Hanoi

We flew from Hue to Hanoi and stayed overnight in the Old Quarter of the city which is extremely busy with narrow streets and many motorbikes.Any pavement area is full of either parked motorbikes or food vendors who are actually cooking their wares amongst patrons sitting on very small plastic stools at low tables and drinking the local beer.It was impossible to walk anywhere except on the road and we had to accept the constant hooting of horns from motorbikes and cars driving extremely close by.

HalongBay

Early Friday morning (18 September) we were picked up by minibus and squeezed in with some 13 other people for the four hour drive down to Halong Bay, south east of Hanoi.We had a fantastic 3 day/ 2 night cruise on a wooden junk with 9 cabins, all with ensuite bathrooms and a large open top deck, ideal for jumping off into the ocean or sitting with a drink watching the sunset. Our guide informed us that in the high season there can be as many as 500 boats in this bay but thankfully we only saw around 50!!The area is another World Heritage site and contains over 3000 limestone islands - truly spectacular scenery!We spent our time exploring caves, swimming and kayaking around several bays and were sad to leave as we had met some great people.