Hanoi and Halong Bay – first stop in Vietnam

Hanoi was a welcome change after almost seven weeks in China. Already on the bus to the city center I spotted some differences to China. Of course the differences are massive and Vietnam is independent from China and has adopted it’s own writting system. Some remains such as Chinese characters can however still be seen on some buildings. Also it is the Abroad-Chinese, who run the more successfull businesses. The things you’ll notice in Hanoi are the narrow but long buildings. Apparently the tax was payed according to the width of your house. Then there are millions of motorbikes and scooters that jam roads everywhere. Crossing the street is an adventure on it’s own. Best is just to start walking and hope the drivers will avoid crashing with you. In Hanoi there are only a handful of high-rise buildings. Therefore the city is flat and stretches far out.

Hanoi Backpackers was my Hostel of choice. It is located near a church in the old town. It was easy to find good street food nearby. Typicall food comes in a bowl with soup, noodles, meat and mint. This is called Pho. Usually people eat on the pavement and sit on tiny little chairs and have food with cold green tea. Ice cream is very popular too, we got to try it on the free walking tour offered by the hostel. Lots of locals parked their mopeds in the front of the ice cream parlor and enjoyed a break. The ice cream was Fresh and served on a stick without any packaging. I tried the rice flavoured one but preferred the coconut and chocolate one.

Hanoi has lots of museums and some of them are worth visiting. We went to the Nature History Museum, which was not that great and to the History Museum, which was much better. The latter covered the French colonization and the various wars. Most of the artefacts and pictures where described in English. In the evening we went on the pubcrawl organized by the Hanoi Backpackers Hostel. Backpackers from all over the world joined in and we had a fun time together.

The day after I was in for the Halong Bay tour. Starting at 8am a bus picked us up at our various hostels and drove us to the 170km far away Halong Bay. In Halong Bay we changed to a small boat that brought us to the bigger boat, which we had spent the day and night on. I let you judge from the picture below whether or not we were alone.

On the water and in the rain that’s how we started our cruise around Halong Bay. The scenery reminded me a lot of the one in Yangshuo. We were surrounded by karst mountains, which are said to be dragons (depending which of the stories you like most). On the first day we had lunch on the boat and went to see the cave soon after. It was interesting to see the caves and listen to the stories our guide told us. Then we had some time to climb up one of the mountains and enjoy the view from the top. Back down we jumped into the water to refresh. Fortunately the weather was much better by now.

Shop-Boats where a new concept to me until the Halong Bay cruise. Basically women with a little rowing boat filled with food and drinks would row up next to our big boat and try to sell us stuff. It was quite funny to watch.

The second day was spent getting onto another boat that took us to Cat Ba island where I stayed in a hotel. I was the only foreigner staying in this hotel, almost all the other Westeners have booked the bungalows. I was supposed to have dinner with 600 vietnamese tourists but instead they allocated me a table right by the entrance where there was no other person sitting. Everyone could see me from the outside and had to walk past me in order to go upstairs for food. Basically I was the White Monkey, a very popular thing also in China. They would hire white people to eat, drink, dance, shop at their place to make it look cool and popular. Anyway I can’t really complain as I got as much food as a table with 8 persons.

We went to see a Nature Park where we had to climb up a mountain. On top oft his mountain was a old rusty sightseeing tower with missing plattform. This thing would not be considered safe in Europe. Nevertheless I climbed up and took a few photos.

In the evening I played cards with a family and their kids by the sea side. I kind of knew the game already from China so it was easy to get started. It is currently holiday season therefore lots of kids where on Cat Ba with their families.