Moving on from our 24 hour stop in sweaty, sweltering Singapore, we took a flight with Vietnam Airlines up to the capital of Vietnam; Hanoi. Onboard, the free wine helped Evie to cope with the flight, even though all of the cabin crew couldn’t distinguish between the english word for red & white wine, after asking for two white wines, we received two red wines, we said that there had been a mistake and after asking for white, we soon realised that (trying my best not to sound racist) the Vietnamese pronounce the ‘R’ like a ‘W’, so when said quickly, two ‘white’ wines could easily, to the air crew, sound like two ‘wed’ wines and when said fast, be translated to two ‘red’ wines. Anyway they brought over two white wines after I just said, the other one please, but I kept the red anyway, waste not want not.

We landed in the evening and jumped in a cab towards the centre of the city. The journey was a very interesting and eye opening introduction to Vietnam, soon realising that there doesn’t seem to be any rules to the road, except that the smaller vehicles gave way to the bigger vehicles, so lorries just turned across the highways, whilst the mopeds and cars screeched to a halt. Also it seemed like absolutely everyone had a moped, there were thousands of them, some with up to five people on them, kids standing up wedged between their parents, some with livestock attached, some with guys taking their lady out side-saddle, but with no regard to safety, texting whilst driving, turning across traffic, you name it, they were doing it, yet we saw no accidents in our whole time in the country. We were soon outside our boutique hotel, which we had paid less than $5 for after receiving a voucher from Jetstar, thanks Jetstar a $30 voucher goes a long way in Vietnam.

We quickly threw our bags in our funky room in the old quarter of Hanoi, had a shower to remove the sweat for at least five minutes, then hit the night markets which were just outside our door and branching off from Hoan Kiem Lake.

By this point it was about 9pm, but the city was alive with people, mostly vietnamese with the odd tourist scattered around. Now we had read about the best way to approach crossing a road, no point taking any notice of the little green man telling you its safe, don’t listen to him, he lies! The only way to possibly get across the street, with a seemingly never ending stream of mopeds flying past, is to slowly and at a steady pace, step out into the road and confidently walk across, the motorists will simply swerve around you, so long as you don’t change your course or freeze in panic half way across. And it works, if we had of waited for the traffic to die down and a safe moment to cross, we would still be standing there now.

Within 100 yards Evie had made a purchase of some shorts, fair enough, they were cheap as chips, and it was hot as hell, she would be needing them. Soon after, we found a bar for a nice ice cold beer overlooking the square, the lake, the markets and the thousands of people enjoying their evening. It was good people watching, there were kids running around having fun, families having picnics by the lake, people walking dogs (lots of huskies too for some reason, they must have been rather warm) police trying in vain to co-ordinate the traffic and hawkers selling their wares at every corner. We sat and watched the people below, with a nice cold beer, a man whistling us a merry tune and three belly dancers gyrating around us, a rather bizarre experience.

We left the bar and wandered through all of the market stalls, stopping to sample our first street food, some kind of unknown meat kebab, it was delicious, I’ll just hope it was chicken. We soon found a convenience store, where we would stock up on supplies for the next few days boat trip to Ha Long Bay. We had bought some gin in duty free so needed some tonic to accompany it, we cleaned the fridge out and bought a load of water, so we wouldn’t have to purchase any on board. I also bagged a few beers, some crisps, some nuts and some dried squid to snack on. We lugged the shopping back to our room and tried to work out a way to pack it all into our bags. It was well past midnight by this point and another shower was needed to remove the latest bout of sweating, but we had to be up bright and early to get our transport to Ha Long Bay. We had a nice buffet breakfast and then our luxury minivan pulled up at 7am.

Onboard our ‘limousine’ we had reeling leather armchairs, water, a snack and wifi, luxury indeed! We had been picked up first so a quick round up to fill the van and we were off south-west of the city for our 4 hour journey to the bay. The journey would have been a lovely one, we probably would have slept the whole way, seeing how comfortable it was, if only our driver didn’t insist on dicing with death at every available opportunity, overtaking on corners, driving like a nutter and generally being in a massive hurry. Not too much of a hurry though, that we couldn’t stop for half an hour at a store where we were expected to blow our budget on a load of overpriced rubbish, we somehow resisted temptation, but lots of people were buying trinkets and jewellery and god knows what else.

We eventually made it to the harbour at Ha Long Bay and had to wait an hour to get on our boat, good job our driver risked all of our lives to get us there so quick eh!? The tender boat was soon upon us, after I had been given a sample of the local firewater and we were bobbing along to our vessel the Huong Hai Sealife cruise. All of the boats ready to embark on their journeys were beautiful, old fashioned wooden boats with amazing dragon woodwork along the sides and masts with traditional vietnamese sails and nice sundecks.

We pulled around a corner to our boat, which seemed like the architect had given up half way along a drawn a straight line down the back, at best it resembled a partly ordained white brick, but our minds were soon changed as we stepped on board and saw the interior, a beautiful bright open spaced dining room and communal areas, a nice sundeck with loungers and a bar and our room, which was nice and big with windows and a balcony. We were very happy, plus we would be looking out at the other beautiful boats whilst they stared back in disgust at our eyesore!

That first day, well afternoon by this point, we embarked on our voyage through Ha Long Bay, passing the amazing limestone stacks and islands littering the bay. It was so nice just to look out at the bay, taking in the scenery and enjoying the sun, even if it was baking hot, it wasn’t as humid out at sea. After a delicious lunch, where I tried jellyfish for the second time in my life and confirmed that it tasted of nothing and felt like cartilage and rubber in your mouth, we dropped anchor and hopped on a tender boat to a small island were we hiked up a few hundred steps before entering a nice cool cave.

