Blog : More Hanoi and Halong Bay

We were a pretty big group when we counted everyone that was keen to go to Halong bay together on the same day. There was Al and I, Christa who we met and travelled with in Australia, Tom from work back at home, the four Liverpool lot from the Thai islands, plus their israeli friend Alona and Helen, Sebastian and Hatem who were all single travellers on our Sapa trek - 12 in total!! It was a bit of a nightmare to try and coordinate everyone, in terms of times and dates and Kate was going with a different group of friends from home on the Halong trip to do three days and two nights, as we were looking at the cheaper two days one night option so we were looking at two different types of trip which was confusing! We didn't want to go on the tour that the hostel offered because it was quite a lot more expensive and although the activities - kayaking, sunbathing and chilling on a private island - sounded cool, the forecast was for seriously chilly weather as its North Vietnam's cold season now so that wouldn't have been that much fun. Plus we all wanted to actually learn about the formation of the rocks in Halong bay etc rather than just spend three days getting pissed with a load backpackers on an island - that was Australia and Thailand!!

We fell in love with a travel agent opposite out hostel - Anna's, where the lady was so sweet and offered us a really good discount on the price as there was so many of us, knocking nearly 20 USD off the price per person. We put a deposit down to hold the beds for everyone for our one night on the boat and then as everyone arrived throughout the day we pointed them in the direction of Anna's to go and pay. She was so lovely and actually walked us, holding Helen's hand to a nearby restaurant that she recommended to us for lunch when we asked her - it was delicious as well, I had vegetable noodle bo, which is a kind of soupy broth with peanuts, lime and chillies. We ended up going to this restaurant Noodle and Roll about three times! Whilst we were eating our lunch - Sebastian, Hatem, Helen, Christa and the four Liverpool lot, Al was with a pretty distraught Kate who couldn't find her camera anywhere and so they'd gone back to our original hostel in Hanoi to see if it had been handed in there after we'd returned from our Sapa trek. It hadn't been and so the hostel phoned all of the places the girls could remember in Sapa to check there as well, on the off chance that Kate could have lost or dropped it somewhere. They had no luck unfortunately in finding it but her pictures up to Melbourne had been backed up and the camera had been broken for a whole on Asia so it was mainly pics from her and tom's time together that had been lost :( she was understandably v upset bless her but we tried to cheer her up as much we could! They came and found us for lunch and noshed down the bo noodle dish too, which was dirt cheap and so tasty! So we were only waiting for Tom to arrive that evening then our group was complete and ready to head to Halong Bay the following day.

I packed for Halong in the dark after having been out to beer corner with the gang earlier on the evening. Once Tom had arrived we had a couple of drinks in the hostel's bar whilst it was happy hour and then grabbed some Vietnamese fresh spring rolls from our fave cafe up the road, Noodle and Roll again (not deep fat fried but instead it's fresh veg and noodles inside steamed rice paper, yummy!) and headed out to beer corner, a place where locals sit on baby sized boxes around tiny tables on the pavement and drink local beer that cost something like 15p a pint! Everyone loved it and even though I wasn't drinking beer I really enjoyed being around a complete mix of different people, westerners, locals, travellers and ex-pats and there was a really chilled atmosphere. We all sat chatting and catching up with Christa on how Indo had been and how much the Liverpool lot had enjoyed Cambodia and south Vietnam! Hanoi had a curfew though which was quite strictly enforced and so all drinking on the streets, including beer corner finished up at 11pm and apparently all of the bars closed at 12am. Occasionally one of the bigger clubs pays the police to turn a blind eye to staying open later but other times even the big clubs got shut down apparently, so after regrouping and thinking about our next move, it was already 11:30pm so we figured we'd head home, most of the group had done long bus journeys earlier in the day/overnight to get to Hanoi and we were leaving early for Halong bay the next day. We made our way back to the hostel and I had a nice catch up with Andy on the walk, telling him all about my time with B which was lovely :) Once back at the hostel I went to pack my little day sack for the Halong trip as we could leave our big bags in storage at the hostel overnight. I had to pack in the dark though as quite a few people were going to bed already so the light was off. I shoved this and that into my bag and it wasn't until I was actually on the boat and wanted them that I realised that I'd packed a pair of B's boxers rolled up instead of my leggings so I was pretty freezing and I'd not given a second thought to patterns or anything when I was packing so ended up in outfits with more clashing prints than was cool, but whatever! I wasn't really sure how warm or cold it would be on the boat so I pretty much took half my backpack in the end, my warm Sapa headscarves but then my bikini and shorts! That's what happens when you midnight pack!

