"Uncle Ho's got his testicles out!" (Hanoi and Halong Bay)

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We cheated. We cheated and I don’t even care, it was so worth it. Yes, I’m afraid to report that we caught a flight (gasp!) from Hoi An to Hanoi (similar names, I’ve been getting ever so confused). What with Tet coming up (Vietnamese New Year – I swear to God, if I hear one more thing about Tet and how it means everything is fully booked, or expensive, or busy…I’m going to punch someone), the train was very busy, $20 more expensive than flying and, crucially, 15 hours longer. So we flew for an hour, and it was lovely to arrive somewhere new without feeling like I was about to die of exhaustion. A novelty!

Hanoi is cold. We were prepared for it to be a bit colder, as it is way up north and it is winter, but it is unseasonably cold – like, England cold! Water buffalo are freezing to death (seriously). So, putting on every item of warm clothing we own, Lizzie and I went to the Women’s Museum (we learned about street vendors, fascinating stuff), and the Temple of Literature (pretty, but some weird old Vietnamese man tried to follow us, we stared him out, loser), and to watch Vietnamese water puppetry (weird, the puppets creeped me out, unsurprisingly). At the water puppet theatre we were interviewed by Vietnamese TV – finally, my 15 minutes of fame! We were asked our views on water puppetry, and what other puppetry we had experienced in other countries…hmmm, I’m sure that’ll be a thrilling TV show!

We went to Halong Bay for 2 days and a night and almost froze to death sleeping on a boat. But we kept warm doing karaoke with some Scandinavians and an American couple. The memory of Steve "I don’t do karaoke" the American belting out Purple Rain will stay with me always. The Scandanavians kept doing east London accents, it was really odd – they’d obviously met someone from east London on their travels who had amused them greatly.

The bay itself was really beautiful, we braved the cold and kayaked around some of the caves. I recommend a visit – but in the summertime!

Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to visit Ho Chi Minh’s embalmed corpse before we left Hanoi (definitely a reason to return).

Oh, and as for an explanation for the title of this blog post, it’s probably better not to ask...

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