Hue, Hanoi and Halong Bay

Ok, I have been home a week and I’ve been lazy…! I think this is completely justified, but it doesn’t mean I can just slack off and not complete the update of my adventures. So I bring you the last week or so of our trip to Vietnam!

Hue: When I tapped out my last blog post, we had just arrived in the town of Hue. We got to our hotel in the evening and hesitantly headed to the restaurant recommended by our hotel. It turned out to be brilliant (the coconut shake was the best one I’ve had yet!). The next morning we were on our bicycles early to explore the Citadel and The Forbidden Purple City. The Citadel grounds were an overwhelming maze of buildings and wide open spaces. We soon discovered what there was to know about the Emperors who had ruled during the Nguyen dynasty, the staff who served them, and who was allowed to enter the Forbidden Purple City. We spent almost three hours there and still didn’t see it all… It’s truly a spectacular place!

Once we exited the grounds we jumped back on our bikes and headed out of town to find some tombs. We stopped along the way to sample an interesting selection of deep fried foods from a local stall (at about 15c a piece), before continuing on our mission. I had a fairly useless map which ended up taking us along some amazing little back roads.

We eventually found the Minh Mang tomb, followed by a visit to the Kinh Dinh Tomb. Both tombs were very different, but fairly straightforward to navigate around (we needed it by this stage… we were exhausted!).

By the time we pedalled back to town it was peak hour traffic. We surprised ourselves with how easily we negotiated it all, and were absolutely starving for a carb-overload dinner!! A good day all round.

The next day was spent being a bit lazy. We were starting to feel a little tired, so we spent the day wandering the streets and checking out the local market. We had to be ready to head off at 4:30pm because we had a date with a night bus to Hanoi!

The bus to Hanoi took a whopping 14 hours (even though it was only 650kms away). We managed to score the extra spacious beds at the back of the bus, but Lindsey was kept awake all night by the bonus heating coming from being over the top of the engine. We packed snacks for the trip, napped as much as possible and were only a little bleary eyed rolling in to Hanoi.

Hanoi: We had a bit of an early morning walk to get us to our guest house. Breakfast was first on the agenda and we eventually decided that we couldn’t function without a nap. When we finally hit the streets of the Old Quarter, we were overwhelmed by the number of motorbikes and people. We trawled through some shops, got a pork and noodle soup from a local resturant, and then checked out a temple and the St Joseph’s Cathedral. We headed down to the lake to watch the world go by and ended up in an impromputu English lesson with some local university boys!

Halong Bay: The next day we were up early to head to Halong Bay. This is one of the most visited places in Vietnam and it shows with the number of tourists around! We were bussed out to the boat port where we boarded our ‘luxury liner’ – The Aloha! We cruised to a magical cave for our first stop. Although it was FULL of people, it was fairly amazing.

The rest of our afternoon involved relaxing on board the boat and taking in the amazing sights. It was fairly chilly, but we didn’t miss the opportunity to go for a kayak and to watch the sun set from the deck.

We spent the evening on board playing cards with our new friends, eating at the “special table”(no seafood and the vegetarians), and enjoying an amazing birthday cake for one of the guests (I haven’t had cake in months!!).

In the morning a boat took us over to nearby Cat Ba Island. We met up with a crazy tour guide who went by the name of Monkey (he was overly affectionate with the boys in the group… but in a scary way!!), and began a hike up a mountain. The view from the top was awesome and got us sweating for the first time in a litte while (ever since we arrived in Hanoi the temperature had dropped). Lindsey and I were pleased to be able to descend the mountain without our knees giving up!!

We soon checked in to our hotel on the island, had an included lunch and then cruised on over to Monkey Island. This was a place of positives and negatives… a beautiful beach… but horrible monkeys. Horrible, horrible monkeys. Everyone else was feeding them but Lindsey and I hid on the beach… and for good reason!! One of the guys got mauled by the alpha male!!

The next day we cruised to the mainland and bussed it back to Hanoi in time for dinner. Our final day was spent wandering the streets, checking out the embalmed corpse of Ho Chi Minh in his mausoleum, and buying some last minute souvenirs. We also got a local lady to take us to get our hair cut… We may have said we just wanted a trim, but for $3 you can’t really complain if it turns out a tad shorter than anticipated!!

We had an early night for our last evening in Vietnam. The next day we were at the airport and making our way home…

Thank you to everyone who read along over the past few months. South-East Asia is truly a magical place and I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m back there again!!! For now, Christmas is around the corner, followed by a few weeks of getting myself sorted for my next adventure… Teaching in Newman!!

Until then,
Alana.