All smoke, but no fire???

By the way. Don't go in winter to Ha Long Bay, it's freezing!
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Where do i begin? - Oh and its Jes by the way.

We arrived @ Hanoi Airport after a nice Vietnam Airlines flight from Hue. In Hue it was cold (I was wearing all my warm clothes!) but in Hanoi it was freezing. I do believe we could see our own breath outside - oh and inside! The coldest winter they have had for 35 years!

Once in Hanoi we had a day to look around the city, this we chose to do by Clyco. They are bigger here than in Saigon (a chair pushed by a cyclist) and we sat next to each other looking at the sights. We arranged a price 50,000Dong for an hour for the two of us. Once we were on board we circled round the city for 25 mins and ended up at the top of the lake that i showed him on the map i wanted to go round. He looked at us like 'ok, there's your hour - Get out', but we had only been in it for 30 mins! What?!!? so he carried on after some gesturing, until we ended up at the other side of the lake near our hotel and we said 'um here is fine'. I gave him the 50,000Dong and he gestured he wanted more for the two of us! Ummmm NO! We know about this one and made sure we said for 2 at the beginning - he had a cheeky grin on his face and rode away. All i can say is they try and rob you of as much money as they can! NOT IMPRESSED!

It's comedy to watch the special rowing technique.
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We booked our next trip with the hotel- a two day Ha-Long bay tour on a Junk! (a chinese boat). We set of at 8am and were taken to Ha-Long town (three and a haft hours after we left Hanoi!) where we boarded our Junk. Well i say boarded our Junk, first we had to climb under the pier where there was no walkway just posts that you have to hold onto and perform chinese acrobatics around, whist getting grazed by all the (blistering) barnicles! Then we borded a junk, however this was not our junk! we walked along the side of it to find another junk to scramble on to (on all fours!), then we walked to the front of that Junk where we had to climb up onto another Junk, and finally 'is this our Junk?' 'Where is our guide?'..... An experience is not the word!

Traditional Junk (turned into a pleb tourist boat)
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Finally on board the Junk & we were off on our adventure to the 'world famous' Halong Bay... where we first had to pass thought Hanoi's shipping channel.. and secondly find all the other Junks going the same way! Scenic? Peaceful? Relaxing? No Comment!

Ok thats the 1st part of the story of Halong Bay - I am currently very tired after an early start this morning and the wake up time of 5 am Tomorrow doesn't sound too good - thus this is all you will get for a bit!

Is this fog or is it pollution????? The fumes we smealt out there suggest the latter :o(
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So its now been a few weeks (and a few more) and we are finally back in the UK so i will continue.

Halong bay was an experience that we were not prepared for! In a warmer month it may have been a lovely trip, however it was very cold and there was no heating on the Junk, but we did have heating in our cabin (a small plus point!).

The day after Halong bay we were on an early flight to Bangkok where we happily sat at the airport for 4 hours until our next flight on to Phuket.