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Published: August 7th 2012
The train arrived in Hanoi at 7.30 in the morning. After asking 3 separate taxi drivers to take us to our guesthouse and all looking confused and shaking their heads we started the walk in the rain. Paul is like a baby turtle who instinctively knows which way to go. He doesn't seem to study the map, just glances quickly, looks around at his land marks (quote) and after a walk (this one 20 minutes) we arrive at our dwellings! It's crazy how good he is at it and I'm very grateful as I can get lost looking for my car in tesco carpark!
So, first impressions of Hanoi: smelly, dirty, rainy, I don't much like it. It is the Capitol city though and I'm not a fan of cities (apart from Nottingham)! Everything is twice the price what we've paid in other parts of the country and even the street food vendors have a foreign price list, which means more often than not its cheaper to sit in a restaurant! The saving grace of Hanoi was beer hoi junction! We spent our 3 nights sat here people watching and drinking fresh beer at 15p a glass!
After much
Snake Sign
Didn't fancy eating hereresearching Halong Bay tours we decided on a one day trip because we didn't fancy staying overnight on a boat (one went down a couple of years ago and all tourists drowned). The safety has allegedly improved, but we knew we probably wouldn't enjoy it (we've found we are quite anti social), plus the price put us off a bit. So we spent 5 hours on a boat(4 hours by minivan to get there), we took in the scenery, had lunch, visited some caves and cruised around the islands. For us it was over hyped and wasn't all that impressive. The place was rammed full of tourist boats, there was rubbish everywhere and a load of construction (building another pier to accommodate yet more boats). We think we visited 20 years too late.
Back in Hanoi our laptop charger decided to stop working. This laptop (Asus Seashell) is marketed as a travel laptop but we have had nothing but problems with it. The screen mysteriously cracked before we left England and now this! Luckily there was a service centre in Hanoi and after an epic 4 hours round trip (walking in 38 degrees) we were glad to be back
at beer junction! Oh I forgot to mention we had to make this trip again to collect the new one!!! It was hell, walking 6 miles through the smoggy city, thank god it was covered on the warranty! The bright side being we spent little money on the two day escapade!
The lonely planet walking tour was pants compared to the enjoyable one in HCMC, but it ended at beer junction, hooray!
So, we're off to Sapa for a few days to see some green and we'll be back in Hanoi for 1 night before making our way into Laos!
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