Ask yourself this question, would you step out in front of a moving vehicle you know wont stop? Well what about several moving vehicles you know wont stop?! Well if your answer is ‘no’, you wouldn’t get past the front door of the hotel in Vietnam.

To cross a road its simple, you walk to the kerb and pause for a second or two to be seen. Look for a slight gap in the traffic, take a deep breath and step out! Looking directly at the vehicle you are about to walk in front of you shuffle over the road taking on the role of Mosses and parting the traffic like the sea. Under absolutely no circumstances should you ever ever stop moving, if you stop the flow is disrupted and you will almost certainly be hit!

Scary and crazy as this may seem, it does work and is the only way you can get around as Hanoi is a maze of streets and crossroads every few steps, all as busy with flowing traffic as the next. Like wise the drivers treat the road the same, in that if there is tarmac free and they can get on it it is theirs. Regardless if its on the wrong side of the road.

Now you may be thinking this is all just madness, but the accident rate on the roads is almost non existent! More to the point nothing ever stops, pedestrians, cars, bikes, buses, trucks, all keep moving all the time. So who is really the silly ones? Us with our traffic lights and strict own side of the road rule, or the Vietnamese and other South east Asia places where nothing stops and there are less accidents???!! You decide.

Nerves of steal developed we had walked across the old quarter of Hanoi, to the central lake where the remains of a giant turtle are said to be kept. The pagoda/temple cross style housing of the turtle remains is set on an island in the middle of the lake linked by a bridge, which is decorated with various animal paintings including Tigers and Dragons.

The turtle that sits in the glass case is confusing at first as you know you should be seeing turtle remains that are preserved, but what you are seeing is clearly a varnished replica. Its only when you walk around to the other side you see the remains, which turns out to be one foot inclusive of claws! Not much to look at. He last sighting of a Turtle in the lake was in 2007 so its unclear if there are any left all. A short walk around the little island completes the visit along with swift look in the souvenir tat shop.

Having walked south of the lake we had arrived in the French quarter of town, so called as it was where the French ….. Had occupied and built the ….prison. The prison was later taken over and used by the Vietnamese and housed American POW’s during the war, most of which were pilots that ad been shot down while trying to bomb Hanoi. The infantry soldiers weren’t kept here as the land battles were further a field, so other detention areas were used for those prisoners.

Having been to America and Australia and seen some of the versions they tell about the Vietnam war, it will be interesting to see what we turn up in Vietnam. In this particular prison museum it is claimed that the POW’s were treat with great respect, having personal time, basketball courts and pool tables to use. Pictures show the POW’s eating a good looking Christmas dinner and receiving excellent medical attention, along with this reports from some of the prisoners allegedly saying the war was wrong and they had been told to bomb places that were actually civilian areas, not the factory and military targets they had been led to believe. No mention of people like …… was ever made, despite the fact he cant now lift his arms above his head due to the torture her received while in the detention of the Vietnamese at this prison.

Honestly we don’t totally believe all of what we have seen in the three different countries so far, we feel that if you combine pieces of the three stories and then add some, somewhere in between you will get the truth. But honestly that will never happen. Only the people in it at the time truly know what happened and they only really know what happened if it involved them. The rest we think is fictional history and Chinese whispers.

History over, time for fun relaxing stuff. This time it was a boat trip to ‘Ha Long bay’, the trip was two days one night and the overnight was on the boat. The boring bus trip to the port over and cabins assigned we had a few hours sunbathing time on the top deck, much needed it was too. If you didn’t have your eyes open you wouldn’t know you were on a boat as the sea was like a mill pond.

Away from the cities and chaos this is probably the most relaxed we have been in a long time, which was no bad thing. Roused from our snazzy day dreams, had a variety of seafood’s, salad and fruit for Dinch. What is Dinch you ask? Well you should have read the on going debate throughout the blogs, between Carina and David about where Lunch, and dinner are in the day. David arguing that if you have Lunch and Dinner where does tea fit in?! And that Lunch is people trying to be posh as it is clearly DINNER. Carina doesn’t agree, so for the benefit of you the readers, Dinch is an exact combination of the two and will be used for the midday meal from now on!

So Dinch explained and had, we arrived at the ….. Cave. The cave is natural in its size and shape but has had steps cut into the stone, this was not for the tourists benefit. These were done years and years ago as the cave was used as for religious purposes and still has some meanings kept today, such as the turtle shaped rock with the money on its neck which is in the pictures. Other rock shapes such as Dragons and Lion heads are visible if you have some imagination. To give you an idea on the size of this place you could easily fit a football pitch in here and on top of that there are the odd couple of side caverns. The soft glowing lights give the cave a magical edge to it but also emphasise its shape really well.

Back on the boat and short journey away we moored in amongst the many free standing rock islands and cliff sides, this was a scenic setting with calm waters perfect for sea kayaking. For the next hour and half we paddled around the bay taking in the different markings and shapes of the rocks and finding tunnels and leading into what can only be described as an oasis at the other side. From the tide marks these places would be cut off from the outer when the tide is in, at least from sea level anyway.

After all that hard paddling work it was time for a dip and seen as we had a boat to hand we made good use of its upper deck as a launch pad, after several splash downs in the bath water warm sea, it was nice to just swim around for a bit. The swim turned into a bit of a gathering with several of the group in the sea and he crew and rest of the group sat on the boat edge, it was more like a chat in the pub than treading water in the sea talking to people basking in the sun.

Dried off we had tea just before sunset in the bar, which again included sea food but was nice enough that having it twice in one day was fine by us. The obvious choice after tea was taken by all on board, yep we all congregated on the top deck for the sunset which followed on to star gazing and chatting by the charms of the flickering lights on the water from the many boats creating the mini city in the sea.

The calmness and stillness of such a beautiful place at sea is not to be underestimated, for relaxing having fun and food for the soul the ocean and great outdoors is certainly the best place to be.