Hanoi & Halong Bay

Our final stop in Vietnam was Hanoi, the capital city. We probably could have done a little more with our time in Hanoi than we did to be honest but we were all shattered and had a lot of things to work out before China, for which our plans were still a little all over the place. We wanted to try eating some dog, and we heard that Hanoi was the best place to do it but we were completely misinformed the night we tried to find a restaurant, so ended up walking around doing nothing at all that evening. There was supposedly a 1km stretch just of dog restaurants but that was quite a way away and we didn't really have time by that point. The people in Vietnam going wild for eating cats and dogs is a bit of a myth as far as I can see - we haven't stumbled across a single restaurant serving them.

The only other thing that is really worth a mention in Hanoi was the water puppetry - supposedly one of the things to do in Vietnam. We gave it a go. It was the kind of thing that is pretty cool for 5 or 10 minutes, but after that it just got a bit boring to be honest. The music was really cool though.

There was much deliberation throughout Vietnam as to which Halong bay cruise to go with (the choice is massively overwhelming, and chances of being ripped off high). Eventually we opted for a mid priced one through our hostel, Central Backpackers. It was a three day, two night cruise with one night on the boat and another on our own 'private island', apparently. I was sceptical.

All in all the cruise was incredible. Halong bay is one of the most beautiful places we've seen on the trip, the activities were for the most part great. We met some brilliant people as well. It's now been a couple of weeks since the trip and as such my ability and enthusiasm for recounting any kind of interesting story has dwindled. In short; we cruised around the bay a little bit, went to visit some pretty epic caves, went kayaking around the bay, stopped for the evening and spent some time jumping off the boat into the water and swimming. Ate some food, drank the vodka we had snuck on to the boat, got some sleep, woke up hungover, jumped off the boat some more, ate some more food. Cruised around a little more, played some cards, went to Cat Ba national island - opted out of trekking and sat watching a video about the island while some others went trekking. Ate some ice cream and observed some chickens being mercilessly killed for somebody's dinner (one of them had his head cut off and did indeed flap around as the saying goes), felt vindicated as the trekking group came back muddy and sweaty not long later. Got back on a boat, went to private island that we were sharing with some vietnamese tourists (which was actually great, in fairness). Lounged around, went kayaking again, ate some great food, stayed up chatting for a little while, consume lots of beer despite declaring it a night off after the night previous. Woke up and started the loooooongest journey of the trip so far.

More about the long journey in the next post - essentially as far as Hanoi and Halong Bay go, we woke up, ate some food and then made our way back the way we came before heading back to Hanoi where we had a couple of hours before catching our train to China.

Really this post doesn't do Halong Bay the justice it deserves - it was an amazing place. We met a really cool Irish couple who had just got engaged, one of which had previously worked for KPMG - we had alot to talk about. There was also an incredibly amusing Belgian guy on our trip who was on leave from the boat he works on - he'd been all around the world with it and had some ridiculous and funny stories to tell. Despite all that, the jumping off the boat was probably the highlight for me, so much fun! There was also an incident with some monkeys when one of them jumped up onto my head while we were feeding them and he wouldn't get down. A little concerning to have a wild monkey up there to be honest, made worse by the fact the tour guide seemed genuinely worried. Thankfully he didn't bite me, good monkey.

Here are lots of photos....