That night apparently Al fell out of her bunk again but thank goodness this time she was only in the bottom bunk rather than the top! I slept through the whole palaver but apparently one of the random boys in the dorm rushed over to help her and thought she might have broken her neck or something :/ she said she was fine in the morning though, with no bruised or aches and pains! We were up early to finish off our packing - I remembered that I needed to take a new pill packet and my malaria tablets so got them out of my big bag and somehow I managed to loose the pill packet in the bed, which I was quite annoyed about when I realised! Grr, will have to see if I can get a new one. We got free breakfast from the hostel that morning which I filled up on, not knowing if the boat food would be any good or not so I had eggs on toast. We then went over the road to Anna's and got onto a minibus which was going to transfer us from Hanoi to Halong City, which we thought was about a three hour journey and that I had assumed would be relatively quick but we had so many people crammed into the bus and absolutely no leg room or space for our little bags that the journey was actually pretty tedious. We'd even managed to get the most cautious Asian driver in the whole world, so he drove the entire way at about40mph whichever the transfer was closer to 5 hours long :/

All I really knew about Halong bay was that Top Gear filmed a special show there as part of their challenge to motorbike down the entire Vietnamese coast together on clapped out old bikes. Jeremy Clarkson etc had converted their bikes to boats and they cruised round the thousands of limestone rock formations out to sea. Halong bay was recently classified as one of the seven new wonders of the world as well as being a unesco world heritage site and listed in all of the guide books as one of the top three things to see in Vietnam. We were all really excited about our two day boat trip around Halong bay, to learn about how the formations came about, to see the funny shaped ones and have all of us together on essentially a private boat - there were 12 of us on a 14 man boat and the last two spaces hadn't been filled! When we arrived we were a tiny bit disappointed on the outside appearance of our boat, the Halong Fantasea, but I thought it was just very traditional looking and inside it was well looked after, cleaned and maintained and each of us shared a bedroom with only one other. When the guy working there handed out keys though he sort of checked you and your roomie out first and then decides which room you get. Christa and I got the one furthest away so we weren't really sure what that meant! Lunch was served on the boat as we set off to cruise around the bay and it was delish! The crew made the three of us vegetarians sit together at one end of the table we dubbed veggie corner and they kept bring platter after platter of food out to us all. We got lots of vegetables and tofu dishes as well as a marinated fish with its head still on and everything but I was feeling brave so I still tried a little bit and it was actually surprisingly nice :) be proud mummy, I cleaned my plate!

After lunch we all sat with goose bumps up in the top deck snapping away taking piccys of the views and then we stopped off at a little floating platform where we all got off the boat and followed the guide into the 'amazing, surprise caves'. These were massive caves inside on of the biggest rock formations which had loads of funny shaped rocks, a love heart, a turtle, a kissing couple and c*** rock - a massive sized willy shaped rock which obviously made us all snigger!! It was really cool to see inside the caves that got bigger and bigger and you carried on through. The chamber but we didn't really learn anything about the place or its uses and history! On our way back to our big boat, Tom brought some bottles of vodka from one of the old ladies who was floating in her big row boat with loads of snacks and goodies in her boat and then we got back on the boat and cruised onto the next place - tip top island, named after one of the kings of Vietnam's friends, who visited the island together many years ago. We all put our swim suits on and in the freezing cold weather -about 10C - we stripped down and ran into the sea. Andy, me, Al, Sebastian, Bry, Tom and Alona a came in but the others chickened out because it was so cold! We ran in screaming and being breathless from the cool - it made me remember swimming in Scotland at new year, one year, a long time ago! It was freeeeezing! My nipples were like bullets and the outside air even felt warm in comparison when we got out. We all huddled together util the boat came back to pick us up and when it did, the first thing I did was have a scorching shower and it was then that I realised I had no leggings, only denim shorts and my silk trousers, so I resigned myself to just being freezing for the two days! Whilst I was getting dressed after the shower I did it in bed under the covers, with the electric blanket turned on!

