Hanoi and Ha Long Bay Vietnam

We left Kuala Lumpur International Airport one hour later than our scheduled time due to a missing passenger. We thought the passenger must be someone more high profile than ourselves as they don't usually hold a plane for one person for an hour. This set us back about 45 minutes for arrival in Hanoi and put us a little on edge as we had arranged an airport pickup due to the various scams encountered at the Hanoi airport that target arriving newbie passengers to Vietnam such as ourselves. As we picked up our Visas on arrival and obtained our luggage, it was almost two hours after our expected arrival time. I had arranged a very specific pickup procedure that the driver was to follow in order for us to trust him and we actually had to use this procedure as when we exited the arrivals gate, two people had my name up on a sign claiming they were there to pick me up. Note to anyone travelling to Hanoi, read up on the scams and you'll be fine and worst case scenario, stay in the airport until your sure.

The driver brought us to our hotel (Hanoi Guesthouse Hotel) and we were immediately greeted by two friendly staff ready to help us. They checked us in and brought us to our room, which to our amazement was a free upgrade. We have stayed at a lot of places during the trip and this room (minus a small ant problem which I took care of) was top notch. Two beds, very spacious and modern looking, a nice top view of the old quarter and our first huge bath tub...plus it was the only room on the floor. We stayed in this room for two nights and it was a great hotel to stay at.

View from our deluxe room of the old quarter, Hanoi

The museum showed much of the history of Ho Chi Minh and was definite a different perspective on all the events the Vietnamese people have endured. Plus, we were able to see a piece of the downed US B52 that everyone here claims they can take us in a tour to see (I guess they don't know it is in their very own museum).

The next day we explored Hanoi, specifically the old quarter and the area west of the old quarter where all the sight seeing sites are. To save money, and confusion we had decided to walk to everything. First on our list the Imperial Citadel. If you ever go to Hanoi, the first thing you will notice is the motorcycle/scooter chaos. I thought Bangkok was bad for traffic, it has nothing on Hanoi. I am not sure how these people drive, what the road rules are and how we never saw any accidents within the city but one thing I am sure of after staying there is how to cross the streets. It is a simple procedure, approach intersection, look both ways (it's a North American habit but it really doesn't matter if you do this or not), maybe say a prayer and then walk across at a constant speed. DO NOT THINK WHILE CROSSING as you will get hit by at least 4-5 motorized vehicles.

The Imperial Citadel of Thang Long was constructed by Ly Dynasty around 1000 years ago. It was largely destroyed by the French in the late 19 the century and was supposed to be demolished in the early 2000s for The National Assembly Building when early construction uncovered remains dating back to Thang Long. One of the coolest parts of the Citadel is a section still being archaeologically explored. The public is able to walk on raised platforms over this site and watch the archeologists  brush away the dirt to discover the old relics that have been there since it's beginning. In fact, the deeper they brush, the more generations they can see built over previous generations of construction. It was the first time I have seen a fresh archeological site and I see why this type of work takes so long as we watched them brush millimetre by millimetre of dirt.

Imperial Citadel

Dragon Stairs at Imperial Citadel

Due to some miscommunication, we did not realize that the Citadel closes for two hours during the middle of the day. This meant that we needed something else to do and we decided to walk to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum and also explore the Ho Chi Minh Museum. If you ever see the mausoleum, you will truly get a feel for how high the people here hold Ho Chi Minh. The building and area surrounding is immaculately kept and don't try to step past any lines or you will be welcomed by soldiers...we saw a European tourist think that he could walk past the line and he was met by a vey loud whistle and dirty looks.

Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum


Museum

 After we were done the tours, we decided to explore the old quarter. Lots of traffic, lots of shops, lots of eating and drinking and lots interesting people is a good summary of the old quarter. We will say that immediately, we noticed Vietnam is the cheapest place we have been to. You can get dinner, plenty of drinks, and possibly even dessert (someone always has room for dessert even if someone does not finish everything else) for on average 10 dollars (200 000 dong). One of the main attractions of northern Vietnam is Ha Long Bay and we opted to do this through a tour company to get the best experience. Looking back on it, it was the best way to do it as it is the best thing we have done so far on this trip. We booked a 3 day 2 night package; which I will detail in the following paragraphs and after finalizing the package, and continued exploring the old quarter and Hoan Kiem lake which the old quarter surrounds. Hoan Kiem lake has a small island with a temple on it and a foot bridge to get to the temple. The whole area lights up nicely at night and it is a great place to walk around. We went to bed at a reasonable time as we had to get up early, pack our things and make our way to the tour operator (Vega Tours) before 8.

