Crazy, chaotic and incredibly intriguing, this is my first impression of the wonderous country that is Vietnam. I flew from Bangkok to Hanoi very smoothly and got my visa on arrival with my letter of approval I had paid for online. I had booked a taxi pick up from the hostel which didnt show so I took a $2 shuttle bus directly to my hostel which worked out much better. It was on the bus that I meet Hugo from Portugal my first travel buddy in Vietnam. Im a bit behind on writing this so unfortunately I will have to skim through a few things but firsty the "Hanoi Central Backpackers Hostel" was excellent, $5 a night including breakfast and free beer for an hour each day, well you just cant beat it, it also had the best shower I had ever come accross in all my travels. Along with that the staff were freaking awesome too. So now, Hanoi itself, in my opinion is my favourite capital city out of all I've seen in asia, it was just completely diffrent to anything it is impossible for me to describe and of course, the traffic! Wow! Motobikes everywhere utter chaos with continuous sounds of honking horns, I was absolutely blown away. Me and Hugo spent 4 nights here meeting various other people and our time was spent walking the city visiting the various sites and museums and attractions, we also played badminton with some locals in a temple very randomly one afternoon. The best thing to do in this city though is people watching, you just cannot belive your eyes here. We rented bikes one day and you can only imagine what this was like, our mission was simply to stay alive. We succeeded just. We did have one encounter with a dodgey taxi driver with a very rigged meter but this was the only negative I can think of. I had read and heard vietnamese people are not as fredindly as their neighbours but I didnt find this at all, they perhaps dont smile as much as Thais but I found them just as pleasant as any other.
Following Hanoi our destination was Halong Bay, we had booked the cruise tour via our hostel as it had great reviews on trip adivisor. It was clear why, at $85 for the one night/two day cruise it was pretty pricey but it was worth it, the cabins where nice and clean with hot showers and all food (which was plentiful and delicious) was included, drinks were not unfortunately. We spent the first part visiting the suprising cave which was great although a bit crowded. We then got back on our boat to take a meander though the stunning islands of Hạ Long Bay before anchoring at our spot where we would stay for the night. Shortly after stopping a Vietnamese man from the small floating village towed over our kayaks in his small craft and we spent a good hour going around one of the islands, there is no place like this that I had ever been, it was phenomenal. That evening was party night and another boat joined up with us to get involved, although there weren't that many people it got pretty messy, at one stage during the night a couple of us wondered in the kitchen to find all the staff munching away on 10KG of mussels which they were happy to share with us, although I thought I wouldnt like it I tried one and it was pretty good. The following morning we had breakfast and set off back to the mainland, mid morning we had a demonstration on how to make vietnamese style spring rolls, we each made one which was then sent to the kitchen to be fried and these were served as part of our lunch. They were tasty. Once we got back to the mainland we had to wait for our bus to take us the three hour or so journey back to Hanoi, it was here I haggled very hard with a vendor selling hammocks I got it for 45,000 dong (just over $2) when she was asking for 100,000. Just after we figured out a place to hang it at the bus stop I had a few minutes to sit in it and the bus came. The whole situation, mostly the haggling was worth it in itself. Very funny indeed. That night I took the night bus to Hue to await my next adventures.
No comments:
Post a Comment