Hanoi & Halong Bay

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In Vietnam

The Little Hanoi Hotel was amazing, not only did we get a free pickup from the airport (do love seeing a sign with your name on it at the airport) but also a free breakfast on arrival and free fresh fruit and flowers in our clean and spacious room every day, all for the equivalent of about 3.50quid per night. On top of the amazing accomodation it was quite a relief after the expensiveness of Hong Kong to be able to get a cheap beer (apparently the cheapest in the World) in one of the many bia hoi's in the city which was pretty much road-side stalls with childs plastic seats and cups of beer for 3000 Dong (don't start Paul off with the names of Asian currencies) which is the equivalent to 10p a beer. On our second night we managed to have a meal and three cakes for a pound and drink all night for another pound, cheapest date ever.

We saw the sights of Hanoi's old quarter in the best part of two days, the water puppetry relating an old Vietnamese legened was particularly good. After staying for an extra night to catch up on some sleep we departed for our trip around Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island. Unfortunately for us our tour guide was about as useful as a dissolvable lifejacket but we had a good kayak trip around the bay, saw some fascinating caves and even dived off the top of the boat into the sea (Paul went for 'macho' but managed to pull off 'terrified')

So many mozzies

After a beautiful night under the stars we set off for Cat Ba and a trek through a forest where we got eaten alive by all kinds of bugs (Suze had over 100 bites on her legs). That evening we decided to play some pool and some drinking games (a favourite of ours was 'Forsythe' which was pretty much high-low) and ended up with our recently befriended M-Dog, who is possibly the most Northern person you'll ever meet blasting out 'Roxanne' by The Police on the karaoke machine at full blast in a Yorkshire accent, possibly the funniest thing of the trip so far.

The day after we spent on Cat Co 2 beach and spent the night in a nice little beach hut and luckily not a karaoke machine was involved all evening. After 3 days of glorious weather, beautiful sea and beaches it was back to an overcast Hanoi and the prospect of an overnight train to Hue. We ended up in a carriage with two snoring French people which was disappointing, to be honest I think I would have preferred to listen to M-Dog do karaoke all night.

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Photos

Hanoi
Hoen Khiem Lake, random Vietnamese man

Bia Hoi
10p beer ahoi, tsk

Old Quarter
Almost Indian-levels of traffic

Street Urchin
Stay away from this man, his cakes are dangerous

Enjoying the beer
Sitting on plastic chairs

Halong Bay
Great weather

Dusk
We were surrounded by hundreds of other boats

Comments

[mush]

ah its starting to look like something ive seen
Yey loving the Nam pics they look so like thailand yet prob a tad more green makes me want to cry and be there all over again. The sunset pictures are stunning and mmm the cakes and 10p beer god bet it was cheaper than watter haha x