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Published: January 2nd 2009
The bus journey to Hanoi... On the plus side it did actually go to Hanoi, on the down side it took 18 hours and was probably one class below a cattle float. We sat on the bus for 3 hours in the station waiting for the engine to get fixed for a start. The roads to Hanoi are unbelievable, we now know why the guidebook tells you to take the train. The roads are basically an off-road mud bath. At one point we had to wait for about an hour due to a lorry getting stuck in the mud and blocking the road. No-one on the bus spoke English, and perhaps had never even seen Westeners before judging by the way everyone was staring at us. Anything hoes on these buses, one guy put a cage of screaming pigs on the roof and one in the luggage hold. This guy seemed to take a shine to us, constantly talking to us in Vietnamese, even though we quite obviously couldn't understand a word he was saying. At one point he kept on pointing and poking at Michael, speaking in Vietnamese and the whole bus was in fits of laughter. Don't ken what
he was saying but we were obviously the butt of the joke! 18 hours later we were dropped off 3 miles out of the town centre at 4:30am. Not the best place to be at that time with a rucksack on looking at a map of the area. Prime candidates to be ripped off. A taxi driver stopped and offered to take us to our hotel for 200,000 dong - twice the price of our 18 hour bus journey! We knew it wasn't that far and refused out of principal. We walked a little further then gave in and managed to get a cheaper taxi at 80,000 dong. Thankfully our hotel allowed us to check in early so we flop into bed for a well deserved rest.
Feeling refreshed after our rest, we head out to explore Hanoi City, and there is only 1 word to describe this City... Chaos!! There are 5 million people in the city and 4 million have motorbikes. I presume the other 1 million have cars as it seems no-one likes to walk here. There is next to no provision for pedestrians, what little pavements they have are lined with parked motorbikes. God forbid
if you need to cross the road, you just need to hold your breath and hope that the vehicles coming for you at all angles will avoid you. Every time we made it across safely we breathed a sigh of relief.
For Christmas we treated ourselves to a nice meal. Watercress soup, pan fried salmon, turkey, cheese board and Christmas pudding, topped off with a bottle of wine. Bliss!! Must admit we have been missing our cheese and wine. Christmas night we fell in with a crowd of travellers, fair to say a good night was had by all!
Boxing day, early morning we got a 3 hour bus to Halong Bay. Beginning at a pier near Halong City, we board a junk boat and commenced our tour of the bay. With over a thousand islands of harst - limestone, there is currently a motion to make Halong Bay one of the new Seven wonders of the natural world. For the entirety of our trip however, it was dull, foggy and raining though it was still very much possible to appreciate the beauty of this place. After one night aboard our junk and having toured extensively around the
bay we returned to Hanoi and booked our onward tickets by open-sleeper bus to Hoi An.
Photos to follow although we lapsed a bit and hardly took any photos in Hanoi, hoping to steal a few off some of the guys we met... 😉
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John Gaynor
non-member comment
Happy New Year
Hi guys Happy New Year from a freezing Scotland! It's been Baltic up here for about 2 weeks but the woods were beautiful, all frozen white and silver. Loving the photos, brings back memories! Great that you went to Halong Bay, are all the tiny wee family boats still floating around selling stuff to the tourists? Hope you enjoy Hoi An, it was flooded when I was there but still charming. Have fun! John (Clavie coming up then my liver can have a holiday! x)