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We're now in Vietnam... and it was a bloody nightmare getting here! After our last blog which ended with "we're definitely getting a sleeper bus for the 24 hour journey to Hanoi", it turned out there were no tickets left for the sleeper buses so we had to get a local bus afterall.. for what turned out to be a 27 hour journey!!! The good news is we bumped into Paul (the South African guy from Vang Vieng) and Patrick (Paul's German mate!) in Vientiane and they were heading to Hanoi too, so we all got the bus together! Luckily the 4 of us got the seats at the back of the bus so we were all together and had the most space on the bus, which was fully booked, and had local produce all the way down the aisle (rice bags, fruits in boxes, etc), not to mention that everybody's luggage was placed in the aisle too, as the luggage compartment under the bus was also stocked with local produce!!!!! To get on and off of the bus was an obsticle course, we had to climb over all the bags and across the chairs as it was impossible to walk down the aisle! Another illustration of how unimportant H&S is considered in these countries! Despite all of this the journey turned out to be OK! Sharing the back row with us was a lovely Chilean girl called Sandra and the 5 of us joked, played cards, shared snacks and snoozed until 1am, when the bus came to a halt at a remote guest house - we weren't told anything (none of the locals or bus staff spoke English) but luckily there was a French guy on the bus who spoke fluent Vietnamese and informed us that we were staying here for 5 hours to wait for the boarder crossing to open at 8am - we could either stay on the bus or rent a room for the night... the 5 of us opted for the latter and shared a room with only 2 beds between us for 75p each! Sandra had only met us hours before but was now sharing a bed with 4 complete strangers, and this is perfectly normal by the way... it' amazing how fast you get to know and trust other people in these situations and how close you get so quickly. The boarder crossing was a long process - everybody had ot get off of the bus, get stamped out of Laos and then get stamped into Vietnam, and the bus had to go through seperately, but all the buses arrived at the boarder at the same time so there was sooo many people all trying to do the same thing, so it took a couple of hours. We finally arrived in Hanoi at about 8pm! The 5 of us squeezed into 1 small taxi (together with all our luggage!) for a death ride to our hostel... we'd read about the driving in Hanoi but the experience was something else, it's like India but much faster! They just weave in and out of each other at speed just beeping their horns constantly! And there are MILLIONS of bikes/mopeds... we would later find out that Hanoi has a population of around 6 million and there are 5 million bikes, which, by the way, can carry 5 adults, or 2 pigs, or a cow if you so wish!!!!!! And we've actually witnessed a bike transporting 2 pigs!!! Amazing! We arrived at our Hostel alive and well, if not a bit shaken! We'd seen posters in Laos advertising this particular hostel (The Drift) and it's very popular so we were relieved when they had rooms available - the 5 of us ended up with a whole dorm to ourselves! It only opened last year so everything is brand new, the showers were amazing and there was free internet/wifi, free bicycle hire and breakfast included... all for $5.50 each!!! (the local currency here is Dong (VTD) but most things are priced in $). And when we checked in we bumped into Rob (the Yank!) and his friend Guy from the USA, so we're all reunited!!
First impressions of Vietnam aren't good... the people here seem very hostile and not nearly as friendly or helpful as Laos people or Thai's - on the bus journey in we had a 'set to' with one of the bus staff who decided to take my blanket and give it to a local with no regard for me whatsoever, and when we asked for it back he just looked at is in disgust and ignored us! As you all know, I'm not exactly the best person to confront, ESPECIALLY when it means I'll be cold, so I got up and took the blanket back!!!! The guy didn't say another word! Their hostility is understandable in a way though in light of the history and wars they've endured, so we'll persevere! Another thing we're not too keen on here is the choice of food... even I'm put off my food by the site of the back end of a dog being BBQ'd!
