Hanoi - Halong Bay "Not quite Hayling Bay"
We arrived in Hanoi after a short (turbulent therefore brace position for me) flight from Dong Hoi. The first thing we saw was a sign post warning us against double dealers and conmen which did not fill us with confidence. At this stage we were worried that all the awful things we had been told about Hanoi were true. We arrived in the centre of the city in the pouring rain, it was dirty and chaotic which left us asking ourselves why we were there and why we had left "Stalagmite and Stalagtite heaven" (yes that was most definitely a curly comment!) of Dong Hoi.
We are afraid there were only a few postives to Hanoi:
At 3: A wonderful kind lady (they are few and far between in Hanoi) who told us to rest up in her shop and sit out the torrential rain. When we got up to leave she gave us sandwich bags to cover our heads with.
At 2: Our hotel which was a lovely calm sanctuary in the centre of the frentic hustle and bustle outside.
At 1 : This is more for me. After rice, pho (noodle soup), rice, pho and yet more rice. We found an amazing french patisserie where I tried the entire bottom shelf of 3,000 dong mini cakes! It was chocolate heaven and we spent many happy hours here pretty much eating them out of house and home!
Haylong Bay
During our stop over in Hanoi we took a trip out to Haylong Bay. The bay is the number 1 tourist attraction for the whole of Vietnam as a result we were really apprehensive about going. We chose a 2 day 1 night tour which included a nights stay on a junk and all the food you could eat which pleased the bigger of the two of us. As we were arriving with the wonderful limestone karsts on the horizon Marky lent over to me and said "It's not quite Hayling Bay" this was quickly followed by "I yearn for my boat!" All be it the bay itself was beautiful I think I will remember it for those comments! Unfortuantely for us the weather did not do the bay justice as it was a hazy grey day.
After touring the karsts by boat we did some exploring of our own in kayaks. This was fantastic as we got up close to the many floating villages, many of the people on these floating villages have never been to the mainland they simply live and die on their floating pontoons - incredible!. The only downside to this was noticing the sheer number of jellyfish as our next activity was to go for a swim!
We spent the remainder of the evening jumping from the top deck of our junk in to a jellyfish free zone and eating. Our guide tried desperately hard to get us in to karaoke (they LOVE it here!) he was bringing out all the hits. YMCA must have been played at least 5 times before Marky escaped to our room and I made it to top deck to watch a lightening storm on the horizon - wonderful.
The following day we arrived back in Hanoi where we immediately set about getting out to Laos. We massochistically booked ourselves on a sitting bus from Hanoi to Vientienne which was to take 20 hours! We ended up staying a day extra in Hanoi in order to get our visa for Laos sorted as we had heard horror stories about the Laos- Vietnam border. The time came for our dreaded 20 hour bus ride they gathered us together (all foreigners, locals are not stupid enough) and herded us on to the crapiest looking bus is in the depo. To top it off there was not enough space to put our luggage in the carriages underneath the bus so they got a piece of tarpulin and some rope and tied our luggage to the roof! We had to laugh. So our journey to Laos began.......