Hanoi - Ha Long Bay - Hanoi - Hué

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We left for Ha Long Bay with an organised trip as that seemed the easiest/quickest way to do it - Halong City didn't seem to offer much as a way of a visit of itself. Our minivan was pretty comfortable and the trip was going well out of Hanoi and into the Vietnamese countryside until the two women in the back of the van decided to talk about their love lives - and boy did they talk. For most probably two hours solid Rach and I had to listen to these two women discuss the details of their current relationships and how they worked in TV (I think they were trying to tell us they worked in TV, not that you could tell, what with dropping in the odd Top Gear presenters name or how hard it is to work in TV with this producer and that producer, blah blah). One of the women, woman A lets call her, was back with her boyfriend Ben who she had broken up with a couple of years ago because he was too nice, silly Ben. They then started to become friends again and then he proclaimed his love for her, how dare Ben, and then they sort of fell back into a relationship. But, woman A, it seems, has had a bit of an affair with a guy on their latest project for TV, who is also in a relationship and has a house with this woman, which made things too messy for them to be together. Woman A proceeds to dissect her and Bens relationship, over and over with woman B consoling her. in the drawly lovey voices ''like...like...yar...like''. Nothing quite makes you feel car sick like wanting to turn around to someone and tell them to break up with their boyfriend because they're so obviously not in love with them and just using them until something better comes along because they can't face being alone! Argh, it was soo frustrating!

Anyways, thankfully when we turned up we were split from our group and joined another - you should've seen Rachel and I's covalent looks of eternal joy when we were taken away! We joined another group of 12 people or so and met our tour guide, a very friendly Vietnamese guy who Rachel believed sounded like Dr. Nick from the Simpsons, the one who says '''Hi everybody"and then everyone says "Hi Dr. Nick!'. We took a little boat out to our Junk boat and were shown to our rooms - which although small we were surprisingly nice and comfortable - with Air Con! We then had lunch and cruised to one of the islands of the bay and along to what is called the ''Surprise cave'', apparently found by a fisherman a few years ago. As we walked up to the cave and then into it, I must admit it was genuinely surprising as it was absolutely huge and very impressive, I'd love to have been a gecko on the wall when the fisherman first found it. After seeing the cave we went sea kayaking around a small part of the bay in between a few of the islands. Rachel and I are pros at this kayaking lark now and had an enjoyable time kayaking around the bay in fine tune. After half an hour or so we were picked up by the boat again and cruised to where we would be anchoring up for the night. This part of the Halong bay trip was most definitely my favourite as we sailed past islands as the sun was going down. When we finally reached our destination and anchored up we all took a swim in the bay which was definitely a high light of my entire trip. The water in the bay, even though it is the sea, was so warm, it felt as if you were swimming in bath water. After a shower we were served dinner which was delicious, another surprise as usually the food that is included as part of a tour package is pretty bland. Amongst other meat and vegetable dishes we were served this fresh fish, an entire fish, that had been cooked in garlic, lemongrass I think, in just generally delicious things. Luckily for me, the Italian and Spanish people we were sharing our table with weren't that keen on eating from a fish that still was fully intact so I pretty much devoured with much the pleasure the entire fish. I didn't realise how much I had missed fish until I started eating it - I had decided to steer clear of fish when I wasn't within a reasonable distance of the sea. The two italian guys who were part of the trip decided to organise karaoke for the evening - the Vietnamese never take much persuasion to put on karaoke as the South East Asian's seem to love it! (You can hire karaoke rooms over here to sing in) This was actually quite good fun and everyone joined in, albeit clapping/cheering/encouraging those who were brave enough to sing. We were able to sample some Vietnamese pop love songs and also a couple of Chinese pop songs were sung to us by a Chinese married couple. The next morning we made our way back to the port, had some lunch in the city and then were driven back to Hanoi.

Rach and I were dropped off in the French Quarter as we wanted to find somewhere to eat before we got on the sleeper train to Hué, which was due to leave about 7.30, so we had a good couple of hours to eat. After searching and searching we managed to find this little restaurant and both had quite a tasty meal - we also decided to treat ourselves to a desert, Rach had lemon pastry pie and I had a creme caramel (random french influences). We then hailed a taxi (Mailinh of course) and got to the train station. When we walked into the lobby of the train station we were completely confused, there was no obvious departure board! There was only this one board that seemed to list every other kind of train you could imagine apart from ours. We managed to find someone to ask and thankfully they managed to point us to the right platform and after grabbing some water for the journey we made our way to our platform. As we walked out on to the platform we realised that our platform, platform 4, was actually reached by walking across 2 railway lines, behind a couple of trains. Luckily it was only dusk so we managed to cross ok but it still felt so strange to walk across tracks when we've had it drummed into us from such a young age from Michael Frost on those 999 programmes not to go near trains. However, in their defence, their stations are no way as busy as ours and the platforms aren't as raised up so its completely different to walk across their tracks than it is to ours. We found our carriage and got our first glimpse of our 'hard sleeper' room for the night. I must admit I was quite pleasantly surprised as it was a lot more pleasant than I had thought. It was quite a narrow little room with two sets of bunk bends that had 3 beds on each sides. Luckily Rachel and I had the bottom bunks so started to make ourselves comfortable. Rachel had been talking to guy from Newcastle in Halong bay who had travelled by hard sleeper in Vietnam and he said that when he travelled he was in the room with 6 other Vietnamese people, 4 adults and 2 children (who ride for free). He said that they were quite pushed for space but he said it was ok. Luckily, however, the only two people to join us in our 6 bed room was a dutch couple who we chatted with for a few hours before all turning in for the night. They were a really friendly couple, the guy was a primary school teacher and the girl also worked with young children. The guy was a massive Oasis fan and spoke about them for ages, he said that it was his dream to see them play live in Liverpool - I think he may have meant Manchester?

