Hanoi...a short stay

To summarize Hanoi, it was short stay in a city that had little to offer except for 3000 Dong (20 cent) beers and cool little streets.

Cave in Halong Bay

We arrived at the airport at 4 in the pouring rain (our luck huh?) and we got in a cab. Here is the first fun story of our stay in Hanoi, which just like Ho Chi Minh City is ful of people that simply want to rip you off. Until Vietnam people at elast tried to hide ti or were really nice. Vietnam on the other hand is horrible and you always have to be on your toes otherwise you get screwed. And it's not painless!

So we get a cab from the airport which is a set price of 14 dollars. On the way there the driver starts his meter and point as it as I am saying "No" to him and "14 dollars". So he keeps the meter going and then at the tolls he tries to make us pay for them but as I had read online before arriving, it's a scam because they don't really have to pay these tolls (in fact when I said no he just went around them like every other taxi did). After that we stopped to get gas (literally 15 minutes) as the meter was going. I don't know if he thought I was stupid or what but I was not born yesterday.

Halong Bay

Finally 1 hour after leaving the airport for for what was advertised to be a 30 minute ride, he drops us in front fo CEBU Pacific offices (still pouring rain of course) and asks for what's on the meter. We just give him 14 dollars, a dirty look, and leave. Finally we made it to CEBU which lucky fro us has offices in Hanoi and there we booka flight to Manila. Overprices but what can you do if they ahve a monopoly on that section. After that we asked them how much the flight from Manila to Macau (our next stop) is and she tells us $120. The night before I had checked online and Tiger Airways flew it for 90 dollars so I asked her to check online and she said Tiger didn't even fly that destination. Therefore, being in a time crunch as it was the last time we could book with CEBU, we booked it. Following this we walked to a hotel which was about 6 dollars a night for AC per person and went online. Well, we found out that Tiger Airways indeed does fly Manila to Macau and it does it for $60!!!!!!!! F*cking Hanoi really did not start well. So 60 dollars burnt...which is a lot after tarveling for 2 months and having been screwed for at least half of that time by Asians who have local prices and tourist prices.

Halong Bay 2

Anyway, we go to the nightmarket which has easily the worst quality clothes of all Asia and book our Halong Bay Trip, which everyone we met travelign speaks so highly of.

The following morning we got picked up and went on our "deluxe" cruise. Too bad everyone else had paid for the regular one so we got scerwed out of another 25 dollars.

As far as Halong Bay, we met amazing people on the boat. There were 5 peole from Barcelona who I chatted with and tried to speak spanish to (I need to brush up on that asap!) then there were people from Chile, Argentina, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Cambodia, and Spain of course). On th boat we had dinner, cafeteria style food, dove in the water which was full of jellyfish (they forgot to tell us that in the description) and we went kayaking for a little bit. Then we all hung out and enjoyed stories from each other's travels. Good thing we go lucky with the people on the boat. What was one of the most amazing things was beign on a boat off the coast of Vietnam where there is no artificial light and not only you can see an immense amount of stars but also the moon shines so bright that it lightes up the deck of the boat ina cool white shade. After we went to sleep in a room where AC was broken and at 5 I woke up to see sunset. Then breakfast at 8 (which was preceeded by some serious techno blasting at 7AM by the crew on our boat in the restaurant cabin), move out of our rooms on the boat at 9, and we docked at noon which is when we went to eat by the dock, a 10 minute walk with our 18 kilo bags on our shoulders in the heat of the Vietnam sun. Eating-wise it was us and the people from the other boats which considering there were about 100 boats doing what we were doing, i must have been hundreds of people. Oh, and I'm sure no-one paid for deluxe!

Sunrise at Halong Bay from the boat

Once we arrived back to downtown Hanoi (a 3 hour bus-ride jampacked in a no AC bus which was actually hilarious because the Irish guys we met were in serious pain and discomfort) we made it a point to find a restaurant where we could drop our bags for 5 hours (with the excuse that we were going to eat dinner there as we actually did) and then go to the place we booked the Halogn Bay trip at to b*tch him out for the horrible trip he sold us.

This is where Dominique's wrath comes into play. Shady and I started the argument but when the owner of the boat company (not the travel agency owner who looked like a ninja turtle) started telling us lies and changing his story and trying to make us believe we had the deluxe package, Dominique started screaming at him and going nuts. I was afraid for this person's lfie but he deserved everything that was coming at him as he was obviously trying to take our money because like every other Vietnamese he probably thought we were "stupid tourists". So, as teh guy kept telling us lies, the owner of the travel agency saw straight through the lies and agve us 30 dollars back. I guess there are good/fair people everywhere. So after that we walked around a bit, ate dinner, and made it to the airport at 10:40 for a flight at 1AM. Slight misjudging of the tiem but better to have more time than not enough.

With CEBU we left at 1AM and arrived at 5AM.