So Hanoi is a large urban mess, the roads are gridlocked with motorbikes, the pavements are blocked with motorbikes, the sky remains a dull grey colour and the lakes an inky black soup. It's one redeeming feature is the fact that the air temperature was cool enough to go outside even during the middle of the day.
Perhaps the only tourist attraction of any note in Hanoi is the mausoleum of Ho Ch Minh. In Moscow we had already been to Lenin's mausoleum, but the Vietnamese have taken their bureaucracy to scary new heights with their organisation of this morbid attraction. As you enter the grounds from the front, you are told to walk around to the main entrance hidden over a kilometer around the back. You then join a queue and wait for a while before being called up to the baggage drop window. We assumed the point of the baggage drop would be to leave all cameras behind, as these are not allowed in the mausoleum. But no, we had to take our cameras out the bag when we checked it and were given a small red bag to carry our cameras in. We then had to join another queue to check in the camera bags. Surprisingly there wasn't a queue at all by the time we got to the mausleum itself so we filed in passed the obvious waxwork body of Ho Chi Minh, amazed at how seriously the locals took it, and straight out the back where we could collect our camera bag again. The path then lead to a palace or museum that you had to pay to get in, so we by passed this and tried to get back to the baggage drop area only to be told we couldn't walk directly there and had to leave the park, walk all the way around the edge again to the main enterance and get it that way. As you can imagine, B who hates being told what he can or can't do at the best of times, was fuming and cursing the whole of Vietnam as the worse country he had ever visited.
B's hatred of Vietnam was worsened when at the first restaurant we went to they tried to charge us for the use of the napkins they supplied. It was only 4000 dong, but out of principle he refused to pay, and eventually the waitress conceded it wasn't in her best interests to try and argue with him any more and removed it from the bill.
We also went to the temple of literature, which the guidebooks describe as a peaceful haven in the city. Peaceful? Chance would be a fine thing. Nothing you could do would dampen down the noise of the traffic, where the use of horns seems obligatory. Even without the traffic. The number of people trying to sell you everything from guidebooks to bananas quickly removes any illusion of tranquility. The temple itself is nothing special, but a standard Chinese style temple, all red and gold and tacky.
Luckily we only had one full day in Hanoi before we headed off to our Ha Long Bay cruise, an experience that definatly turned into one of the biggest highlights of our trip so far. We were picked up by minibus from our hotel at 8:30 in the morning, and after a couple more stops to pick up a few more passengers we were on our way out of Hanoi. The bus journey took nearly 5 hours with one stop for a toilet break on the way. We walked down to the harbour with a little apprehesion, the pictures on the website showed the Paloma to be a very attractive high quality junk, but so did the pictures of the phnom Penh to Siem reap ferry. Our fears were soon put to rest when the boat came into view, the Paloma was everything the website promised, and when we checked into our cabin we were even more reassured to the quality of the cruise we were joining.
Lunch was served soon after boarding, and the Paloma began it's cruise away from Ha Long Bay city out into the bay itself. It was at Lunch we met a crazy Australian woman who was exactly 2 days younger than B, and a couple of girls from Finland one of which was born in Vietnam and so could speak Vietnamese and provided us with some interesting insights into the psyche of the local people. During the cruise we also made friends with a young Canadian family who were living and working in Jakarta.
Our first activity after lunch was to go Kayaking around one of the floating villages. The kayaks were two man kayaks so B and I shared one, B had never been in a kayak before so I went in the front and he sat in the back. Well B has now found a new hobby as he loved it, and got grumpy when time ran out and we had to head back to the boat. Our next stop was TiTop island where we had the choice of swimming or climbing up to a viewing platform. It was not the warmest of days and so we climbed up the hundred or so steps to the top of the limestone 'mountain' to take in the spectacular areial views of the bay. After taking more photo's than anyone could possibly look at, we headed back down and onto our junk for a glass of Vietnamese wine and dinner. Before dinner however we joined in a cooking class, it only involved rolling springrolls, which B knew how to do and I had done in Cambodia. The food on the junk was good and plentiful, if not a little bland for B's taste. After dinner there was the opportunity to do some squid fishing. It was fun to watch the squid swim around the line, but with no bait there was no chance of actually catching any. I wouldn't have known what to do with it if I had anyway.
The next day we got up early to do a Tai chi class on the sun deck before breakfast, another novel experience for us both. It was also good to see the sun breaking through the clouds, it was going to be a good day. After breakfast we made our way down to a smaller boat for our day trip. We were taken to a small secluded bay well away from all the other tourists and did some more kayaking, coming to rest at a beach were we had a BBQ lunch. Then as the tide had gone right down we explored all the limestone rock outcrops on foot, crawling through small caves and finding hidden jungles, washed up sea cucumbers and tiny little hermit crabs. We were enjoying ourselves too much to notice how badly we were slicing our feet up on the jagged coral and oyster shells that littered the beaches. Painful yes, but it was worth it. We had to kayak back to our boat, when the Canadian family came back, they bought with them a stash of starfish they found washed up on one of the beaches, they were all different colours and patterns, beautiful.
It seemed every time we got on or off the back of the boat we were instantly descended upon by the local women, rowing over to our boat in their boat-shops, and we were constantly bombarded with calls of "buy something". I don't think they made a single sale from our group, and I wonder if they ever make any money.
On our last day on the junk, the weather changed, it was decidedly cooler and windier. Whereas before the boat felt still the waves had grown big enough to rock the junk slightly more noticably. We only had a short excursion to the Surprising cave that morning, and I was surprised at how big the cave was, but not as surprised as when I saw cock rock, yes it exactly what it sounds like. We then went back to the junk for lunch as the Paloma began the cruise back to Ha Long Bay city. The 5 hour bus ride back to Hanoi was long and tedious, but at least when we got there we knew we only had one more night in this unattractive city.
Adam
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