maybe we will put one on later if we find a decent internet connection anywhere)

We stopped off at the 'surprising caves' which were on one of the many islands. From the outside it just looked like any other but once inside it was breathtaking. The inner geographer in Leanne came out and she was in heaven (even though she claims to be a human geographer). I don't think we could describe it that well so here are some pictures:

After the caves we got to go kayaking to a fishing village which was really interesting. Apparently the people spend most of their life on the water and so don't walk very far, this means that when they do go on to shore they get really tired easily when walking. Despite us being both first time kayakers we managed to navigate our way round and avoid capsizing!
When we anchored for the night I couldn't resist a dip, it was too cold for Leanne though, Southern softy! Or sensible as she calls it.

We then had food on the boat which was surprisingly good followed by some squid fishing (we caught nothing which just adds to our poor fishing record) and karaoke with the other people onboard. I don't think they were quite ready for our note perfect rendition of Take That's 'Back for Good'.

The next day we sailed to Cat Ba island, most of the people on the boat were just staying for 1 night so it was just us and an English couple who were really friendly and who we had drinks with on the boat. On Cat Ba we went to the national park and climbed to the top of a hill. The climb was a bit ropey in parts with metal ladders resting up against the rocks helping us climb, which was made worse by the wet weather. This didn't pose any problem however for our 60year old guide, she was practically running up whilst we were all out of breath, at one point she was literally swing from a vine making monkey noises.
Once at the top the view was pretty good but a little limited by the mist.

At the top there was a metal tower that you could climb up to get a view from higher up, I didn't fancy it, it looked a bit of a scary walk up the open metal stairs but Leanne was braver than me and decided to have a look. When Leanne returned with these pictures I feel I made the correct decision.

Long way down!

Leanne: It was only until I was half way up the slippery stairs that I realised just how dangerous it was, I tried not to imagine tripping and falling down! As you can see getting to the top didn't help with my nerves...

This greets you as you reach the top!

 It was a shame that the view was not massively different from the view from where Rob was, just cloudy and misty!
We had the rest of the afternoon to ourselves to explore Cat Ba town, there wasn't much to see though. We went for a few drinks with the English couple, our new friends, in the evening. The next day we had to be up early to get a bus to the other side of the island where we would get back onboard the boat and sail one last time through the limestone islets to Halong City where we got the bus back to Hanoi.

One last shot before we left.

We arrived back in Hanoi around 5pm and had another local dish for dinner, Cha Ca La Vong. There is one restaurant that specialises in this and only serves it. There weren't many other westerns in there making it feel more authentic. You are served a cooker in which chunks of fish are cooking in a saffron oil, you then add mixed herbs, greens and chilli to your taste and add to a bowl of noodles. It was really good.


The next day we woke early to try another place popular with the locals, it serves Pho Bo (beef noodle soup) a staple of the Vietnamese diet, and is only open 7am - 11am. It was really busy and again we were the only westerners there, the Pho was amazing, probably our best in Vietnam.

Later that day we got a 24 hour sleeper bus to Vientiene, Laos if only it were that easy. Firstly we were told we would be picked up at 5pm, they didn't come till 6.30. And when they did it was a man on a scooter who shouted follow me and sped off through the hectic saturday traffic. We tried to keep up but weighed down with our rucksacks we weren't as nimble or quick. This is when Leanne was 'hit' by the motorbike ( I am sure most of you have seen her Facebook status) We would like to reassure everyone that she is ok and got away with only a tyre mark on her trousers. Thankfully in all the traffic they can't build up much speed.
We eventually found him next to a 7 seater taxi, and 5 other tourists, we all managd to squeeze in with our luggage. The taxi then followed the man on the motorbike and dropped us off in the middle of nowhere and we were told to wait here. About 5 minutes later the motorbike man drives by and shouts 'follow me' again. We were led to a cafe in the middle of nowhere with about 20 other people waiting for the bus. When we arrived, by this time it was just after 7 he informed us the bus would be here at 8. At this point we hated him, but there wasn't much we could do except wait. 8 came and went, 9 came and went and finally at 10pm 5 hours after it was due the bus arrived. Because the Vietnamese either can't count, can't be bothered to or most likely wanted to make as much money as they can two people ended up not having a seat, so would be spending the next 24 hours on the floor.

If only it ended here, during the journey we picked up about 6 Vietnamese people, I guess this is the drivers way to make a little extra cash. So at one point there were 8 people in the aisles of the bus. Then at the
Laos border we all had to get off and go through the border and get our visas etc. When we got back on one girl found that her phone was missing from bag. Her friend called it and we all could hear it ringing near the driver, he acted dumb though and tried to say he couldn't hear anything, eventually we found it under his seat. So he had obviously tried to steal it, luckily we had taken all our bags with us when we went through the border. It's at times like these that you feel so helpless, we couldn't do anything about. One passenger tried to tell the police at the border but they just waved him away. So we spent the rest of the journey, 8 hours, being driven by the driver who we knew had tried to steal from us, he didn't even seem bothered that he got caught. Our worst journey so far!

We were relieved to arrive in Laos where it was alot quieter and friendlier than Vietnam. The experience on the bus soured our last thoughts of Vietnam which is a shame as we had enjoyed most of our time there.

We have now spent 5 days in Laos and will update you all with what we have been up to in our next blog...

Gong Hay Fat Choi (Happy Chinese New Year)