Hanoi

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We flew into Hanoi 3rd Septemeber. Although the population is smaller than Ho Chi Minh (5.5 mill versus 3.5 mill) it feels much busier. Around the backpacker area it's just chaos and the noise is starting to drive us insane! The people are not as friendly as in the south, a little arrogant. The food is very oily and there isn't actually that much to see/do. Just another crazy big asian city really. We are both in agreement that the south is far nicer than the north.We spent a couple of days in Hanoi (dragged Jono to the water puppetry - we both lasted about fifteen minutes before a mass exodous with all the other tourists who thought it just as boring!) then decided to bite the bullet and book another organised tour to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. One night sleeping on a junk and one night on Cat Ba Island that we extended for another night. We wanted to arrange it ourselves but you can't actually get there in a reasonable time frame unless you take a tour. We had braced ourselves for another overloaded bus/junk only to find that it was only the two of us and three Korean girls... and eight staff! The junk was actually very nice and comfortable and good food on board. We still had to put up with being told when to eat, sleep, laugh, swim ect but it was very bareable. We were just a little dissappointed that we didn't get to meet a few more people along the way.Halong Bay is beautiful, again our photo's don't do justice. There are approx 3000 island spattered around the Gulf of Tonkin. We spent the first day just cruising around, visiting some amazing caves/grottos, swimming and relaxing up on deck. The water was so calm we didn't feel any movement at night so had a great sleep as well. The next morning we headed to Cat Ba Island which is the only inhabited island of them all with a population around 7,000. Our first activity on the island was a 4km treck up a huge mountain to some viewing tower...we didn't make it to the top as it was so dangerous we made the guide take us back. What we were doing was not trecking but some pretty serious rock climing in conditions that were so unsafe that we couldn't believe the guide didn't have enough common sense not to take us up. It had been raining quite heavily so the dirt/clay was just slippery mud and there were so many mosquitos we thought no amount of malaria medication could possibly help! Apart form that, the 6 billion spiders on every rock you put your hand on for leverage weren't exactly pleasant..By the time we got back down the mountain we were sweating so much that the white top I was wearing was completely see through - much to the boys amusement and to my embarresment!We cancelled the rest of the days activities after that and headed for the beach which was probably the nicest we have been to so far. No hawkers, warm, calm water. That night we had dinner at a restaurant accross the road form the river where the owners puppy was hit by a car right in front of us, then died at our feet. Pretty sad for us but the way they dealt with it was to throw it in a plastic bag and straight into the water😞We headed back to Hanoi on the 9th to fly to Laos on the 10th but our flight was cancelled due to bad weather so we had our sandles polished (ha ha) and drank some local home brew to pass the time....

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Photos

Water puppetry - Hanoi
Probably would be entertaining if you understood Vietnamese!

Sunset on Halong Bay
View from the deck of the junk - pretty amazing!