After an early night we got up, had our free breakfast of as much toast, jam, honey, banana's and coffee/tea as you could eat (which was A LOT in our case!) and went for a bike ride around the city, which was another death ride! It's easier than it seems though, because the traffic just dodges you! There's no 'right of way' here, even crossing the road is a brave art - you just have to step/pull out into heavy moving traffic and walk/ride slowly but intentionally and the bikes just dodge around you! There's no other way to cross - locals ingnore the pedestrian crossings and traffic lights - one guy told us this is because even if the police catch them jumping lights there's no way they can physically catch them to penalise them because the bikes move faster than the police cars through the traffic! Anyway, cycling around the city was lovely, and productive! We got a 3 day, 2 night trip to Halong Bay booked for $50 each and booked an open sleeper bus ticket which will take us the length of the country and we can hop on/off as and when we like for another $50 each, so that's all our travelling paid for! After dropping the bikes off at the guest house we all went for lunch, but we couldn't find any cheapy local places (and those we could find had no real menu, so we daren't order in case we got dog!) so we ended up at a Vietnam's answer to Pizza Hut - it was BOGOF so cost less than £3 for a huge Pizza and it was amazing!!! We just had a shop around the city and markets after that, bought 3 big bottles of cheap vodka (at just over £2 a bottle!) for our boat trip to Halong Bay the following day, and then went out for dinner at a really nice but cheap restaurant called Gecko. Walking back from the restaurant was an experience - on a couple of occassions Vietnamese on bikes rode buy shouting 'f*uck you' or f*ck off'... another example of how nice these people are!!!!!!!!!!
After another huge free breakfast at our hostel, we got a taxi to Hanoi Backpacker's Hostel which is where we booked our Halong Bay boat tour and where we would be collected from. After another free breakfast there (yep, we're pigs!) the bus set off at around 8.30am for the 3 hour journey to the harbour. We got on our boat which we were relieved to see was gorgeous (we'd heard horror stories about old boats with rats!) and lunch was served - fresh fish, veg, rice... mmm! After lunch we stopped at a huge cave which was apparently discovered by a fisherman chasing a monkey which ran into the cave! The cave was huge and amazing... except for the fact that the stupid Vietnamese have now paved a walkway through it and set up different coloured lights throughout the place taking away all it's natural beauty. They don't look after anything here.
It's actually winter here and the weather isn't great so there's not much to do on the boat - we'd imagined sunbathing/swimming/snorkling but it's grey and drizzly so none of that, so at about 3pm we decided to crack open the vodka! To scam tourists the boats try to charge you for bringing your own drinks on board, so we went to our cabin to drink! By the time we stopped at the floating village to kayake we were all hammered - we all kept crashing into things... we crashed into a villager's floating house at one point, he didn't seem impressed! I remember the village being facsinating though - these people actually live in the ocean amoungst the huge forest covered limestone cliffs/karsts in floating wooden shacks! There's a whole community! After a kayak race bace to the boat we had a gorgeous dinner followed by karaoke which was hilarious! At one point one of the crew sang a song in Vietnamese so when the following song came on it was also in Vientamese, but Rich decided to sing along to it anyway and everyone was in stitches, the crew were almost crying with laughter at his attempt at Vietnamese! And the funniest thing was that he actually got a score of 83% for singing it to the correct beat!!!!!!!!! We ended up drinking all 3 bottles of vodka that night!
The next morning the boat took us to Cat Ba island which is where we stayed for the night in a really nice hotel (by our backpacking standards!). Again there wasn't a huge amount to do because of the weather so we just shopped around and had a few drinks. The following day we went to do a bit of trecking, which wasn't mentioned when we booked the tour so none of us bought appropriate footware and were all in flipflops, and it was so muddy and slippy that almost everyone fell over and people were covered in mud! We only made it about a quarter of the way up the hill before we turned back! We headed back to Hanoi after that, at which point the sun decided to come out, typical! It was still a great trip though, but mainly because of the group we were with, not because of the tour itself. On arriving back at Hanoi we had just enough time to get some grub before catching our overnight bus further South to Hoi An, where much shopping will be done!!!! TBC! x
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