Vietnam - Part 3 - Hanoi - Halong Bay - Sapa - Hanoi

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VIETNAM - Hanoi - Halong Bay - Sapa

Thursday 1/3 - Hue to Hanoi

The morning included a walk by the river, then we caved in to the craving of some more familiar food - a lovely pizza supreme at "Little Italy Restuarant".  We pulled another 2 million dong from the ATM and Mark's wallet was again fat with all these notes.  We palled up with Eva, a bright Belgian solo traveller from our hotel, and shared a 3 o'clock taxi to Hue train station (nice for Mark to have someone else do the price negotiating).  4pm and the train pulled in - we got on board with loads of French tourists with sharp elbows (!) while dozens of patients from the nearby Red Cross hospital peer through the bars onto the platform.  We find our 4 berth compartment only to discover a Vietnamese couple with 12 month old baby asleep on our lower beds (we discover later they'd been visiting family in Saigon for the Tet Festival).  After sign language diplomacy we sort it out and help them move "upstairs".  Their delightful little daughter keeps us amused with typical antics.  Soon after 9pm it seems to be lights-out all round and we sleep well with the rocking/rolling action of the train.

Friday 2/3 - Hanoi

Up 5.45am as the train gets in on time (!!) - no taxi transfer waiting as expected but again we share with Eva and arrive at Lake View Hotel 6.30am to wake up the nightwatchman with the neighbouring shop-keeper shouting and kicking against the roller shutter door!  He rushes to open up looking so sheepish and guilty, as though he's been surfing porn on the internet just inside.  We leave luggage and wander down the road to breakfast then come back to check in and book our package trips to Halong Bay and Sapa - much talked about and anticipated.  This hotel came about after we met one of the friendly staff earlier at Nha Trang - www.longgallery.com.vn  The hotel ($10/night) shares space with a wonderful art gallery.  We walk the lake perimeter, do some shopping, check out optical glasses and give up (too much complexity of our geriatric prescriptions), raid the Sutherland-recommended mini-supermarket and get some treats - Milo drinks, chocolate etc - and eat our sweet French bread treats by the lake.  Home for Jan to have some down time - Mark heads out again to explore the market and the north edge of Hoin Kyem lake where he visits the Ngoc Son temple accessed by a walking bridge over to a tiny island.  This complex is dedicated to the Viet scholar Van Xuong also known as General Tran Hung Dao who defeated the Mongols in the 13th century.  Home to collect Jan and out to dinner over the road at Puka, tiny 3 storey restaurant with a nice vibe, as suggested in Lonely Planet.

Sat 3/3 -Hanoi to Halong Bay

Up 7am to pack and be ready for bus transfer - 7.30 became 8am - and we collect our group of 13 on the mini-bus.  Coffee/breakfast stop at 10.30 as we drive north-east through lovely green fields of rice paddies with eucalyptus trees growing everywhere - used to help suck up ground water in many parts of south-east Asia.  Noon we arrived at the bustling harbour amidst a horde of buses and boats, following our guide Linh to clamber across three boats and eventually onto "ours".  Passports are processed and documentation completed and we "set sail" about 1.15pm with a lovely lot of people to share this trip.  A family of four from Brighton UK, a lad from Korea, a girl from France and another from Japan;  a couple from Germany;  a young woman from Chicago and a guy from Ontario Canada.  An interesting and diverse group on a lovely boat with a wonderful welcome lunch, and we discover each meal will feature different local seafood - yum!  There are about 3000 small islands (karsts) in the Bay - unfortunately it's cloudy/misty but this adds to a sense of atmosphere as our boat motors with careful navigation to our first stop at Sung Sot Cave with impressive limestone formations as per Jenolan Caves (pity that they've copped a lot of vandalism and abuse with inadequate fencing and protection).  Some swim at a lovely sandy beach - our next stop - while others including us walk up the hill to enjoy the amazing scenery, take photos, chat, relax, then back on board to get out the tiara and pearls and prepare for 6.15 dinner - a very comfortable 25 degrees in our cabin.  Another lovely meal with entree of amazing prehistoric-looking prawns, the like of which we've never seen - imagine a cross between a king prawn, lobster and a freshwater yabbie and you're close!  We compare stories with the Brit family, Grant, Teresa and Daniel and Jordan who are doing a 7 month SE Asia holiday - Grant a professional photographer takes thousands of pics, sends the best of them home on the wire, and continues to earn an income as he travels.  We all have a laugh at "Night at the Museum" DVD and sit in the balmy breeze on the roof later, having moored in a sheltered bay with about 50 other boats, all similar size to ours.  Apparently there are about 400 such vessels doing these trips ex-Halong Harbour - we affirm it's great value at US$80 each for the cruise, hotel transfers, access tickets, 2 nts accomm'n and all meals.  We realise with some shock that we're the oldest on the boat - customers or crew - so maybe that's why they allocated us the upstairs cabin, so the white-haired oldies don't have to negotiate the stairs down to where the other cabins are!

