When we arrived in Hanoi we thought we would be ok with the traffic due to the fact we had already been to China, Thailand and Cambodia! Wow, were we wrong! This place takes traffic and craziness to a whole new level.
This is by far the busiest place we have been to and I don't think anywhere (apart from maybe India) will top it! The amount of mopeds, scooters and motorbikes is just incomprehensible - as many as Ho Chi Minh city, but as the streets where we are staying - in the old quarter - are so much smaller, it seems a million times busier. Just crossing the road is like a death run! We've become quite good at it!
There aren't many restaurants in this area but hundreds of clothes, shoes, jewellery and other knick-knacks markets and shops. There are streets dedicated to just shoes or underwear.
As cities go, Hanoi isn't one of our favourites and we were glad to only spend a couple of days here. Our main reason to stay in Hanoi was to use it as a base to visit Halong Bay!!
Our hotel - the "Hanoi Posh Hotel" was lovely, very clean and good value for money. The staff were exceptionally helpful and friendly. They helped us to book our 3 night/4 day boat trip around Halong Bay. All activities, all food and all travel included all for around £100 each sounded like a brilliant deal - and we weren't disappointed!
After a bumpy 4 hour bus ride to Halong harbour we set sail on the "Deluxe Fantasea Cruiser".
Our first stop were the limestone caves - on one of the 1969 islands in this beautiful UNESCO world heritage site.
This cave system is buried deep inside the mountain of the island and spirals right up to the peak. Stalagmites and stalactites up lighted made for some impressive photos.
Unfortunately this was also the starting point for every other cruise in the Halong Bay area - so it was a little crowded to say the least.
We then had the opportunity to hop in a double kayak and explore another island cove at nightfall. Obviously I sat back and let Oliver do all the work whilst I enjoyed the view.
We ate dinner under the starlight and whiled away the rest of the evening chatting and making new friends.
In the morning everyone went their separate ways which was strange to only have known some of them for 1 night only. The rest of us were whisked over to Cat Ba Island.
Cat Ba Island is the biggest of the islands in Halong Bay and in high season is rammed full of sun loving tourists. We were lucky enough to visit in low season and had the beaches all to ourselves. This was also our first time seeing an empty road in South East Asia - not a common occurrence!
We got to trek up to the top of a mountain in Cat Ba National Park with a crazy little Vietnamese woman that spoke no English, but insisted on calling Oliver "monkey man" and making him swing on a tree!
The view at the top was worth the hike up even though we ended rock climbing the last section. The jungle was so dense and green it again felt like we were in "Jurrasic Park".
We spent the afternoon on the deserted beaches and stayed in our nice hotel. In the morning we set off for "Monkey Island" our main attraction!
This was our first experience of staying on a small island in a beach hut right in front of the ocean. Oliver had a lot of fun on the beach and in the sea, spending most of it in a kayak!
Having a few drinks and a seafood BBQ - with as many oysters as I could physically eat - was very romantic and special.
We definitely could have spent a lot longer here enjoying the good food and private beach - we were very sad to leave but it was time to depart from Halong Bay and move onto our next adventure - trekking through the jungle in Chang Mai, Thailand!
No comments:
Post a Comment