Vietnam

We came to Cat Ba Island for a little relaxation after all our arduous travelling (no sympathy for us I know!), and to our slight dismay we found a beach-front reminiscent of Blackpool.. including the rain! It wasn't actually as busy or built up as the hen-night haven, but it did have the typical neon, flashing lights, tacky trinket sellers and an abundance of karaoke bars. So much for lounging around on the sand topping up our fading tans!

As we lunched by the pier a friendly English couple, (Another Andy and Nicola), told us about a boat trip around the island they wanted to go on, and the more people they enrolled the cheaper it would be! Perfect! We had already planned to do a tour of the islands and these two fellow travellers had done all the leg work for us. We met up later to seal the deal with some other keen parties and then went off to celebrate with dinner and a game of 'Extreme Uno'. It turned out that (new) Andy went to Loughborough Uni too, so we had a good old laugh about Echo's, Pulse, Far Pav, FND, The Purple Onion, Nasty, Faraday.. oh, sorry am I boring you? We did the same to Nicola who had no idea what we were talking about.

So, there was ten of us in total setting off on an adventure into the mysterious waterways, and what a wonderful sight! Hundreds of jagged, elongated rocks just randomly positioned, all odd shapes and sizes, almost like they were just perched on top of the water. We spotted a bunny-shaped one, a dog-shaped one, a sausage-shaped one, and even a giant dinasour one... but I was the only one to see that unfortunately! Away from all the tourist ships it was so serene and beautiful, we floated past quiet fishing villages where people have made homes on a few planks of wood. Most had a seafaring mutt to keep them company who would race up and down there limited playground, barking to keep us at bay.

We were allowed to use the kayaks all day and the captain stopped off at several interesting points to explore nearby caves and crevices. The water was relatively clear and shallow in places, rather disconcerting when you go through a dark cave and get stuck to a rock. Floating through these dim tunnels, not knowing when you are going to emerge caused raucous excitement, Andy and I nearly got our heads decapitated on a low lying, clam-encrysted, stalactite, and i'm pretty sure some naughty bats pooped on us!

Once the sunlight streamed through the cave we became aware of the bizarre yellowy-purpley-rocky-roof, space-like with its chinks and formations. We all followed each other through one small hole with a very tight turning curve, which led us into this secluded blue lagoon. As we marvelled at the surrounding landscape with soaring eagles above us we wondered which way the current was flowing, and then imagined being on 999 Rescue as the tide blocked us in this desolate place with birds feasting on us. I don't think they call 999 in Vietnam though! Trying to navigate back round that L-shaped bend in long banana boats as the water was gushing the other way was somewhat...hilarious. If those kayaks could bruise they'd have been scarred black and blue from all the rock collisions. Firstly everyone took it in turns to try, laughing at the attempts and presuming it can't be that hard! As time was ticking we just piled in like bumper cars and staged a survival of the fittest. The last two stuck had us as an audience chuckling and whooping... which didn't help at all. One of the guys couldn't quite grasp the steering and kept frantically paddling right which unfortunately led them into a lefterly direction, and straight into the rock. We decided to just leave them there to keep the eagles at bay! Only joking!

Some of us braved the jelly fish and took a dip in the cool waters, the jellies are huge here, much bigger than Andy's head, and probably containing more brains! ha! (Not really Andrew). We saw one fisherman scoop one up in his net and when we waved at him he put it up to his mouth to motion 'dinner'... eugh... jellyfish soup! They will certaintly eat anything here. Our arms soon turned to jelly aswell after a few hours of paddling, which wasn't helped by getting lost in the similar looking karsts. When we eventually found our boat again the crew tied us to the back and we were thankfully allowed to justle along behind and admire the view without doing a workout.

To round off our exciting and exhausting day we all met up later for a beer, and at 15p per pint of the local tipple were soon searching for a bit of karaoke.

Flying from Vientiene to Hanoi was a great idea as the prospect of spending 28 hours on a bus journey which would be plagued by scams at the border didn't appeal!
Soon after landing in Hanoi we negotiated a stupidly low price for a guy to take us into the city, 30km away, the alarm bells should have rung. After specifying several times where we wanted to go the driver appeared to take little notice! Sadly all wasn't well and instead of arriving in the vibrant old quarter of the city we arrived in a dark, dingy and empty side street. After a length and heated argument in which with their broken English they told us they didn't want Vietnamese currency but only dollars. This was quite exasperating as we didn't have any dollars, so pushed them aside and gave them some Thai money and walked off, annoyingly they followed us for a bit but soon found a legal taxi.
By this stage we were both a bit frazzled and desperately in need of the sanctuary of a good hotel room. After checking out a few places we stumbled upon a lovely hotel where we promptly locked ourselves away for a night of Sky tv and raiding of the mini bar!

In the morning we set out on the walking tour which is given in the lonely planet book, obviously nearly every other group of travellers had this book and also seemed to be walking the route but it did give us a great insight into the old quarter of Vietnam. The most striking thing was how shops organised themselves, one street would be full of jewellery shops, the next full of clothes shops etc. Along the way we explored several food markets which where amazing and we now firmly believe the saying that they eat anything in Vietnam! We saw turtles in cages waiting for boiling and half a dead dog.

After lunch we visited a theatre to watch a water puppet show. Basically the stage becomes a shallow pond of water and behind a screen puppeteers operate puppets that appear to be floating on the water. Several stories are narrated throughout the performance, none of which we understood but the performances are fantastic and now we have discovered the video function on the camera and short video will be uploaded soon!

It is fair to say that the majority of people who visit Hanoi go on a trip to Halong Bay, famous for 300 limestone rock formations protruding out of the sea and also for Top Gear! We decided against doing an organised tour after our debacle in the Nepal national park even though Lonely Planet’s recommends taking a tour. So we bought a ticket form our hotel to the island town of Cat Ba in Halong Bay thinking we would get there in half a day. Unfortunately it soon became obvious we were to be part of tour for the first day and after seeing how the guides treated the tourists we were glad to leave them at the end of the day. Whilst on the boat to Cat Ba we saw many of the famous limestone karsts and also our first floating village. The villagers now made a good living from taking tourists on small boats into remote caves. It is hard to say whether they are happy having so many tourists and their money or perhaps they would rather be left in peace to live off the sea.

In the town of Cat Ba we found decent accommodation, not a hard task as all the local men seemed to do apart from fish was to build more and more hotels, sadly opting for quantity over quality. The food here was good with fresh seafood available at every restaurant.