18 July: Hanoi

We were up at 05h00, a few minutes later we were dressed and sitting on the deck. Only the Dutch couple were also up to watch the sun rise, we were all able to grab our own deck chair. A few minutes later the sky turned different shades of red, orange and pink, there were a few clouds, but it still looked stunning when the sun came out above them. We continued to lay there watching the early morning goings until after 06h00, our eyes falling shut every now and again before bouncing open again. By that time the clouds had receded and it was a beautiful blue skied day.

Breakfast was served at 07h00, but was disappointing, only two small slices of hard bread each, with one egg, at least they gave us a little butter and jam and a mini coffee. We had started to sail to Cat Ba Island and see some more of the limestone outcrops along the way. Stopping at the jetty, those doing a 3 day 2 night trip got off while many Vietnamese got on. From there on the boat was no longer as quiet as it had been earlier, it was even difficult to have conversations.

By now the sun had become scorching and we could no longer sit on the top deck, we moved to the second deck but the whole restaurant section was occupied by the newly boarded Vietnamese, so we dragged 2 chairs out and sat under the steps in the shade, watching the cliffs as we passed them by. It was another 2 hours before we reached Halong Bay harbor and were asked to disembark. We were directed to a restaurant across the road where we were seated in an aircon room with other travelers. The food this time was delicious and more than enough, probably because few of the other foreigners at our table wanted to eat, don't ask me why.

Finished with lunch we boarded our bus for the 3 ½ hour drive back to Hanoi, both of us were tired and every now and again our eyes fell shut. We arrived in Hanoi just after 16h00, first resting in our room for an hour before we went out. We had really enjoyed the trip, but expected it to be a little bit more fun, maybe if we had taken the cheaper option we would have met more younger people although it was our anniversary and we wanted to spoil ourselves a little. We walked to the lake to enjoy the sunset, each with an ice cream in hand, their so cheap here, you can't refuse!

On our way back we walked down the Sunday street market, the streets were closed and in the middle of the streets were stalls packed back to back for kilometers on end. Their all very interesting but all have exactly the same goods. The only things that found their way into our bags were a ice age 3 dvd and a plastic vegetable grater, other than that we needed to keep our eyes on the hundreds of Vietnamese who on several occasions almost walked over us.

We walked down until it ended then turned into a side street where we spotted a restaurant with many locals, always a sure sign of good food. They were selling Bit Tet, J & B had told us about this and we had wanted to try it, but never found it. Basically its strips of beef cooked in a nice sauce with chips, a baguette and cucumber shavings. You tear a piece of bread off, dip it in the sauce with a piece of meat and eat it, absolutely divine. We had only ordered one, but ended up going for a second due to our limited intake of meat these couple of months. From there we walked up another street on our way back, spotting a toy shop selling all kinds of lego for about R140 for sets with between 200 and 600 pieces. Back home we settled in, we were off to Ba Be in the morning but had no idea of what to expect, we were roughing it big time as we struggled to find reliable information on how to get there and no tour agencies specifically offered tours there.