Currency:
Vietnamese Dong

Highlights:
The beauty of Halong Bay

Our Adventure:

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam and has a population of 3.5 million. It has some of the country's best sights and although we didn't have time to check them all out, we did make it to the place we had most been looking forward to seeing - Halong Bay.

There are some beautiful French-style buildings here too like the Opera House and a bridge designed by the same guy who did the Eiffel Tower. The city is also really busy but didn't seem to be quite on the same scale as HCMC. We did hear a scary accident statistic though - apparently there were approximately 11,000 car accident fatalities in Hanoi last year - which is insanely high when you compare it to a similar-size city such as Melbourne, Australia which had about 300.

Day 1 - Arriving in Hanoi

We arrived late afternoon into Hanoi and after another stressful drive from the airport, made it to our hotel in the Old Quarter, which is a really cool area where most of the travellers stay with narrow streets whose names change every block or two. Apparently the street names are derived from the main activity that used to occur on that street- although these days the streets seem to the same mix of hotels, restaurants, travel agencies and all sorts of markets (it seemed like we were in the meat-packing district so the pig heads were following us!).

We finally got to try out a hot pot for dinner that night which was really fun cooking the dinner at our table. It was also a lot cooler in Hanoi so we had to dig out our sweatshirts from the bottom of our bags (although I guess 14 degrees doesn't quite compare to the -10 currently in London!).

You can view our photos here:

2010-01-08 [Vietnam, Hanoi] Than biet (Goodbye) Hoi An, Xin chao (Hello) Hanoi
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=378952&id=713415257&l=9b73d8948b

Day 2 & 3 - Halong Bay

Halong Bay is another UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is currently vying to be included as a new Natural Wonder of the World. The word 'Halong' means descending dragon and was named by a Frenchman that came to the lake and claimed to see a giant sea snake rising from the water.

The thing to do is to hop on a 'junk' (wooden boat) and cruise around the lake admiring the over 3,000 islands that rise out of the emerald waters in all different shapes and sizes and containing lots of caves caused by all the wind and waves.

We chose to do the 2 day / 1 night tour which involved sleeping on the junk. We did make a classic Griswald error in our packing though - we rocked up for the tour in our shorts and slops only to see everyone else decked out in jeans and takkies (track shoes). We thought maybe they were just a little over eager as it wasn't that cold in Hanoi but when we got there, we realized that we were the over eager ones as there would be no use for our swimming costumes as it was really cold!

We cuddled up though and really enjoyed our first day cruising around the bay with islands all around us. We also stopped at a fishing village and went on a little rowing boat through the caves. We were very relieved later on that we decided to skip the kayaking part of the trip as everyone that did it came back soaked!

The food on the boat was surprisingly good (not sure how they made that all out of the small kitchen!) - lots of seafood. Dinner conversation was also really interesting as there was a mix of ages and nationalities on the boat. The most entertaining characters were the Aussie we nicknamed Crocodile Dundee and the crazy Frenchman who told us so many horror stories about Nigeria where he lives now and how much he loves it.

On the second day, we did some more cruising and then did a walk through the 'Amazing Cave' (that's seriously what it is called!). There were lots of cool formations and legends behind them - although I personally feel that if you've seen one cave, you've seen them all...

Our drive back into town was also eventful. It's about a 4 hour drive from Hanoi to Halong Bay and we were on an old bumpy bus that sounded a little sick to begin with and then promptly died when we were almost home. We were stranded on the side of the highway with the cows for about half an hour but luckily the driver managed to fiddle with something and we were on our way again.

For our last evening, we met up with Mel and Mike again for a final rendezvous and devoured some pizzas at a recommended restaurant near our hotel.

You can check out our photos here:

2010-01-09 [Vietnam, Halong Bay] Cruising On The Junk
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=378974&id=713415257&l=78651d83e8

2010-01-10 [Vietnam, Hanoi] Than biet (Goodbye) Halong Bay, Xin chao (Hello) Hanoi
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=378955&id=713415257&l=820eab73b6

We have vowed to come back to Vietnam especially as we would like to see more of the countryside areas but until then, it's bye for now and off to Laos!

Tạm biệt,
Lara + Leise