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Good morning Vietnam!
After a quiet last night out in Hue we have finally arrived in Hanoi!I'm pleased to say that the flight was fine, despite any pre-conceptions and we took just 4 hours to get from the hotel in Hue to the hotel in Hanoi - much better than a 16 hour bus journey even if it did cost us £30!
Hue is deemed the gateway to the north; therefore we were unsure of what to expect once we got here.Many tales, including a rather in-depth opinion sent to us by Rich, had suggested a much more third-world environment (similar we thought to parts of Indonesia), where the communist government was much more obvious than in the southern regions (where to be honest we had hardly noticed it at all)!Hanoi, it turns out, is nothing like we expected!In truth, apart from the more French-style architecture in the older parts of the city and narrower roads, you could quite easily be in Saigon!
As the capital city, Hanoi is the most populated with around 6 million people and 4 million motorbikes (nothing new there!), although with the narrow streets, crossing the roads here seems almost more deadly than crossing the 8 lane roads of Saigon - at least in the south they drive on the right side of the road - here lanes are more of a suggestion and horns are used constantly as an alternative to actually looking where they're driving!Unsurprisingly, it's never very peaceful here, even in our 3rd floor hotel room!
Our hotel is in the Old Quarter of Hanoi and apart from a leaky sink and a leaky shower we definitely can't complain about the place - it might be a bit of a nasty shock when we get to Thailand and flat-screen TVs and mini-bars don't come as standard for £4 a night!We spent our first day here doing a walking tour (shopping tour) of the older part of Hanoi, centred around Hoan Kiem lake.The lake is actually very pretty with nice walkways and even badminton courts around it (a favourite of the locals).We headed south first and ended up in what seemed to be Hanoi's answer to Mayfair - turns out even communist countries can have a 3-story Gucci in their capital!To the north of the lake we wandered through the narrow lanes of market stalls and shops, all of which sold the standard fare of North-face and cheap-knock offs as well as lots of food stalls.By this point the sky had turned black so we headed to safety in a nearby coffee shop while the rain poured down around us - we are here in the wet season so it's inevitable at some point - I don't mind as long as I'm not standing in it!For dinner we tried out Pho 24, their answer to Pizza Express, which sells noodle soup of various styles - we all had fillet steak which was amazing, with the obligatory beer - 'Beer Hanoi' this time.
Yesterday we got up early and took a 4 hour bus over to Halong City for a day tour of Halong Bay.While we had been told by all the travel agents to do an overnight, the 2 day trips were massively more expensive so we'd decided to just do a full day tour, which worked out pretty well for us, especially since we're short on time. The drive to Halong Bay took us past lots of factories - might be on the lookout for some knock-off canon cameras and Samsung TVs too now!! Once we arrived in Halong Bay we were taken to our rather flash boat (in comparison to Indonesian standard anyway) - it was basically just a refurbished old junk with nice wooden tables and chairs.We had lunch on the boat on the way to the caves, it was pretty nice actually - we even got spring rolls!
The first cave we visited was absolutely massive and lit up with crazy coloured lights - it seemed a bit commercial but then once we had seen the number of boats and tourists at the dock earlier on, this was unsurprising!It was pretty cool all the same, and much bigger than we'd thought.After about half an hour walking through the cave, we just had time to look into another one, which was much quieter and without the disco light features, although equally impressive in terms of its size.
After about 45 minutes sailing through the massive rock features in the bay we arrived at a fishing village, where we went kayaking through a couple of really narrow gaps in the rocks into hidden caves and smaller pockets of water, completely enclosed by the towering rocks around us.It was incredibly beautiful and we were really lucky to have great weather as it can so often rain due to the height of the rock features.In the kayak the landscape seemed even more impressive as we were underneath the towering rocks, some probably around 100m tall.
Post-kayaking we sailed for about an hour back to the port, where we slept for most of the long bus ride back, although by this point we did have the whole 16 seater mini-bus to ourselves!After a quick shower, we headed out for dinner once back in Hanoi.As it had been raining the night before we hadn't gone too far from the hotel for dinner, but with fine weather last night we went for a wander through the streets before finding somewhere for dinner.Hanoi was packed, with hundreds of people all around the streets - to start with we thought there was some kind of event on but actually it probably just is this busy!! The restaurant we found eventually was really nice - a mixture of Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine with some of the best food we've had in Vietnam (plus they had cheap beer!!)
Today we're heading out to explore a bit more of Hanoi - there are lots of temples and museums around here so I think we'll try and see a bit more than the shops today!
Love Katie, Martin and Gemma
- comments
Mum Katie, Sounds as though it had something of interest for everyone. I'm rather taken with the blogs from Vietnam. Sounds like somewhere I would like to visit. Love to you all. XXX
dad s Halong Bay looks like the best bit yet of a stunning country. Looks like you've "over-caved" with the photos though. xxx