The cave was one of many in the bay, but one of the only ones which tourists are allowed to visit. We were given a very informative tour by our ships manager – It was very interesting and since everyone else with us was disinterested or competently ignorant, Evie and I pretty much had the tour to ourselves, whilst everyone else talked over our guide, took thousands of photos and poked and prodded areas of the cave they weren’t supposed to. No wonder they limit the areas to tourists.

Ha long Bay is a ‘Unesco World Heritage’ site and since receiving that status, it has limited the areas available to tourists, so as to protect the bay, which is a good thing. The not so good thing however, is the amount of litter that can be floating around the bay. Something we learned later in our trip down in central ‘Nam’ is that the Vietnamese are very quickly transitioning from a very communist state and also rapidly modernising, this includes everyone moving from a bicycle to moped in the last few years, which will soon become cars, as well as and more of a concern, the increase in plastic products and packaging being used. In the not too distant past, everything was wrapped in paper, or food was wrapped in leaves and so when one was done with it, everything could be thrown on the ground to compost and disappear pretty quickly.

The problem now, is that the locals have not been educated well enough about the impact of plastic packaging and so they are continuing to throw everything on the ground, into waterways and eventually out to sea. As a ‘Unesco World Heritage Site’ I think that the companies making their money from taking thousands of tourists out day after day, should have some responsibility in cleaning up the mess thats floating around. I’m sure if every boat out there, spent only 15 minutes a day sending a guy out to collect some rubbish on a kayak, it would not take long at all to get rid of the floating rubbish and actually the only real negative of the bay itself. Rant over!

After our cave trip, we took the tender boat back to the floating brick, this time being told to wear lifejackets, which was a completely random order each time we went on the tender boat, sometimes being told to wear them, other times not, for no apparent reason, the bay was like a mill pond the whole time so maybe they just wanted to see us sweat with the extra layer on.

Evie was ready to soak up the sun in warm late afternoon sun, and I jumped in for a swim, hoping not to come across the family of the jellyfish I had eaten earlier for lunch, or any sharks or any nasty human made waste of any kind. The water was lovely and warm, but very deep and murky, I braved a lap of the boat with quite a string current one way, then rinsed off and enjoyed the last of the sun with my fiancé and a beer up on the top deck, bloomin’ delightful!

Dinner was delicious and they had clearly gone to a lot of effort with their white swans with chillies for beaks and their melon flowers. We were tres impressed and it was all very yummy. There was a bit of after dinner singing which was less impressive but we watched and clapped as you do!

The next day we were transferred on to a day boat, as it seems that most people only do one night cruises in Halong Bay, so our boat took everyone back to the harbour and we had a lovely relaxing day exploring more of the bay. Our guide took us kayaking and we lazed on a small beach after venturing in to an old cave. Another sad reality of how people/waste affects this area – the amazing cave used to welcome people for dinners, candle lit and what I would have imagined to be a gorgeous experience in an amazing setting, however just the presence of people being in the cave and the rise of the temperature meant they were no longer allowed to host the dinners, but another factor being the rubbish left behind – the tea light cases, and other non bio degradable items, still in the cave, was pretty awful. (Ok both of our rants over)

Kayaking around the bay was gorgeous and it was great to learn some information from a local. It was so serene and peaceful and we couldn’t have been any more relaxed! Lunch followed, whilst our guides also had a very relaxing time napping before we all headed back to the main boat.

Just in time for sunset we relaxed on the boat and enjoyed the views before another delicious dinner. Equally as exciting and again, top marks for presentation! There was more bad singing again tonight, but ah well! When in Vietnam!

 We had our last morning of activities before heading back to land and today was about seeing how the locals had lived, in the floating villages. I don’t think anyone permanently lives there now, but they fish out there and so to see the villages that still exist was amazing. Kids and dogs running around too, it was all very cool.Â

We definitely made the right choice in coming to Ha Long Bay and would recommend it to everyone, the views are insane and it is such a peaceful place.

Even if our boat looked like a brick, we think we picked the best one! Don’t judge a book by it’s cover hay! (I always do, oops)

Back on land, we took our luxury bus back to Hanoi. It was equally as scary as the first leg and we once again had to resist the temptation of buying ‘stuff’. Back in the city, surrounded by mopeds and in another lovely little hotel, we decided it was time for coffee! We asked the lovely lady at reception where was the best place locals go for a drink and she gave us the most Vietnamese place she knew! So, we ventured there, with no need to worry about sweat patches when you are consumed with sweat. Your clothes just take on a darker shade of their colour, which is of course, extremely attractive and very damp.

Anywhoo, we found the cafe, up two flights of stairs, basically through someones living room, into another room and then out on to a balcony. Well the views were great and I ordered an iced coffee, whereas Ryan really wanted to go for a vietnamese coffee which was of the hot kind, with condensed milk. Interesting. And so it was.Â

Whilst on the balcony overlooking Hanoi, there was another English couple next to us, which seemed rather strange as we had been told this was more of a locals cafe and we were already quite cosy as the balcony wasn’t overly big, so when Ryan said to me – I think I went to college with that guy….. I thought he was going a bit mad. After the odd look over the shoulder, Ryan was sure this was Simon, who he went to college with and after asking him, it actually was!

The world couldn’t have felt smaller at this point and his lovely girlfriend Ali told us that she only knew about the cafe, because her sister who once visited had told her about it. Well many chats later, we decided to go for something to eat. The boys caught up, we all sweated A LOT and ended our evening sitting on kids plastic chairs on the side of the road, drinking beer (which, little did we know would make us very ill later on) and had a lovely time!

Isn’t the world a fascinating place!

Sorry for the delay,

R&E x