Vietnam Part 1 - July 2011

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Good morning Vietnam! Well actually it was evening when we arrived but you get the idea.

Our first stop on our coastal trip down Vietnam was Hanoi, the capital. We were told before arriving that when crossing the road you should close your eyes and walk out (as the motorbikes will go round you), this proved to be useful as the city is chaos with motorbikes. The whole city was noisy, dirty, hot and just a bit of a hectic place to navigate. Luckily 3 of our friends from Thailand were already here so we met them and escaped for the day by going to the mall, a bit of a treat! Watched transformers 3 and had a thoroughly western day.
Our next escape of the city came in the form of a 3 day tour of Halong Bay. So with 43 other travellers we boarded the Jolly Roger for what was effectively going to be a booze cruise. Alcohol aside, Halong Bay was stunning, thousands of little islands dotted around with clear water inbetween, floating villages and clear blue skies, its easy to love a place when its this beautiful. After hearing the ground rules of the boat (from our tour guide who looked remarkably like Alan in the hangover 2), we jumped off the 3rd storey of the boat into the water below, about half way down as you realise you're still falling it gets a bit scary. The rest of the day's adventures included some kayaking (Sarah got herself a pro rower as her partner - cheater!) and then a bit of cave exploring. Our days efforts rewarded by a big night on the boat. Roxanne, followed by the best game of ring of fire/kings ever! Probably regretted this a bit in the morning when it came to heading on to the deserted beach at 7am!
The next stop of our tour was on Castaway Island (where they filmed Castaway), a deserted island bar from a few bamboo huts where we slept,a volleyball net and a communal area.
Spent the day doing watersports (high speed tubing) and playing games on the beach all day, the night was spent in a similar fashion as before, however at about 2am we were all sent swimming as the phosphorescence lit up the water for about an hour which was pretty cool! 45 drunk people in the glowing ocean singing 'Hey Jude' and 'Wonderwall', with all the boys completely nude, and all the girls trying to avoid cutting their feet on rocks.
The hangover of the next day was one felt by all and worsened by an entire day of travelling, we did lighten the mood by seeing who could fit the most pringles in their mouth at once, Craig managed an impressive 20 and remains champion to this day.
When we returned to Hanoi we felt a bit of culture wouldn't go amiss so we headed off to the prison, this was a pretty depressing day as the prison had been a pretty miserable place for the Vietnamese rebels during the French ruling of the north. The women's museum was sort of interesting but got a bit boring, I think Bryan enjoyed it though!
The highlight of our cultural experiences had to be Snake Village! Here we got to hold the snakes and get over our fears before members of the group cut open the live snake (Sarah) and another ate the beating heart out of it (Seb). This was then followed by a shot of snake blood and vodka, and 7 varied courses of snake; bones, meat, ribs, intestines, skin etc. Each course was noted by a shot of rice wine each, which tastes like battery acid and is probably as harmful. We ended the night by Seb dj'ing and Vicky falling down some stairs, rice wine definitely to blame!

We've split our Vietnam blog in 2 just because there are too many places, people and events to fit in. This is the north and we will add the South soon.

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