Sunday 4/3

Slow start in our cabin - breakfast at 8.00 and we soon start cruising towards Cat Ba Island, then transfer to another boat and say goodbye to some of our companions (doing the 1 night/2 day option).  We arrive at the Viet Hai wharf and take to mountain biking 5 kms on a pretty well-made path through a local fishing village where dog was obviously on the dinner menu!  Not for us thankfully.  We park the bikes in the care of a local and walk up through the forest into a large cave which we're told was a hide-out for up to 500 Viet Cong soldiers during the war.  Then cycled back to the boat and we made our way to a pretty sandy beach for barbecue lunch and a sleep on the sand for an hour.  Then we motored on a little way to moor alongside a floating fishing village where we collected a set of twin kayaks - nine of us head out for 1 1/2 hours paddling to Lan Ha Bay Lagoon, only accessible via a "London Bridge" type archway under the karsts.  With all this physical activity we're confident of a good night's sleep.  We check out the floating fish farm, stop briefly at Monkey Island, and then arrive at Cat Ba Island rendezvous with mini-bus to Holiday View Hotel, a wonderful 3 star international facility - very stylish by our standards - check it out at www.holidayviewhotel -catba.com  We have a welcome shower, washing off the salt air and in Mark's case the sand in his togs from his swim, and enjoy a delicious 7 course dinner on level 2 of this beaut hotel.  Good yak with Anja and Bernhardt from Germany plus we celebrate tour guide Linh's 34th birthday with flowers and a song.  Jan and I out for a walk after dinner with Lisa our new Jewish friend from Chicago (www.LLworldtour.com), a really interesting TV producer taking a year off for her round-the-world travel.  Backsides and shoulders protesting a little after the respective bike-kayak action, so bed is welcome at about 10.15pm.

Monday 5/3 - Halong Bay to Hanoi

Hotel breakfast at 7.00am includes the rawest poached eggs you could ever imagine, so the toast and fruit went down well!  Mini-bus transfer back to the boat and we're "sailing" once again by 8.30am.  This day is mostly dedicated to travel.  We have a four hour boat trip back to Halong Bay harbour and we fill the time in with conversation and reading and chilling out as we drink in the last of this scenery we'll see for awhile.  The reverse scramble in the harbour as we clamber across four boats with backpacks on to eventually be safely ushered onto our mini-bus and then on to a huge sumptuous lunch at the Viethouse Lodge (www.viethouselodge.com).  Not much dinner needed tonight!  We bid farewell to our tour party, do the obligatory swap-email thing and are returned to the friendly welcome at Lake View Hotel where we commandeer the computers for this long update session and have a complimentary room/shower before we head off about 9pm for our transfer to the train station and the overnight 10pm sleeper train up to the north-west town of Sapa, ETA 5am tomorrow morning. 

Enough of all this rambling for now - congratulations to the faithful who continue reading with us - we hope you are having something of a vicarious experience of our travel and it's great to feel that we are able to share our journey with readers at home and abroad!  Once again, our love to you all.

Tues 6 to Thurs 8/3 - Hanoi-Sapa-Hanoi

Train journey with Peter and Ange from Oz very comfortable and secure in a lockable compartment - we got away on time, bed down fairly quickly, read for a bit and asleep cosy and comfy by 10.30pm.  Next thing we know it's 5.45am Tues and the train is arriving at Lao Cai ready for mini-bus transfer 35kms to Sapa.  Amidst the throng of people we were grateful to pick out the "Mark Dunn" sign to welcome us on the only mini-bus which had been allowed on the station platform.  8.00am at hotel and ushered in straight away for brekkie and met our tour guide "Chi" a local 18 year old H'mong woman.  We set off with Karl, Sarah and Chi and trekked 7 kms to a village of the "Black H'mong" tribal people, so called because of the dark colours they wear, particularly exploiting the deep blue dye from the indigo plants they grow.  Back to the hotel for lunch and an enforced rest as it is VERY misty/foggy/drizzly = no chance for more photos of the lovely hillsides and agriculture.  Down time in our room for diary/reading/nap and later meet up with Sarah and Karl for dinner.  Karl - a German now living in Mallorca Spain - owns/runs a small hotel there with a six month high season (www.tillnows.de/finca) - the rest of the year he travels the world or sails in his ocean-going trimaran - a hard life but someone's got to do it!!   Jan chooses an early retreat to our bedroom - Mark out for an hour of walking the streets with an umbrella but eventually scampers back to the hotel after being accosted by a crotchety H'mong woman intent on selling an armful of bracelets!  SMS from home always welcome (thanks girls!).

Wednesday - more cloud and misty rain - visibility about one metre - so we bail out of the planned five hour trek, avoiding getting cold and drenched and muddy, but we make a few short forays to the market and craft shops where we buy a lovely wall hanging to feature at Faraday - it includes intricate cross-stitch, embroidery and handwork, including local hemp and silk fabrics.  Jan picks up a "pasmina" scarf (not another one!) for $2!  After lunch we take a visit to the sadly neglected Catholic church, still getting lots of use despite its dilapidated state.  The news of minus 3 degrees in Beijing overnight chills our bones then we discover that our current weather is influenced by a huge snowstorm in southern China.  In the same news bulletin the Garuda jet crash is sobering news, with some Aussies likely victims.  On a brighter note we see that the Roos beat Freo to earn a quarter-final berth in the NAB Cup!!  Go you Kangas!  Early dinner, 6.30pm bus back to the train station, 9.00pm train Sapa to Hanoi, with more friendly companions to share our compartment - Germaine a 60+ years French-Canadian who seems to spend most of his life travelling the world and managing his share portfolio on-line, and Thuyen a Viet tour guide, very articulate and intelligent - not willing to pay the US$3000 bribe to work as a secondary school teacher (his training), so he cracked a great job with better pay and conditions in tourism (sad that this is somehow remunerated more handsomely than the vital task of teaching).

Thursday - 5.00am arrival at Hanoi - all good - taxi transfer back to our friendly Lake View Hotel where we crash for another couple of hours before heading out for shopping and walking the neighbourhood - chasing warm gear for the cooler climate to come.  Mark buys his long awaited hammock at the market - after much haggling of course!  9.00pm and we're about to head out for coffee and cake with a couple of the young women from the hotel who've been so wonderfully helpful for us here.  We'll hang on while they negotiate Hanoi's night traffic on their motorbikes!!  (Not sure if our travel insurance covers this - keep praying for us folks!).  Love to all - next time we'll be in China.