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6am into Hanoi - The air is stifflingly hot 38C. It is the most hectic city we've been to, even more so than Beijing. The roads are full of mopeds, horns sounding every second and people everywhere. To even cross a road is a blind leap of faith, apparently you have to just walk, but very slowly to allow the moped to swerve round you! Running will inevitably lead to injury and waiting for a gap will take weeks!
We spend our first morning wandering the sights, but we are struggling, the pounding heat and intensity of the place..we become sweaty messes! Fortunately we discover Bia Hoi - one keg of beer, plastic seats on the pavement, and beer - at 7p a glass, officialy the cheapest beer in the world! 7p a glass. Paul is determined to take this idea back to Clapham, and even my question of "Why would the council encourage people to get drunk on the streets?" isn't detering him - watch out Northcote Road.
Sadly the wonderful Bia Hoi's don't stretch to a TV for the football so off to a pub to find our fellow fans and to listen to Paul critisise Peter
Crouch for 90 minutes - until he scores that is!
After a couple of days in the heat it's time to head off to HaLong Bay. 3000 rocky outcrops in the sea. We've seen the pictures, watched Planet Earth and now we are here - however so are about 200 other people. In our minds HaLong Bay was mystical and exclusive, in reality it is fully on the tourist route.
Up on the boats deck we're drinking beer with a couple from Denmark and another from Holland. Explicit rules from our captain not to jump off the top of the boat fall on deaf ears, Soren (a double for American Pie's Stiffler) is currently on leave from the Danish army serving in Afganistan, there is no way someone's going to tell him what to do, plus he wants to show off his acrobatics! For us this is the first sea we have seen since our trip began, rules do not apply and we follow him off and wave to the Captain!
More beer and vodka as the Vietnamese start drinking with us - and they can drink. Straight vodka is no problem for these guys.
The
next morning is awful. We didn't learn from our trip to Tiger Leaping Gorge that drinking the night before a hike is a very bad idea. Our Vietnamese friends have no intention of hiking and slope off to a cafe to wait for us - very sensible. Hiking up a hill in the sun with hangovers - we are a sorry sight. Our guide is 58 and is setting quite a pace as we sweat out the beer and vodka from the night before!
While our friends check into the luxury hotel up the road, Paul and I are off with all the Vietnamese (not sure how that happened). It isn't even noon as they invite Paul to have a drink. 6 vodkas later and he comes wandering back having arranged to go to the beach and then the disco that night.
And we do - 8pm and we are in a disco. Bottle of whiskey on the table for Paul and the lads (I'm still working through my hangover!) and cheesy music. The Vietnamese take dancing seriously, sitting out is not an option, but me dancing in flipflops when sober is a pathetic sight.
The hospitalitly
of the Vietnamese is amazing, The Don of the gang is Tang (a double for Trung Tran for those that know him) he orders all the bottles of vodka, whisky and no-one seems to move without his approval, he is quiet but commanding and apparently has links with the vietnamese mafia (or maybe that was the booze talking).
As our friends the next morning fill us in on how they spent the night in the hot tub relaxing, Paul has his head in his hands with another hangover - I'm feeling smug.
We leave Ha Long and return back to Hanoi, it's at this point that we need to confess something to the dog lovers! Yes, we've tasted Fido! A chicken dish was placed on the table, we should have noticed from the grey colour all was not well, on entering the mouth we soon realised this was no meat we've tasted before, at first the manager tried to persuade us that it was indeed chicken before surrendering and admitting they provided us dog accidently!
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Elaine's father
non-member comment
excessive consumption of alcohol
Sonds like you are on a global pub crawl! Do you realise how many times you are nursing hangovers and the posiible liver damage being inflicted? Take care, dad x