Somebody give me some earplugs!!!

Our first flight since departing NZ! We have done enough bus trips to last a lifetime. So for US$50 we opted for the easy option to get to the capital of Vietnam - the 14 hour bus trip alternative did not appeal. Upon arrival in Hanoi, our new German friends offered us to share their taxi into town. They had a recommendation for a hotel so we decided it was worth look. After checking out 3 others, which basically all had a bad smell, we settled on the same as them.

01 ...and even more scooters!

Hanoi is everything you'd imagine about city life in Vietnam - at least the Old Quarter, where most tourists pretty much stick to. The streets are narrow, there are more scooters per head than anywhere else in the country, the noise is intolerable after 24 hours - "the more you use your horn, the safer driver you are", but that doesn't mean you need to continually leave your hand on the button! And the horns that they use aren't just the beep beep variety - many of the mini-vans use this noise which sounds like a cross between an airhorn & Tarzan! It really does your head in.

02 Bia Hoi on all 4 corners...

So with that in mind, it was easy to succomb to a Halong Bay tour which is offered every time you walk thru the hotel foyer. No one in Vietnam specialises in one kind of business. If you run a hotel, you also operate a tour business, possibly a restaurant & most likely a taxi service. We sat down with the sales guy and discussed the merits of "average", "standard" or "deluxe" options for a 2 day / 1 night trip to Halong Bay. The differences included number of people, type of food, chance of our room not having a window, and type of boat. At US$110 we decided "deluxe" was not us, but in the words of our salesman we had to decide if we were "just average kind of people"! It worked as we chose the "standard" option - it's Christmas after all!!!

03 a local vegie shop

We ended up with a group of 8 on a junk which could accommodate up to 14. There was a couple from France, and Canada, plus us and another couple from Wellington, NZ - Tony & Leta. They had just arrived in Vietnam and probably thought it Murphy's Law to travel halfway round the world to end up on a boat with 2 Kiwi girls. Halong Bay is recognised as a World Heritage Site and some say is one of the natural wonders of the world. There are 3000 islands which jut out of the sea somewhat similar to the landscape of Milford Sound in NZ. We cruised around the islands for 3 or 4 hours, visited a cave on one of the islands and went kayaking for about 1 1/2 hours before sunset. We spent the night in a cove with probably 25 other junks dotted around the place on either "average", "standard" or "deluxe" tours, ate our second very good seafood meal for the day and proceeded to drink a few bottles of 1996 French Bordeaux under the stars - why not, aye?! The following day we visited another cave which was absolutely massive and could've housed a small city which was tastefully lit up with coloured backlighting. Afterwards we cruised back to the port for another tasty lunch on an island accessed by a causeway possibly 2kms long then made our way back to crazy Hanoi.

04 a super skinny building

05 Halong Bay

06 Inside our boat

07 Amanda kayaking

08 Our "standard" companions