Happy New Year in Hanoi and Halong Bay!

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  Hanoi, Vietnam
Monday, February 19, 2007

Ok so its been a while since my last entry so I've got a lot to write. So last you heard I was in Hue ready to get a train to Hanoi. We got to the train station and when the train arrived it seemed that we had been given sleeper tickets (beds in a carriage) instead of seats...wicked! apparently not though. we discovered that because New Year was approaching (and the trains being absolutely packed because of this) they had converted each sleeper bed into 3 seats...as in 3 of us had to sit on a bed for 12 hours! and to make things worse we got to our cabin and it had about 40 Vietnamese inside crammed in with no space whatsoever. for one of us let alone 4 and 4 bags! luckily, however, the next cabin along contained only one guy, from Manc, and he let us sit in there instead which worked out great as nobody else came in during the journey so we effectively had a bed each to ourselves! I think the train operators were glad to segregate the foreigners off in one place as they didn't seem to care that we were not in our correct seats

A view of the Lake in Hanoi, lit up for Tet

!

we arrived into Hanoi around 5am. luckily when we disembarked there was a guestroom tout there who took us to his hotel and paid for half the taxi fare. this was fortunate as when we actually drove through the town all hotels were closed so that would of been fun walking around that early with nowhere to go!

when we got to the guestroom we had an hour's lie down before getting up and going to Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum. The whole grounds were very regimented...you had to walk in single file throughout the whole area, not crossing the white lines which defined the path. Seeing HCM was strange.... the body looks like a waxwork rather than and actual person....it was quite eerie. Next we walked around town for a bit as we wanted to book our Halong Bay trip ASAP as we knew that it would be busy and difficult to get transport over New Year. Our hotel quoted us 56 or 80 dollars but we thought maybe we cold get it cheaper somewhere else. we eventually found a place which did the 3 day boat cruise for 45 dollars, leaving on the 17th which was ideal as it included all meals, transport and activities (but not drinks) so it worked out very cheap in the end. James Laura and Dave wanted to go shopping in the markets for a bit but I decided to go back to the hotel as I wanted to use the internet to research on how we could get into Laos

Ho Chi Minh's Masoluem

. when I got back the hotel owner was there and asked whether we had decided on whether we were gong to book the Halong Bay cruise. I told him that we had booked it somewhere else and he went away and came back and asked us to leave the hotel as we were bad luck and didn't want us there for New Year! so when the others got back we all decided that the situation had turned a bit too sour to even stay that night so we paid them for that day and left to find somewhere else.

the new place that we found was brilliant! family run, the owner is a legend! I want to adopt him!!!

the next day we got up and tried to go to the ethnology museum. this was closed, however, for Tet, so we jumped in a taxi to the Temple of Literature. This was cool but I think everyone was templed out so we didn't it quite fast! We chilled out in the afternoon as everything was closing down for Tet so we just walked around and soaked up the atmosphere. in the evening me and James found an awesome Bar which overlooked the lake where at midnight they had a fireworks display where we watch from the balcony of the bar. Experiencing Vietnamese and Chinese New Year was a fascinating experience. The streets were packed full of people and the atmosphere was electric. Things cleared up pretty quickly after the fireworks display so we didn't stay out too late as we needed to get up the next day to catch our bus to Halong Bay

Me and James on one of the smaller Islands

. when we got back to our hotel the owner was still up and invited us to join him for food and drinks to celebrate the New Year. it was really nice celebrating and eating the traditional foods of Tet with the locals...definitely wont forget that experience anytime soon!

the bus the next day took us to Halong Bay. Halong city itself is a bit of a dump but once we got on our cruise boat and set sail through Halong bay we were witness to amazing views and scenery. The weather was quite overcast but this was nice as it made Halong Bay look even more mysterious (Halong Bay - meaning descending dragon - is a collection of just under 2000 islands which nobody knows how they formed, no even the professionals) Our first stop on the cruise was a cave. The cave was amazing! so big and beautiful inside. the interior had been sculpted by millions of years of rain and dotted around the cave were natural formations of animals and objects - we saw one of a tortoise which head was shiny as in Buddhism the tortoise brings long life so everyone rubs its head when walking past it. The next stop was one of the smaller islands. It had a trail up to the top which we climbed and once we got there the view was breathtaking. I took a video of it as I felt a mere photograph wouldn't express the beauty of the bay. In the evening we had dinner on the boat and had a few beers before retiring for the night in onboard

The cave

.

the next day we arrived at Cat Ba, on of Halong Bay's bigger and more developed islands where we did trekking and kayaking. Trekking was very interesting.... I thought it would involve climbing up hills etc but this was not correct. we ended up scaling rocks for 2 hours holding on for dear life! luckily because of my experience in rock climbing I didn't find it too bad but I did feel sorry for another guy in our group who had put on black loafers for the trek...he still made it though!

Kayaking in the afternoon was brilliant. they were 2 person kayaks so me and James jumped in one and had a paddle around for an hour exploring the islands ourselves. We came across a cave which we were tempted to go in and have a look but unfortunately time was not on our side and we had to return to the fish farm where our boat was waiting to take us back to Cat Ba. That night we were staying at a 3 * hotel on Cat Ba which was a nice change.

Our Halong Bay trip ended the next day at 12pm and we got a bus back to Hanoi. We didn't do much when we got to Hanoi as we were all quite tired and low on money. Today we get the bus to Vientianne, Laos which apparently takes 12h ours which I know is a lie so it'll be interesting to see how long it takes us to get to Vientienne (this bus route has many scams operating on it so I'm sure it'll be an interesting read when I next write here) bye for now! xxxx

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The Trekking Hill/Rock Face Mountain

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