Hanoi & Halong Bay, Vietnam

Hanoi

Here we are arrived in South East Asia and cracking on with Vietnam as the first country to be visited.

As soon as we are out of the plane we feel the heat of Vietnam compared to Australia.

We negotiate the taxi fare to avoid being charged 500% more than the normal price; finally we check in and can drop our heavy bags in a surprisingly spatious room.

We decide to start browsing the streets around the hostel that are full of shops mainly selling clothes and accessories.

But the heat and humidity makes Weronika weak and feeling sick... Every morning before breakfast, it is the same cycle: feeling weak, heavy, headache and not well... No Weronika is not pregnant, we even bought the test.. ;-)

We stayed in Old Quarter as it is full of history, pulsating with life and commerce and with thousands of motorbikes. 

We rent a scooter to visit the city centre and get some pictures of the Parliament and multiple pagodas (temples).

Hoam Kiem Lake with the temple in one of the corners, which is a symbol of the city.  

 Ngoc Son Temple is the 18th century temple that lies on the above mentioned city lake (with the turtle legend).

 Pagoda

Ho Chi Minh mausoleum and museum

  

 Temple of Literature with ever playing music, used to be a university too.

Anecdote: the museums are closed on Friday and if not only open it is only in the morning. Unfortunately, we only arrived in the late morning and missed the entrance of the main sites. But we are still lucky to visit two pagodas and have a view of the very official and very communist Parliament.

In the morning, we meet a Canadian couple and after exchanging a bit more we sympathise and agree to meet for drinks and dinner. As a coincidence, the Canadian guy is CA too so we can talk a bit about "Finance".

The next day, we go to Halong Bay the highlight of Hanoi. Very excited we check out our hotel early morning and got transferred by van to the harbour.

Halong Bay
The natural wonder with 1969 limestone islands! Resulting from tectonic movements, sea regresion and earth movements.
It accounts for one of the 7 New Wonders of Nature together with: Iguazu Falls in Argentina, Amazonia river in Sth America, Komodo in Indonesia, Table mountain in Sth Africa, PP underground river in Philippines, Jeju island in Sth Korea.

Just after boarding, we discover a charming room made in wood. It starts well. We realise that there not many cool people on the boat and Weronika makes sure to be at the best table with the coolest crew.

Indeed, we meet a married gay couple, Vietnamese and Japanese girls, as well as a French student àd Canadian teacher. We have some tasty red wine together and some fun during the excursions.

We discover these thousands of small islands from the boat with a very good weather.

First activity included in the cruise is kayaking. We take a old school type of a tender to reach a floating village before paddling a double kayak. 

The view is stunning. We access hidden bays inside the islands that you can only access when the tides are low. Indeed, you need to putnthe head down while riding through a sort of a cave.

The sun hits hard but paddling between these islands is marvellous.

 Floating village in the bay

 

  

After the session we returned to the boat that will head to a nice small sand beach where we can refresh ourselves. Unfortunately the water seems to be dirty with some foam coming from nowhere...grrr we still go into the water risking skin diseases and thousands spots.

Weronika got flowers from the crew and we also got overly sweet cake as a Honey Moon gift...Well, tecnicly we are still on our honeymoon, so sometimes we get a nice surprise! :)

On the way back, the boat cruises through the islands and we can just admire this Natural Wonder. 

We can also walk up to the top of one island with wonderful 360 panoramic view.

 In the evening we have fun altogether trying ourselves in a squid fishing session. Results: 0 squid fished.

The next day in the morning, we go visiting big caves, where we can see how water from the rain is channelling down into an small pond where locals used to take water from.

To our surprise we had a cooking lesson! Well, the chef tought us how to make spring rolls :) I want to see Francois doing this at home! haha

Train Hanoi - Hue 700km, 14 hrs