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Published: April 18th 2008
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Hanoi and Halong Bay - Jan 08
First impressions are important in anything, (don't worry this isn't going to lead into any life coaching !) the morning we arrived in Hanoi from the overnight train we unfortunately picked a taxi driver quite happy to rip off tourists. I asked him to take us somewhere which should only be a five minute journey, luckily I had the lonely planet book out and was following ( or trying to ) where he was going. I spotted his comedy route, " Is this a city tour?" I asked , showing him my map in his mirror. He soon got back on track ! He dropped us off in an area called the Old Quarter which has many hostels/hotels/restaurants/cafes/bars .....etc. We wandered to the nearest hostel and then came accross the next cowboy whose prices ( for a hellhole it has to be said ) were laugh out loud funny ! We weren't having it and ended up paying something like a third of his initial price. As you can imagine we weren't exactly loving Hanoi at that point !
After a little snooze, things got a lot better . We had a
good wander round and really liked Hanoi, although we did go to the Ho Chi Minh museum ( don't ask why ! ). Now i'm not normally one for museums, but this had to be the most boring hour of my life, maybe only second to Dr Scotts A level Biology class or my Wigan Tech Wednesday Evening nightmare ! The Old Quarter has a french feel to it and is really fast paced, at first crossing the road you feel as if you are dicing with death ! There is just a swarm of motorbikes in all directions, with no lanes/no rules/no system/no anything ! But bizarrely, it just seems to work. The trick to it, we found with a bit of practice, is to just walk across at one pace and don't panic ! The swarm heading towards you just seems to magically part and drive round you . We decided ( i think this was a moment of madness) that we needed to sample this for ourselves and got a motorbike taxi to take us around for a bit. Not one each either, both of us on the same bike ! It was scary but really fun
at the same time.
We loved also with Hanoi that each street in the Old Quarter is dedicated to one item, so to explain.... one minute you are walking down towel street , all shops sell towels....... then you turn right and you are on shoe street .....etc . Quality.
During our first day we decided to have a rest and a bit of lunch, we met a really nice English couple from Cambridge in their 50's who were on holiday and chatted with them for an hour or so. I think they took pity on us being scruffy looking backpackers and paid our bill for us ! It was very nice of them, I offered to buy them a drink later but they had something on , maybe they didn't like our company after all ! Only joking.
We booked our trip to Halong Bay after a day or so in Hanoi , the weather had been dodgy so we just hoped it would improve as we would be on a boat for two days ! The weather unfortunately was grey and miserable , but at least it didn't rain. The day we set off on
the boat was chaos , the amount of boat trips leaving the harbour at once was unbelieveable and looked like a scene from pirates of the carribean as if we were all heading into battle. Halong Bay is stunning, there are loads of limestone formations everywhere . If it had been sunny and we could have done some swimming off the boat ...etc it would have been superb. We were lucky again to have a nice group of people for the trip, mainly Aussies but also Malaysians and Americans. We had one morning cycling when the boat docked for a bit, it was good to get off the boat but also the cycle to the villages nearby we enjoyed, especially the bar/restaurant with the pigs out the back and the cute puppies ! There was also an afternoon of kayaking around some of the formations and bays, due to the numbers I ended up being the odd one out who had to kayak on his own , I had quite a dull hour !
It was then back to Hanoi were we had to catch an overnight bus to Vientiene in Laos (what a nightmare that was! ) We
The Ho Chi Minh Museum
Not sure what this is all about maybe he was a big fruit fan decided to go to Laos and have a week or so there before returning to Vietnam and continuing down the coast all the way to Ho Chi Minh City.
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