We arrived in Hué at about 9.30am or so and managed to get a free trip into the centre of town with a guy from a hotel with a minibus (he was from a group of guesthouses that we were going to look at anyway from the guidebook so it worked out really well). A couple of the hotels in his families' chain were booked up so he took us to one of theirs that was only finished 4 months ago. He showed us to a room that had a double bed that we could have had then but said that he had a twin that would b available later. We decided to wait for the twin (Rachel steels bed cover and has a habit of moving on to my side of the bed - you've got to watch her) and go for some breakfast. We had breakfast in this pattisserie that was run by a french expat who trains local Vietnamese children/young people from hard backgrounds to bake and cook and then the profits of the cafe go towards these projects. The pastries were delicious! When we came back the room wasn't ready so we were allowed to use the first room to shower in. We watched planet of the apes on HBO to wait until 12pm when the room would be ready - what a terrible film that was! Just after 12 we were taken to our room - wow, Rach and I had to react quietly as we didn't want them to think they could charge us more (the room was only ten dollars) but oh my, it was beautiful - it had two big double wooden sleigh beds, two windows, fridge, TV, big bathroom with a bath, it was clean and light and had a balcony, we were so excited! With a spring in our step we decided to visit a few of the traveller cafes to see the options for moving on to Hoi An and for seeing the Royal Mausoleums that are situated 5-15 kilometers outside of the city. After booking our bus we went to the Citadel and to the old palace, a small version of the Imperial City of Beijing. As we were walking around it started to rain and it rained so much that the place flood and we all took refuge under the roofs of the old palace buildings. We waded back and walked to this traveller cafe called the Mandarin cafe which is run by this Vietnamese man whose an Amateur self-taught photographer and his photos cover all of the walls. We had a shake in there and watched some more rain pour down. We then decided to make our way back to the hotel but when we emerged from the cafe we realised that the roads were completely flooded out from the rain, we had to wade our way back to the hotel in almost knee high water, hoping not to stumble over and fall into it. We went back to the hotel quickly to rinse off our legs and then went to the local internet cafe to catch up with people. We then ventured back into town and gave into our Indian food urges and had an amazing thali that was absolutely huge - we had to literally waddle back.

The next day we were trying to work out the best way to go and see a couple of the Royal Mausoleums as we really didn't want to spend the whole day on a tour by a big tour bus. We decided to hire a private car for a few hours to take us to two of the tombs that we most wanted to see, Tu Duc and Khai Dinh. Tu Duc reigned in the mid to late 19th century whereas Khai Dinh ruled during 1916-1925, when the French occupied Vietnam. The two tombs were completely different in size, location and style. Tu Duc wrote something near to the number of 4000 poems and actually used some buildings on the side as a palace for a number of years. His mausoleum was beautiful, very romantic and poetic with clusters of buildings that moats and ponds full of lotus flowers. Whereas Khai Dinh was a lot smaller and had no gardens or moats or anything that was beautiful in that sense. It is built on a hillside and constructed by terraces which are decorated with dragons. The main temple which houses his body is a bizarre but amazing mix of colonial and vietnamese style (constructed in concrete). The building is impressive and has left a lasting imprint of its appearance in my mind. Notably, the the view from the top revealed a huge statue of Mary on the hillside opposite to Khai Dinh, a reminder of how prevalent Christianity is in Vietnam (2nd largest religion after Buddhism apparently).

After visiting the tombs we ate some lunch and then decided to hire out bikes and take a ride out around the citadel, the old city and just to have a general look around Hué. This was so much fun, we managed to ride across 6 lanes of traffic to make a left turn without much fuss and was able to see beautiful parts of the city that we would never have seen if we hadn't had the bikes. We rode around for a couple of hours checking out little roads and side streets before heading back towards the district that our hotel was in. Rach got some hassle from these little Vietnamese boys when we rode down this dead end, they were asking her for her water and she was like 'why, you look perfectly fine!'. They asked us for dong (Vietnamese currency') and I said to them they should give us dong and that shut them up, they were just being cheeky boys having some fun with Western tourists, we didn't mind we just found them amusing. As we pulled up to our hotel the rain started to come down to we were pleased we had decided to come back. That night we went out to the Japanese restaurant and had a really good meal. I had teriyaki grilled salmon with rice, miso soup, sesame green vegetables and green tea. We were absolutely stuffed and again had to waddle back to our hotel. We always seem to really really enjoy ourselves and appreciate somewhere more when we're able to get about on bicycle as we're able to see parts that we wouldn't be able to see in the small amount of time we have by walking, its also just a lot of fun and we have fun with the people who go past on the motorbikes as they sometimes wave, laugh or say hello as they ride past.

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