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Having arrived at 2.30am the previous night, our first day in Hanoi was spent wandering around the maze of streets in the old quarter (where we are staying). We found our way to the lake which is where a lot of action seems to be - the water puppet theatre is there, along with the more upmarket shopes such as Calvin Klein, Cartier and Clinique which we wistfully wandered past (well, I did anyway!) A temple dedicated to confucian and tao philosophers was an interesting alternative to the buddhist temples we have recently seen a lot of! Dinner in the Bamboo Bar restaurant was amazing...although we went back last night to check if it really was, or if it seemed it compared to just eating rice like we had the day before - it was still amazing! On our post-dinner wander we ended up sitting on plastic chairs in the road chatting to a few random people drinking bia hoi - which literally means 'street beer'...tasted like it too!! Well, more like pipe cleaner, but for 12p a glass we gave it a go and 4 glasses later we hardly noticed!
The Water Puppets were 2 pounds for a first
class seat and well worth it - totally unlike anything we'd seen before. I think there were about 17 scenes in total with titles including 'harvest festival' 'fishing' 'fairy dance' and 'rearing ducks and catching foxes' The whole performance lasted an hour - so even Tom didnt get bored! Live music accompanied the show which was performed by people in traditional Vietnamese attire on traditional Vietnamese instruments. At the end the performers came out from behind the screen - they were nearly waist deep in the water - and they gave 4 performances a day! Before the performance we visited 'Fannys' which is a very posh ice cream parlour serving some very intricately shaped ice creams! We shared a fruit sorbet - lime, raspberry and passionfruit with raspberry sauce on a bed of whipped cream - yum!
Halong Bay
Deciding which tour to take to Halong Bay was pretty difficult as many of the companies had exactly the same wording on their leaflets and its hard to know who to believe and who will rip you off.....in the end we went with Vietnam Opentours which was the recommendation of Mrs Linh - the lovely lady who runs the
very nice guesthouse we're staying in (Hanoi Guesthouse - 14 Bat Su St) We set off on Wednesday morning at 8am in a minibus (yay!!) to Halong city where we boarded the junk along with 17 other people and our also very lovely tour guide Anna who was ridiculously chirpy the entire trip but very knowledgeable and i think she spoke English, Vietnamese, French and a bit of German and Singaporean!!! The boat was 'plush' to use Tom's word of the moment and we were served a seafood lunch (which was amazing - as was the rest of the food for the entire trip - really fresh seafood including King Prawns, squid, cuttlefish and more). We cruised along the bay relaxing on the sundeck, absorbing the beauty and the sheer size of it all, and taking lots of photos - it was quite hard to do it justice as there are so many islands (around 1,965 if we remember what Anna said) that when they are all in the background they look like a coastline. We visited a cave called 'secret cave' which was absolutely massive inside, but again difficult to do justice in the photos, before kayaking around a
few islands for a closer look. ( Hi this is Tom making a guest appearance. Dad- there were some massive birds circling overhead. I got a picture of one, do you know what it is? They were bigger than me in wingspan. Not just for dad, answers on a postcard.) When the boat had stopped for the night it was swimming time...Anna said it was safe to jump off the sundeck into the sea, so Tom was straight in there. I managed to get a couple of pictures including when he did a front flip! On his second attempt at a flip about 3 other people were taking photos as well!! After dinner we went fishing for squid off the front of the junk armed with bamboo rods with brightly coloured plastic bait on the end. After catching two in quick succession, Tom handed me the rod....i waited....and wiggled the line as i was told....and waited...and wiggled but to no avail. After a respectable 25 minutes I gave up, handed the rod back to Tom and was more than a little miffed when 2 minutes later he caught another one!! He's a bit annoying like that sometimes - but as
neither of us are competitive at all it doesnt bother us....hmmm! When the squid were caught they sprayed ink everywhere which is obviously their defense mechanism, but when another guy caught one and dangled it nearer the boat I was inked!
The next day it was up early for breakfast and then the people doing the three day tour (us) swapped boats to go to Cat Ba island while the others went back to Halong City. We arrived at the north of Cat Ba island and were given bikes (very excited that they had gears and suspension!) Off we went following Anna for about 3km to a village where we left the bikes and walked through Cat Ba national park to a cave called snail cave - so called as there are hundreds of snail shells in there! We retraced our way back to the boat and were taken to Monkey island for lunch. Tom was really excited about the prospect of seeing lots of monkeys, and then we were told that there are no more monkeys on the island - they used all their brains for vaccinations. Nice. Lunch was again the seemingly endless supply of food with
6 of us sharing and everyone very full afterwards! We had an hour or two to relax on the beach so had a dip in the sea and collected some shells. Another 40 minute cruise to the south of Cat Ba island where we were staying for the night. We checked into our 3* hotel called Holiday View which definately deserved Tom's exclamation of 'plush!' (delivered in a higher excited tone) as we walked in....it was massive with an amazing view of the harbour. Showered and changed we went for a wander along the harbour and a beer with Liam and Michelle - another couple we met on the trip. At 7pm we were taken for dinner in a nearby restaurant before heading to a kiwi bar for a couple more beers. We were surprised at how built up the harbour area was - all ugly high rise monstrosities designed to pack as many people in as possible - but the scenery either side was still beautiful. A full day on the island would've been good to have a bit longer to explore but it wasn't to be.
Yesterday morning was miserable and rainy for our journey back to
Hanoi but it couldnt dampen our spirits and the fact we had a fantastic time. We were really happy we opted for the mid-range tour as the quality of the food (very important for us) was second to none and the whole thing was very well run. The tour was $89 which is about 60 pounds and included everything, except drinks. A guy we met on Monday night was off on a tour for $37 and we wonder if he had as great a time as we did....
Back in Hanoi we're off to the military museum today after we've moved hostels into an aussie backpackers hostel which gets rave reviews. Tomorrow we're going to see 'Uncle Ho' as the Vietnamese call him and Monday we're back on the road to Hue....
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Rob Burke
non-member comment
eagle?
Hi Tom- can't tell youwhat the bird is , but it looks impressive. Enjoyed the blog , and the photos -looks interesting and the food sounds fantastic Love mum and dad xx