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One of our final blogs and those of you awake will notice Hanoi looks like a beautiful beach. Not quite reality as Hanoi is very hot and humid with millions of motorbikes all riden by maniacs who don't observe normal rules of the road. Really could not believe that when you get to a crossroads or enter from a junction you just keep going - slow down of course- People go in all sorts of directions, across the flow of traffic, in the opposite direction on the wrong side of the road - oh and by the way if you want to cross the road on foot just walk slowly and hope that everything avoids you, which it seems to do, but closing the eyes also seems to work!! It seems that it is too hot to stay at home in the evenings so everyone drives around the central lake in the evening to keep cool and to socialise (on bike of course!)
Hectic tour around Hanoi visiting Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum of communist/socialist development in Vietnam. Both Jane and Bryan were reprimanded by the officious guards wearing white for daring to pause or speak as we circled the white preserved body, gulp. The ethnological museum was fascinating showing the wide variety of ethnic groups that live in Vietnam today, each with their own customs and unusual clothes. Some of their houses were reconstructed - long houses, stilted houses, houses with really tall roofs made of bamboo and thatch. Will have to come back to the North of Vietnam for a home stay visit in the future. We finished the day with a cyclo tour around the old French quarter (remembering to close the eyes on reaching a cross roads!) Vietnamese food is lovely, and cheap, so we finished the day in style.
The following day we set off for HaLong bay on the North coast of Vietnam for an overnight cruise on a boat. The information I had received stated that we would be sleeping under a mosquito net, so we were expecting fairly basic accomodation. Not at all, we had a beautiful well kept wooden junk-like boat all to ourselves- it seemed that we had somehow booked a private charter. What a wonderful way to end our travels. HoLong bay is a world heritage site with around 3000 limestone islands rising steeply from the shallow sea. absolutely beautiful, especially at sunset. We were treated like royalty with 7 crew members catering to out every demand (not that we demanded much!) 5* seafood freshly caught from the sea - crab, tiger prawns, oysters, squid, seabass served in wonderful Vietnamese stylke , and that was just one meal.
Our final day we sailed back to port visiting an underwater cave system before docking. The drive back to the airport was punctuated with various stops to sample Vietnamese life and included a visit to one of the first pagodas to be set up in Vietnam. It still had the original statues, including a man who had apparently bought martial arts to Vietnam from India (and I always though it originated in Japan or China!)
Now back home to reality!
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