Hoan Kien Lake at night, Old Quarter

This began our 3 day, 2 night tour of Ha Long Bay. The bus departed at about 8:15 and it was about a 4 hour drive by mini bus to Ha Long city. We met a very nice New Zealand lady named Anette and chatted with her drive. We were lucky as there were 13 people on the Ha Long tour but us 3 had our own mini bus down to Ha Long city. As we arrived, we met our tour guide Chook, who would be with us for the 3days and also the other 11. We took a small shuttle boat to our junk boat which was among a sea of junk boats.

The first thing we did was check out our room, which was very spacious and included its own bathroom. Everything in the boat was very wood themed and this followed to the room. Not bad for being one of the cheaper rooms on the boat. Then we went up stairs and met everyone and had a large lunch consisting of spring rolls, seafood, lots of fresh veggies and rice. It was so good and served up family style with plenty of food to go around. We ate fairly quickly as we wanted to watch our departure on the top sun deck through the bay with all the other junk boats. It was fairly clear however around the islands there was a little haze. Chook told us that there are only a few times during the year where the bay looks as it does in the pictures (clear) and that it generally follows a typhoon.

Our room on the Junk Boat

sun deck

Departure

Chook our guide

The Bay was beautiful, so many little mountainous islands sticking out of the water, it made you feel like we were in a movie. Plenty of rock formations and lots of details in each rock where the water has eroded it over the years. We sat on the top deck watching for about an our until we arrived at our first destination, which was discovered by the French in 1901 and is translated as Surprise Grato or Sung Sot cave. it was a 3 chamber cave system where each chamber grew in size the further you walked in. There were beautiful stalactites that stretched up to 30 meters high. It was an amazing cave system and the largest I have ever seen (I believe the sign said over 12000 square meters).

Surprise cave

View from entrance/exit

After the cave it was Kayaking time! We left Song Sot cave on the transfer boat towards the Kayak pickup point. Along the way, we were able to see the greatest sun set ever (picture below). We then got into our two person kayaks and followed Chook. He took us through a rock tunnel where upon exiting, we were surrounded by islands in a lagoon. It was very quiet as it was a separated from the bay however there were some loud monkeys scaling the rocks walls, one even threw a large rock attack he Kayaks (it was a big male protecting his group). Then we relaxed a little and some people went swimming including Chel. After this, we Kayaked back to the junk boat. Dinner was a feast once again, and we spent the night with everyone else on the sun deck watching the stars and enjoying the landscape as the other boats had their many little lights on.

Sunset while heading to Kayak pickup point

Kayaking into tunnel

Our Junkboat, it's law that they are all to be painted white

The next day we went to a small island with an observation pavilion at the top of it. It was a 450 stair climb and at the top, a 360 degree view of Ha Long Bay. After climbing back down, we spent an hour swimming at the beach and playing volleyball with our group.

View from pavilion (lots of stairs to get up here)

Then we transferred our things to a smaller 2 story boat with no rooms as this would be our boat for the day to Cat Ba island. It first brought us to Cat Ba national park where we did some easy biking around the park to a small village that sat in a large flat piece of land surrounded by mountains. This is where we began some more intense trekking through the mountains that surrounded the village. We hiked to a small cave tunnel where we did some rock climbing and Chel did one crazy rock climbing decent that incorporated holding on to a tree root. She did very well and it was pretty crazy, luckily  she had our guide Chook instructing her in fine detail. After that we hiked down the jagged limestone back towards the village. There were many steep parts and the rock was quite sharp so everyone took their time. We arrived back at the village and hopped on the bikes to ride back. The ride was quite scenic and someone managed to break another bike. I guess I am too hard on these old bikes.

Jellyfish we saw on Dock of Cat Ba National Park

Scenic ride in the park

Entrance to village

More biking

Cave climbing

Crazy Chel scaling the wall

Shrimp display

kayaking day 2

We decided to stop on an island with a small beach

As we left the national park, we headed towards Cat Ba City as our second night was in a hotel. This is where Chook started giving us updates on the Typhoon, or as everyone was calling it....The Super Typhoon Haiyan. We saw 100s of boats coming into the bay from the South China Sea, and it was a little concerning for two reasons: 1) we were headed the opposite way and 2) all the boat staff was filming the fishing boats coming in claiming that they had never seen this many boats come in at once. It was a little relieving when we turned into a path towards the city away from the boats coming in, and even more relieving when we arrived at our hotel which had a balcony facing the water where we saw a lot of boats, I guess some of them were making there way to this part of the bay. Where we docked and where our hotel was located was about a 20 min drive over the island. That night everyone kept on the internet checking out the typhoon news. We all went to dinner together and Chook informed us our boat was cancelled for the morning and we would be waking up early to catch the more stable car ferry back to Ha Long city.

Line of fishing boats coming in from South China Sea because of Typhoon Haiyan

The next day we returned safely to Hanoi with no affects of the typhoon, it had slowed down. The following day we had rain from the typhoon. In summary, the Ha Long Bay trip was amazing, something that I will never forget and something that I would have no hesitation in doing again.