Well, let's start with the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi. At first we found Hanoi very 'Hanoi'ing. Get it? I should probably say at this point that Tamara and I have taken up making puns from city names and places. 'Would you like a Viet'nam' and cheese sandwich?' This is much to Paul's chagrin. "'Ha Long' will this go on?" Anyway, we read in our ever handy guide book that some in Hanoi will actually take abandoned apartments, turn them into shady guesthouses and then name them after popular guesthouses or tourist information hubs.
So when we got into Hanoi off the train we were greeted by the usual taxi crowd trying to get a hold of you. We tried to pick the most honest looking and gave him the address to the guesthouse we had decided on. We got a little suspicious when the driver seemed hardly interested in the address we gave him and then got more suspicious when he immediately got on his phone. Lo and behold after driving for longer than we thought was necessary we met someone on the side of the road who flashed a card of the guesthouse we were after and said "Oh we're full but have a new site. Is very good!" Fortunately this is exactly how the guidebook spelled out the trick, so we decided just to get out there pay the driver and make it on our own. We've toyed with the idea if not paying or paying little for taxi's who trick us but apparently (as we read later) these con-ers in particular can get a little angry you call them on it. But after some help from some semi-honest cyclo drivers
(note to cyclo drivers out there, don't try to raise your offer after you've already given the customer their change) we found the guesthouse we were after. So a bit of a rough start to northern Vietnam, but all things considered not too bad.(I should probably note that Tamara would disagree about the 'not too bad'. She found the scams in Hanoi especailly infuriating, or Hanoi-ing as it were. We all agreed she wasn't allowed to blog about Hanoi.)
So this guesthouse, The Thu Giang, was exceptional. If anyone ever goes to Hanoi go there. It's family run,largely by two younger sisters with good English who love nothing better than to help traveller's enjoy the city as much a possible. After having trouble finding us a good cooking class one of the girls offered to teach us a dish, Bun Bo, that we had at a little restaurant and loved. So she charged us 30 000 dong (yes, Vietnamese money are dongs) which is about $2.5 which is what we would pay to eat it on the street. Even though she spent two hours walking us through the process, including a market trip! Remarkably generous. So it was more than worth it to go to the REAL Thu Giang.
So the area in Hanoi that we were staying in is called the 'old quarter' because it dates back many hundreds of years. You could sure tell it wasn't designed in modern times, because no street ran straight, the names we're sporadic, and our map was suspiciously misleading. Now Paul is an excellent city navigator and Tamara by her own admission is especially good with maps. But I think that we must have spent more than half our time wandering around having little or no idea of where were. It was unbelievably confusing. I think that if you designed an actual maze city it would be easier to get around. Mazes have some kind of design behind them. But that's all part of the fun right? right? We did get to refine our Saigon perfected street crossing teqniques in smaller more congested streets, so that's a plus.
Well, it didn't take us long to decide to move on from Hanoi. Don't get me wrong though, there was some neat stuff in Hanoi, we saw an interesting water puppet show, and got to visit the mausoleum of Ho Chi Mihn who is preserved in glass in the Lenin style. He looked good. Dead, but good. But on from Hanoi we went and took a three day tour of Ha Long Bay (get the earlier pun now?)
And Oh Boy was it fantastic! We'll get pictures up when we can, but there are hundreds of little forest covered mountain peaks scattered throughout the Bay. The little ship we got to take would just Cruise lazily between the islands, and just when you think that things couldn't get more majestic or beautiful we would round another island/mountain and there would be an even more fantastic view. We got to take kayaks out for a few hours and were pointed in the direction (OK, I've got to take a moment to express how you can never be sure what you are getting into when asking the locals about the sights. For example, 'the most beautiful temple' in all of Angkor might end up being a little ho hum compared to Angkor Wat and when our guide for the kayaking pointed us in the direction we were to go he said, "Ummmm go round this island, through a channel, take a right, go through a cave, come back" all while tossing out vague hand waving.) So we follow his 'directions' and what he called a cave was a water tunnel (stalagmites and all) through a mountain into a whole grotto completely surrounded by mountain cliffs! Sorry but there are no pictures because we didn't risk our camera's on the kayak, but I wonder if you could google earth it? It might even have a name. (If it was in Canada it would be on our $20 bills, but in Vietnam I don't even know if it has a name!) It was totally inaccessible except by those little boats. I was certain that a place like this couldn't actually exist on earth. But there we were. A very special moment for sure.
Add on to this experience and the amazing scenery that the rest of the group on our tour group consisted of some very kind and interesting Irish, Dutch and Eastern Canadians who quickly became our friends, this was certainly one of the highlights of the trip. Oh yeah, and when it came time to jump into the water for an evening swim, who were the only ones to jump from the top of the boat? Paul, Tamara and I! Who knew we were so cool? (I actually think it has more to do with being used to cold. No one else even went in the water. It seemed fine to us!)
We ended the experience body surfing on one of the beaches of the islands. It actually was a bit chilly that day, and I think the locals thought we were crazy, but it's a good thing that we went because things only get colder as we travel north. But that's for the China post!
Oh, I suppose I should also mention that the exit process from Vietnam was quite comical, involving much confusion, large crowds, waving arms some gentle pushing and stacks of passports. Stay tuned for our mid China "top lessons we've learned so far about travelling" post! Again sorry about the no pictures, but we'll get them up as soon as we find a reliable usb port. They are worth waiting for!
(Plus as I read this over I realize that I use a ton of brackets. Sorry.)
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