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....
 

 

Here is something chilled and beautiful from Helios, their album Eingya is sublime. Well worth a listen.

Hue

We were feeling the squeeze on time now so although we'd have liked to stay a little longer we just passed through Hue. After leaving Hoi An at 7.30am, we arrived in Hue around 12pm. We were booked onto the bus to leave Hue at 5pm.

To be honest we were all far too tired and too short of time to do anything noteworthy in Hue. We walked to KFC and had some pretty terrible food. Stayed inside with the air-con for about three hours, left in search of the old citadel but only made it as far as the outer walls before giving up and going back to wait for the bus. In our defence it was stupidly hot.

When we got on our bus, we found three pretty sweet beds at the back and had just got comfy before one of the guys on the bus (there is always the driver and another person who runs around organising things) told us that we had to get off the bus because we weren't Vietnamese. We protested, we already waited for the second bus because we were told the first one was for Vietnamese people only. The same person now telling us to get off the bus had also sent us to the back because the front was for Vietnamese people only. Now he wanted us to get off and wait ten minutes for another one. Reluctantly we agreed so long as that guy got off the bus also and waited with us, which he did. Outrageous display of racism, though throughout Asia people are pretty unashamed to say that you should pay more and get less priority for things because you're foreign. Really it's quite amusing (nobody has ever been hostile to us or anything really sinister) but can you imagine the uproar if this happened in Britain?

Twenty minutes later we three honkys got on the next bus only to find that the bus was full, so the same guy approached some more westerners and told them they had to get off the bus and wait for the next one. I apologised to them saying i felt partly responsible but ultimately didn't have a clue what was going on. We had also made that guy promise that we'd get the same seats (they were good seats) on the new bus, so he moved some Vietnamese guys into the westerners seats and we were back in the same position as about 40 minutes ago. I still don't quite understand why this was all going on - but it was certainly amusing. The best thing that can be said for the day is that some of the journeys gave us some pretty impressive views.

The next morning at around 7am we arrived in Hanoi, sadly we had no pickup and were once again being ripped off by taxi drivers who were trying to charge us four times as much money as we should have been paying. We convinced a hotel tout to give us a cheap taxi to his hotel (near where we were staying) on the condition we had a look at the rooms but were under no obligation to stay there. We looked, made our excuses and headed to our hostel for some kip. Great success!

Tomorrow we set off to Halong Bay for three days and then when we get back we will be heading for China. It will probably be a little rushed for the forseeable future so i'm not sure when more pictures and blog posts will be up, but they will soon enough.

This is one of my absolute favourite tunes from Trentemoller's latest album. For me this is about as good as it gets, electronic music at its best. The progressions and mix of different sounds and textures is mindblowing. All of his stuff his great to be honest.

Hoi An

We arrived after another uncomfortable 13 hour bus journey. I swear they're getting worse - one thing that can be said I think after a night on one of those you appreciate any kind of bed, just for the fact it isn't moving and throwing you up in the air constantly. I've also managed to get my bag placement down to a tee to maximise the room for my legs while minimising the temptation for any opportunist thieves that may be lurking - there isn't alot of room to play with.

Whenever you arrive in a new place off a bus you are always swamped by taxi drivers trying to rip you off or trying to take you to a hotel that pays them commision. Most the time it is a bit of an annoyance, sometimes a real ballache - especially when you get dropped off miles away from anywhere useful and have no choice but to pay the ridiculously over-inflated fees that travellers new in town do. The one absolute godsend that can avoid all of this (and believe me at 6.30am having had barely any sleep, it really is a godsend) is the hotel pickup. Driver standing there with your name on a piece of paper ready to fend off the touts and take us straight to where we needed to be. It was a good start.

