Vietnam (Hanoi & Halong Bay)

Our flight to Hanoi was only an hour long, in a smallish, yet comfortable plane with props instead of jets. Having read about very long delays in getting visas and passports stamped when entering Vietnam, we had organized everything online through a ‘visa immigration’ company and even paid extra for their ‘fast-track’ package. This guaranteed that you don’t wait in queues and offered a full refund if we weren’t satisfied with their service. We had also booked a taxi to take us from the airport to our hotel. As soon as we got off the plane we saw a young lady holding a sign with our name. We gave her all the documents we had been told to prepare (passports, visa approval letter, application forms, photos and dollars) and off she went, through the crowds, to the visa counter, while we sat and waited. It took her all of 12 minutes to turn in our documents, get our passports stamped and return them to us, while other tourists standing in line seemed not to have moved at all. There were about twenty counters with passport officials and we noticed (while we were waiting for our passports) that there were hundreds (or so it seemed) of tourists who, after getting their visas, then had to queue up again in front of the counters to our left. When our ‘fast-track’ lady brought back our passports, she told us to go to the counters on our right, which, we noticed, only had a few people waiting in line. We were through in about 10 minutes while the counters to our left were still heaving. Forty dollars well spent!

We checked into our hotel and went for dinner at a small, local restaurant close by. Besides the usual noodles (lots of them), soups etc there was frog, hedgehog and some kind of ferret or weasel on the menu…blech! We opted for half a roast chicken each instead, described in English as “Roasted chicken with crispy” (that’s it!). They brought us our French Fries and Fried Tofu sides first, but thirty minutes later, there was still no sign of our roast chicken or the ‘crispy’. One portion came, accompanied by apologies, just as we were thinking of leaving. It tasted and had the consistency of boiled rubber! I have never in my life had chicken, or anything else for that matter, quite like this before. It was 'unchewable' much less 'swallowable', so we pushed it away intending to tell them not to bring the other portion but it came and looked just as bad as the first, so we asked them to put it in a doggie bag and then left everything on the table even though we had paid rather a high price for the privilege. My first taste of Vietnamese food….blech again!

16 January 2016
We had one day in Hanoi so walked into the Old Quarter today. Hanoi is a typical big, busy Asian city. It’s noisy, crowded, dirty and crossing the road is a life-threatening affair. There are scooters everywhere – thousands of them, coming from every direction and nobody stops or even slows down to let you cross, even at zebra crossings. You just have to weave, or more often dash, through the moving vehicles. Then there are the street vendors. Women squat in the street selling food out of pots to passersby (mostly locals), who sit on small plastic stools and eat at low makeshift tables. David was hungry and bought a bowl of noodle soup with some meat floating in it. He said it was tasty but definitely not to my taste….

A couple of streets after 'Noodle Bob’s' lunch, we passed a Vietnamese woman wearing a traditional conical hat (non la) with a pole balanced on one shoulder. There were two shallow baskets containing bananas on either end. As we walked by, she quickly put the pole on one of David’s shoulders, placed her hat on his head and asked me “Photo?”. I thought it was a great ‘Kodak moment’ so I took the picture (she was in it too). Then she whipped both pole and hat off David, and on to me so I could have a photo too. She did this so quickly and smoothly that I wondered if she had done it before? After the photo session she asked us to buy some of her bananas, and feeling a little obliged, we proceeded to pay hundreds of thousands of dong for them. We were still trying to familiarise ourself with the currency and exchange rate so it was only after we had walked away and done our sums, that we realized we had paid the equivalent of about $8 for 4 tiny bananas. We were scammed, but she was so slick and did it with such charm, we just had to laugh. We later googled ‘Banana Scam in Hanoi’ and found out that there were women all over Hanoi ripping off unsuspecting tourists, and have been doing so, successfully, for years. The moral of this story is: Joanna, start taking your 'gut' more seriously!

Afterwards we made our way to the Lake of the Restored Sword, a small lake in the centre of the Old Quarter. It was very picturesque, with a tower on a small islet in the middle, and a

temple joined by a bridge at the north end. It was a misty, drizzly morning so visibility wasn’t super-clear but it was a pretty sight anyway, and the reflections on the lake were lovely. Even so, not really sorry to be leaving Hanoi tomorrow...

17 January 2016
We took a shared bus (actually we 'hitched' a ride with a tour bus) to Halong where we would spend a couple of nights with the intention of cruising around the World Heritage Site of Halong Bay. It was a four-hour drive in a comfortable, mid-sized bus, so nothing out of the ordinary to report. We passed through industrial and rural areas as well as small and larger towns in northeast Vietnam. Actually quite a varied and interesting landscape. We arrived at our hotel around 12:30 and checked in. Quite basic, but worthy of note (or not) is the mattress. I thought the Laos one was like a slab of granite! Words fail me with this one...I'm not sure how to describe something which is twice as hard as granite! Maybe tomorrow I'll find the words, if my spine doesn't collapse in the meantime. I'm not looking forward to falling asleep tonight :(.

Since we had skipped lunch, we were getting hungry at around 5pm so we walked down the street and found a decent-looking restaurant. We walked in and sat down, realising that this was a restaurant which catered for big groups of Chinese or Korean holidaymakers who were dropped off by the busloads and served their meal as soon as their butts hit their seats. We watched in fascination as these Asian tourists shovelled food into their mouths at an alarming rate. I'd never seen chopsticks work so fast! They were back on their buses barely 15 minutes after they got off them.

In the meantime, we had studied the menu which was full of culinary delights like 'Shrimps Perturbed", "Dummy cow", "Bored" and "Bored Interesting" (this was the English translation written under the names of some Vietnamese dishes). 'Brothy Bob' zeroed in on the Seafood Soup (did I mention I don't like soup?). I scanned the entire menu for something slightly familiar and considered fried chicken thigh and sweet potato fries. The waiter didn't speak or understand one word of English (not even yes or no) so we pointed to what we wanted. He gestured that they didn't have the sweet potato and after remembering the rubber chicken fiasco of our first night in Hanoi, I opted against the chicken and went with grilled scallops instead. By the way I forgot to mention that we had been so traumatised by that first Vietnamese cuisine experience, that on our second night in Hanoi, we went to KFC! How lame is that!

We were brought a small bowl of soup each. We thought these were complimentary, but later found out that it had been David's dinner. Our stir-fried cabbage and rice came next. Then came my grilled 'scallops' which weren't scallops at all, but small clams, and I'm not sure they were grilled either. At least the rice and veggies were good so we made a mental note to stick to a vegetarian menu for the next couple of weeks in Vietnam.

18 January 2016
After a terrible night on the hard floor (cleverly disguised as a bed), we were up pretty early for our six-hour Cruise in Halong Bay. This was why we had come to Ha Long, and subjected ourselves to bruised kidneys, in the first place. We were picked up by a bus which (after picking up everyone else) took us to the pier where we boarded our boat. There were about twenty of us so there was plenty of room. We cruised into Halong Bay which has thousands of amazing limestone 'karsts' rising up out of the water.

We were taken to Thien Cung and Dau Go Caves on Dau Go Island. These are huge caves with dramatic lighting and amazing limestone stalagmites and stalactites. After that, we were taken to another island, where lady rowers on small boats waited to take us through grottos

and into inland seas. We were subsequently served a very good lunch on board our boat, and following that we cruised to our final destination - Ti Top Island. It had a nice beach, although too cold to swim, and 427 steps up to a viewpoint with amazing vistas of Ha Long Bay. Finally the leisurely cruise back to the pier.... A great day and experience.