Hanoi
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
11
29
Trip End
Oct 01, 2008
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Our first experience of Vietnamese cuisine was very lucky and good, we stumbled upon a restaurant that had no menu and where we didn't order anything (except beer) and were promptly presented with fish in a frying pan on our table, noodles and assorted greens and sauces and a stir fry of sorts was made at our table, delicious!
About 80km from Hanoi is a temple called the Perfume Pagoda. It is situated in a cave at the top of a mountain and surrounded by lush jungle. The trip there also involved about a 45 minute boat journey too, it was a row boat but luckily for us a local lady was doing all the rowing...Our advice is to take the cable car up and walk down from the temple, it was hot!
In Hanoi there is also an unusual water puppet theatre, where all of the action takes place on a stage that is water. The puppeteers spend the whole show behind a curtain up to their waists in water and make the puppets perform all sorts of dives, jumps, flips, boat races, make dragons breathe fire and old men go fishing.
Ha Long Bay was an overnight stay for us. The are is World Heritage listed and very beautiful, numerous rocky outcrops from the bay make a spectacular view. There is also a very large cave that we explored and we did a bit of kayaking and swimming. We slept on the boat that we were cruising around the bay in. A word of warning on this trip though, don't expect seclusion, there are thousands of tourists and hundreds of boats..
About to enjoy a dip in Ha Long Bay
