Hanoi and Halong Bay

My last blog post felt rather rushed so I'm going to take my time to do this one properly.

On Sunday evening I arrived in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam where I met up with my friends Claudia and Daire. After a lot of catch up chat we feel asleep and woke up to a hot busy city on Monday morning. Hanoi is many things, terrifying, busy, colourful and delightful. It is terrifying because of the sheer number of mopeds over running the streets, crossing the road is a pure nightmare and on several occasions I've come close to having my toes lobbed off!!! On October 10th Hanoi celebrates 1000 years of being capital so you can imagine how absolutely crazy busy it is. More mopeds than usual, more people selling crap than usual, more people in general and most of all a complete wonderful buzz around the entire city, especially the lake area. A far as colour goes Hanoi is bursting with life. The streets are full of lanterns, the shops fronts are full of toys, the trees are full of glow-in-the-dark lights and there roads and people are covered in yellow and red celebratory ribbons and stickers. Whilst all the noise, air pollution and killer traffic may not be your cup of tea and certainly not relaxing the city is still a delight and full of old traditional buildings, funny looking houses, happy people and most of all cheap-as-chips beer =) enough to keep anyone happy!!!

Even though Hanoi is a huge city there isn't too much to see on the sight seeing front. We spent a full day walking around the Museum of Literature where Chinese architecture was in abundance. We also saw the 1 pillar pagoda, the lake, a few other pagodas and caught a dodgy rickshaw ride. Unfortunately we couldn't see the Hoi Chi Ming mausoleum because he's body is apparently in Russia but we did wonder around the grounds a little and I even got booted out of a church for wearing shorts, oops!!!! The evening was spent enjoying 'less than $1 beer' and eating random Vietnamese food i.e rice rice and more rice.

On Tuesday we left Hanoi for our 2 night tour of Halong Bay. We arrived on the boat and enjoyed a delicious sea food lunch and meet some wonderful people. Halong Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site and consists of 1000+ islands poking up from the Gulf of Tonkin, it is a beautiful and peaceful place where the water is warm and the light breeze blows against your skin. The afternoon was spent cruising around the island (some look like animals e.g. fighting cock island) walking through an amazing cave full of more animal shaped rocks and finally taking a swim in the lush water. Claudia and I being the dare devils we are jumped off the boat's roof!!!! After more yummy food for dinner we finished the evening drinking beer and singing karaoke!!!! I am not normally a fan but couldn't resist joining in for Bohemian Rhapsody, Boys Don't Cry and  some other tasteful delights. We slept on the boat and were made to awake at 7am for an adventure packed day of kayaking, bicycle riding, jungle trekking and experiencing Cat Ba island from the inside of a hot sweaty mini bus. After the jungle trek on an island I can't remember the name of, Claudia, Daire and I were left in a remote village to spend the night in a bungalow instead of the hotels everyone else was heading too. The bungalows were basic yet endearing except for the giant spiders we made the bungalow owner man kill with a massive stick. Fortunately our beds came equipped with mosquito nets but that didn't stop us being horrified from all the creepy crawly noises we could hear in the dark. After another early start at 6am the 3 of us cycled back to the harbour to catch a boat to Cat Ba island where we were reunited with our other tour members. We spent a few hours cruising around the islands of Halong Bay and were taken back to the main land for lunch and the 3 hour bus ride back to Hanoi. Because we stayed in the bungalow we missed out on a trip to the beach and due to the not so great weather we were unable to visit monkey island =(

Halong Bay was an absolute dream and so relaxing making our arrival in Hanoi last night rather chaotic plus the air pollution felt 100 times worse after spending 3 days by the coast where only a few mopeds could be seen. Daire and I are getting so sick of eating rice we insisted on finding a pizza place for dinner. The pizza and fries was glorious!!!! We spent the evening walking around the lake and witnessing all the celebrations. The air was full of happiness and cheer, glow-in-the-dark toys were in abundance and the skies were full of flashing lights. After a sneaky cocktail we headed back to the hostel and enjoyed a much need sleep.

Today we leave Hanoi for Hue, a southern Vietnam town on the coast. The bus journey is 14 hours but hopefully my Dexter novels will keep me going. The bus leaves this evening so I think we'll spend the day chilling, walking around a little, blogging (obviously) and maybe buying some food for the horrific bus ride.

The weather here is nice, not too hot but high enough we can spend the day walking around in shorts and dresses. I'm getting really paranoid about being bitten by buys though!!!

Speak soon xxxx