Our hotel was great, we had a buffet breakfast, great pool and a free shuttle bus service in and out of town for free. Also air con seems to come as standard in Vietnam, which is nice - a luxury! Hoi An is famous for the amount of tailors there - it's hard to describe quite how many there are, they literally line every street. I'm sure if you're reading this you probably know that we're both starting in KPMG not long after we get back. We'd been trying to decide the whole time through our trip what, if anything, we were going to get made here for our new jobs (no more rolling up to work in shorts for me). It's seriously cheap for tailored clothes (really it's more made-to-measure than tailored). On the plus side it would be massively cheaper than if we got anything done at home, on the negative side it would be a bit of a gamble regarding the quality and even whether they would be prepared to do all our alterations once we paid our deposit. Because of this we'd spent a fair bit of time researching the tailors online and the one which stood out as being the best was called A Dong Silk - the reviews on tripadvisor (which hasn't let us down yet) were overwhelmingly good. We had a little walk around to get our bearings and we spoke to a few different tailors. Despite being a little bit pricier than the others we got the best vibe from A Dong Silk. They were the only ones that were actually forthcoming about the quality of the fabrics and they all seemed really friendly and really keen on their service. Everyone else promised the world but their prices were too low to actually be offering what they claimed.

We took the plunge. I was only going to get a couple of pairs of trousers but I got a little carried away after negotiating a pretty decent discount, I got a suit with two pairs of trousers, two other pairs of trousers and two silk ties for just over a hundred pounds. Maddy got two custom dresses, a suit with a pair of trousers and a matching skirt. We paid our deposits and headed off, we would have our first fitting the day later. When we got back everything pretty much fitted perfectly first time, the jacket needed a few alterations but they were really good at suggesting and fixing the things that needed sorting. Maddy's dresses needed a bit more sorting because the designs were a bit more involved - again though they sorted it all out perfectly. In the end we were so happy with our clothes that we ended up ordering some more. I got another suit with two pairs of trousers, another pair of trousers and a couple more ties. The shirts didn't seem to be so good value so i'll leave them 'til I get home. other than that I think i'm all set for work now! Maddy ordered another suit with trousers and skirt and another dress. It was quite good fun to be honest going back and getting all the fittings and alterations. I got a special pocket put in the lining measured around an ipod/iphone - what a gimp! We had to buy another bag each to take it all home which is a bit of an annoyance but we don't have too many journeys left to make now!

One night they threw a little party at the tailors as well which was utterly bizarre. The sales assisants all had the task of pretending to be a tour guide for a chosen country somewhere in the world and giving a presentation about Hoi An and then the country they were supposedly from. Their presentations were all in English so they kept asking us for help and practicing with us while we were in the shop and not busy. We went to the party for just a little bit and it was so funny - they had the most comedy Vietnamese guy hosting the evening. Maddy's sales assistant won the competition.

As an aside, the prospect of work is looming ever larger as our travels come closer to an end. We have sorted out loads of admin bits in the past couple of weeks for work, including signing a waiver to say that legally we are happy to forego our right to have an average working week of no more than 48 hours. What a great idea! I'm a bit worried about what we've signed up for, but excited to get going at the same time. We all start on the 3rd of October.

There was more to Hoi An than tailors though. We dusted off the cameras after our dull week in Nha Trang and got snapping again. It was a beautiful town that had been pretty well preserved. We had loads of great food, the people were incredible. It was really touristy but that didn't really spoil it at all. At night it was incredible, loads of laterns lighting all of the streets. Moreover it had possibly the best beach we've seen in all of Asia just a short bike ride away. We also went and got some more massages, we even got a facial! It was all good fun, we ended up staying one more night than planned so had 6 nights there altogether. We didn't want to leave but time was pressing on and we had a fair bit to do before our visa expired and we had to get to China. I think i'd happily go back to Hoi An and spend a couple of weeks there! On our last night we set of three little lanterns down the river which should apparently bring us good luck - how nice. One of the lanterns got stuck on a piece of rope after about two meters and then a boat came and knocked them all out of the way - maybe that doesn't bode too well. But then I don't believe in any of that stuff anyway so i'm sure we'll be fine.

A funky little techno bit by Stimming. Love all the little bleeps and sounds that make up their rhythms. Their album is great.