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The start of a month or so in vietnam..
We manged to survive the 22hr boarder crossing bus journey, with a little help with some sleeping tablets and arrived in Ha noi, the capital of vietnam.
We're staying at a backpackers hostel called hanoi backpackers and this place is massive, 6 floors with 8 12 man dorms on each floor, so basically its the place to be and the atmosphere is buzzing!
Hanoi itself is a mad mad place, the roads are 1 lane wide with traffic coming in both directions. the pavements are stacked full of little street stalls selling all sorts and parked up motorbikes! so the road is full of cars, taxis, motorbikes and people, so as you can imagine it is very hectic with alot of beeping going on and you are in need of about 8eyes to stay safe!
The 2 main attractions in Ha Noi are ha long bay and snake villiage of which we did both!
Ha long bay is a short mini bus journey away and wow it was amazing! it consists of over 3000 small unoccupied islands with the odd floating house scattered around. These houses are where local familys live who have never left there raft as they believe they have been cursed thousands of years ago, so the site of any form of life is a big thing for them.
We boarded the jolly rodger which was the ship where we stayed for the 1st night of the trip, before the sun went down we had a 4hr sail around the islands before jumping off the edge and getting kayaks out to go on our own mini adventure around the islands.
on arriving back we had fresh fish to eat and then started the drinking games for the duration of the night!
Our 2nd day was again sailing around for a couple of hours before arriving on a succluded beach which has been hired out by hanoi backpackers just for this specific trip. The island was called castaway island and was beautiful, little wooden huts to sleep in, a nice decent beach and a little bay to swim around in. The day consisted of alot of activities, wake boarding, more kayaking, cliff jumping and rock climbing, oh and of course some sunbathing. The night followed the same direction as the one before and we started on the whiskey and beer again. The 3rd day was just sailing back to the harbour to come back but via many little floating fishing villiages which again was beautiful.
The 2nd trip was the snake villiage which we decided to do by ourselves. On arrival you pick your snake out of a cage and get your photos holding it. You then go to your table, slice open its skin, pull out his heart, and then do a shot of its blood mixed in with the heart!! You also get to do a shot of its bile was was just as unpleasent even though it was mixed in with some whiskey. So not just your standard entrance to a restaurant. The chef then takes it away and brings out a variety of dishes of your snake, these included fried snake skin, snake ribs, snake spring rolls etc.
As disgusting as this all sounds it was a great experience and one i would recommend to any one.
Tonight i am boarding another night bus down to a farm at Dong Hoi, im not quite sure what to expect but ive been told its a must do and it is the location of the largest caves in the world so am looking forward to it.
- comments
Jen Andy looks so good, what did the snake taste like? have you had spider yet? glad all is well, speak soon. miss you. xxx
Mumsie Can't believe you did this, what an experience. i just love the way you write, its great to read, very evocative. Sure you haven't a ghost writer? Keep on writing.