'Bout Time We...

...found a place that didn't captivate us!


When we first arrived in Hanoi, we passed through immigration and baggage collection into the arrivals area where we were immediately approached by a man claiming to be a taxi driver but who seemed very keen to avoid the nearby secruity guards and so would suddenly disappear and hide behind groups of people before then coming back to try and find us. When we finally did get an official taxi, two minutes after asking us which hotel we were staying in,the driver was on his mobile and sure enough, we pulled up outside a completely different hotel where the manager was waiting outside to inform us that our hotel was full but that he was the manager of both hotels and would instead like to offer us a room at this much nicer sister hotel for a good price. Maybe we would have fallen for it 7 years ago, but these days we just walk away. We made our way to the original hotel and when we got to it, unsuprisingly, there was room available. Luckily several travelling experiences in the past have prepared us well for this sort of thing so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else, but it began Hanoi and Vietnam on a sour note that it would struggle slightly to climb back out from.

We met lots of people in Vietnam who thought that Hanoi was great, and it gets good reviews in the Lonely Planet, but unfortunately, our experience was little better than an OK city to visit but nothing special and not a place I'd be in a rush to go back to. We went round the sights that we wanted to see on our first day there and then we were pretty much ready to leave. Luckily though, the main reason to visit Hanoi isn't because of what is in the city, but instead, because of what is a few hundred kilometres down the road next to the town of Ha Long.

Ha Long bay is a place I have wanted to see for a few years now ever since I first saw a picture of its hundreds of tall sided rock formations soaring up out of the Gulf of Tonkin. It is a UNESCO world heritage site and rightly so as, despite there being similar rock formations in other parts of south east asia (especially around Krabi), there is nothing that is quite on the same scale as Ha Long. Just the shear number of these rock islands is impressive as they appear one after the other forming a bay that is well worth the hassle of Hanoi to come and see! The trip to Ha Long Bay includes an overnight stay on a Junk (a traditional Vietnamese style of boat) and visits to some of the islands and a floating fishing village. Swimming in the sea and kayaking into some other parts of the bay were also options to fill the time, but unless you take a moment just to sit back, stop and enjoy the view, I'm not sure how you'd fit it all in. But then we did have a really nice Junk from which to enjoy it from so I'm a bit biased about the kicking back on the boat and enjoying the view approach (plus the sea was a bit cold at this time of year)!

After we returned to Hanoi, we got the overnight train heading south to begin our trip into the rest of Vietnam, already much happier after our initial introduction to the country and cautiously hopeful that it was now only going to get better...

Steve