We had dinner together afterwards, whilst we pulled up into another Bay area for the night and the boat just kept turning around in circles which made us feel so dizzy and as it got dark so early (and cold!) and we'd had dinner early we all started playing ring of fire with the vodka that we had brought from the lady at the cave. Although we brought a small bottle from the boat do that we could keep filling it up with our vodka once it was finished, as they charged a corkage fee and the drinks on board were a bit more expensive than usual. We ended up making our way through five bottles of vodka between the five of us and the little table we were playing drink card games on was full of coke and lemonade cans, they must have clocked on that the one small bottle we brought from them couldn't have lasted that long... We did end up buying more from them in the end though so we didn't think we were really cheating them that much! Quite a few people were pretty drink by about 9pm and we ended up doing karaoke with one of the crew, singing spice girls numbers, Disney songs and I did Do Re Me, from the sound of music! The tour guide did a Vietnamese one which was terrifying as the growled the whole lot! It was so so so funny and we tried to video it in between laughing! Alona took over the mics for a while which was funny but she did like the sound if her own voice, which was perhaps a tad out of tune in her v drunken state! After a couple of games of ring of fire and the introduction of the 8 - Stephen Hawkings rule (you can't use your hands at all so people have to feed you drink, pick your cards for you and basically you loose at everything!) everything got a bit rowdy and drunken and everyone told everyone else they loved eachother...! People started making their way to bed about midnight and Al and I were amongst the last few up and I went to our room when Al, Andy and Helen went for a three way spoon in their double bed! I slept with the electric blanket on all night (accidentally) but I was so toasty warm and defo didn't want to get out of bed at seven when we got our breakfast wake up call

For breakfast we had fried eggs, toast and jam, veg with noodles and lots of fruit which was nice :) and then in the freezing weather, defo colder than the day before, we got dropped off to kayak around some of the limestone formations and to see some of the floating houses in the bay where people lived. Al and I went together and had a little paddle in the freezing water before she gave up and we bumped into the side of one of the rocks. We pulled up next to Bry and Andy's kayak and linked together and we just floated around for a while, laughing about the evening and discussing the goss of a certain two people that had hooked up that night, which the whole boat had heard!!

Back on the boat we had to check out of our rooms so they could be cleaned before the next tour went out and we started cruising back to the harbour. We had lunch on the boat when we pulled into the harbour which was really yummy, although it was served at about 11am. We were all pretty hungry though, having gotten into the water kayak before 9am!! Lunch was the same as the previous two meals, delish and so much of it, but this time we had battered pumpkin, battered fish, omelet frittas and loads of veg with noodles. As we were getting off the boat we were all thinking that we would never manage to eat again we were that full!! It was such a fun trip and the views of Halong bay were amazing with the cold mist hanging around, although I suspect we might have had a little more fun if the weather had been warmer/sunnier and I had really wanted a little bit more info from the tour guide about how the rocks were formed and their significance yada yada but we were on a cheap tour so you cant have everything! Kate said her three day trip was really informative and that she enjoyed it so much... We missed her though on our tour :( Hers was $100 rather than our $50 though!

We had to wait around outside for about twenty minutes until the minibus arrived to take us back to Hanoi. we were squished in again to this minibus and we had the same half way stop off ad the journey coming the other way at a big warehouse type thing with an open factory where you could see all of the women workers sewing pictures and massive statues etc were on sale including shipping prices all over the world, it was such a random place! It had a restaurant at the back though so we all went straight to the back and stocked up on chocolate and coffee and used the wifi fir twenty minutes before getting back on the bus. Randomly, as we were driving along we kept finding everything hilarious, i think something to do with the much crazier driving on the return leg... We saw a massively smashed uo sleeper bus which we all took pics of out the back window of our minibus and the driver of the smashed bus then started getting all excited and taking pics of us, whilst driving this full bus and veering across the road as he wasn't holding the steering wheel! We then kept on passing this live pig that had been strapped onto the back of a moped and was bouncing along this big highway... It was the most bizarre thing and as we were trying to take pictures of it, the pig turned to us and saw us all and blinked and we all suddenly felt so sorry for it, realising it was probably being driven somewhere for spit-roasting! Everything goes in Vietnam, especially on the roads!!

We all talked about our plans and next stops... The majority of our big group were heading down the coast to Hue that evening on the bus and so we had frantic ten minutes trying to get ourselves booked onto the same 15h sleeper bus going down south as neither Al or I particularly wanted to spend another day in Hanoi and so we were hoping Kate thought the same thing as we couldn't talk to her until we all got back to the hostel, by which time we would only have an hours turnaround before the bus left! We had planned to go to Nihm Binh and Tam Coc national park, but having looked at Alonas photographs, which were very similar to Halong Bay's rock formations and caves we decided against paying the $16 for the day trip and wanted to be in the bigger group going down the coast. Kate had persuaded her friend that she did Halong with to come and stay with us all in the hostel that night though, which we didn't know so there was a bit if an awkward bit where we weren't really sure whether we would be going on the bus in the big group or not and what her friends plans were but it all worked out ok in the end. And we had a mad flap to get ourselves ready for our first Vietnamese sleeper bus to Hue...