Arriving in Hanoi was a pleasant experience, the touts for transport weren't pushy and we were directed to where we wished to go (a nice change!) without attempts to change our minds, the only mishap was my misplacing of the passport holders with the yellow fever certificates but as we still had the passports it wasn't urgent and we hoped that they were just deep in the day pack.
Traveling the 40km to the city it self, allowed you to start to appreciate some of the differences of Vietnam, the high quality highway which we traveled along had signs indicating cars and motorcycles were to share the main part while horse drawn carts and bicycles used the side lane. The closer we got to Hanoi the more frenetic the traffic became until it reached a point exceeding the worse in Cambodia, still we were assured that it was much better than in Ho Chi Minh (Saigon), oh what we have to look forward to. The traffic had 8-12 bikes running level when no cars were sharing, and would manage to cross at cross roads with none of the lanes appearing to even slow. Looking out at the movement from a restaurant window you became hypnotised watching every more crazy happenings none of which seemed to cause an accident (occasionally all traffic at the junction would pause for one or two seconds as they worked out who needed to move first) My personal favorite was a person wheeling a large sign (about 4 car lengths long) across the diagonal of the road with balloon vendors with their carts and the rest of the normal traffic not missing a beat.
The First Full day we organised to see the water puppets in the evening, only one screening that day. But not much else was done as I made a trip out to the airport to collect those yellow fever certificates from lost and found, an experience just seeing how much stuff sits and waits for collection/identification. The Water Puppets were worth seeing, unfortunately from our position taking photos was pointless and my knees were as squished as on an Ethiopian bus, but the show was very interesting with 14 or so very short little skits performed to traditional music. While basic, controlling the movements of the puppets definitely required a lot of skill. Features of the puppets included fire breathing and water spitting dragons, Acrobatic children that stood on each others shoulders and many more.
We had booked a two day trip into Ha Long Bay where we soon discovered that the voting for the "7 Natural Wonders of the World" was currently taking place, Ha Long bay was in the 21 finalists for a position and every one of the people involved in the trip found a moment to encourage us to vote. The bay was very Stunning with small islands all over (approximately 1969 islands in total we were informed) many of which had been given names by the locals such as cocks fighting, turtle sleeping, the whole bay according to legend formed by dragons who assisted the Vietnamese in a war and decided to hang around rather than return to heaven. We had a wonderful time on the boat with very nice food, the best traditional food to that point.
But it wasn't just sailing, the boat went to "The Cave of Marvels" which is a very spacious series of chambers which are stunning lit up (rather tacky really but still pretty), many of the formations had been named some appropriately, it was a bit hard to argue with "penis rock" or some of the lovers, though most in the group thought that the "dog" was rather more like a pig and a conclusion that some people have very active imaginations. Returning to the boat we headed off to our mooring for the night, once there we started our afternoon activity of leaping from the second story of the boat into the water. This really was a great way of spending the afternoon on board, unfortunately the jellyfish put a slight damper to that activity.
It really was a very nice way of spending a couple of days everything ran smoothly, we will just ignore the sleepless night due to the rats :(, and would like to see what the bay looks like with clear days so you can see many more of the islands at once. Our final activity on the bay was a kayaking trip through a nearby arch into a isolated lake inside an island, quite nice but more arm work than I think either of us wanted.
After a day of recovering we decided to at least look at one of the temples in Hanoi, looking in the guide we decided upon the temple of literature. This temple was built by early rulers partially as a university and a place to study Confucianism, it had a number of ponds (representing elements) together with the traditional buildings containing Steele (stone tablets) which contained details of all the students who graduated from the temple. The item that caught our eye first though was the ceremonial drum which can be seen from outside, this drum would be at least 3m in diameter and 5m in length. The temple was a very nice place to escape the rush of Hanoi, and even to take some wedding photos as we observed.
Having booked our tickets to Hue after visiting the temple, our last day was to consist of relaxing in the hotel and visiting one or more of the museums. The morning however started with me deciding to do a kind deed and collecting some chocolate croissants for breakfast in bed. Departing the hotel it looked like a parade was being orgainsed with so many people in uniform around, my return was rather more interesting as in the intervening 10 minutes barricades were erected either end of the street where our hotel was located and people were not being allowed back in to the area with out ID or proof of need. Having just left to get breakfast I had no guidebook, couldn't remember the name of the hotel, had no mobile to call with and was being obstructed by police telling me to go round (both sides told me this repeatedly.) Eventually I narrowed the requirements to getting through this barrier to having a business card of the hotel, calling them and getting them to accompany me through the barrier, or convince them of which hotel I was staying in. As the last seemed the only option, I grabbed the first tourist I saw with a lonely planet and got the address and phone number for the hotel and decided to make another attempt before finding a phone to call from. This did in fact work with only a little extra persuasion. It was a slightly eerie experience being inside a police blockade where the normal hustle and bustle of Vietnamese streets had dropped to a whisper (well if you ignore the few hundred protestors 3 doors down anyway). We found out that the blockade was due to protests by the catholic priests regarding land in the street, it even made the world news a few days later. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7632095.stm )
But it wasn't just sailing, the boat went to "The Cave of Marvels" which is a very spacious series of chambers which are stunning lit up (rather tacky really but still pretty), many of the formations had been named some appropriately, it was a bit hard to argue with "penis rock" or some of the lovers, though most in the group thought that the "dog" was rather more like a pig and a conclusion that some people have very active imaginations. Returning to the boat we headed off to our mooring for the night, once there we started our afternoon activity of leaping from the second story of the boat into the water. This really was a great way of spending the afternoon on board, unfortunately the jellyfish put a slight damper to that activity.
It really was a very nice way of spending a couple of days everything ran smoothly, we will just ignore the sleepless night due to the rats :(, and would like to see what the bay looks like with clear days so you can see many more of the islands at once. Our final activity on the bay was a kayaking trip through a nearby arch into a isolated lake inside an island, quite nice but more arm work than I think either of us wanted.
After a day of recovering we decided to at least look at one of the temples in Hanoi, looking in the guide we decided upon the temple of literature. This temple was built by early rulers partially as a university and a place to study Confucianism, it had a number of ponds (representing elements) together with the traditional buildings containing Steele (stone tablets) which contained details of all the students who graduated from the temple. The item that caught our eye first though was the ceremonial drum which can be seen from outside, this drum would be at least 3m in diameter and 5m in length. The temple was a very nice place to escape the rush of Hanoi, and even to take some wedding photos as we observed.
Having booked our tickets to Hue after visiting the temple, our last day was to consist of relaxing in the hotel and visiting one or more of the museums. The morning however started with me deciding to do a kind deed and collecting some chocolate croissants for breakfast in bed. Departing the hotel it looked like a parade was being orgainsed with so many people in uniform around, my return was rather more interesting as in the intervening 10 minutes barricades were erected either end of the street where our hotel was located and people were not being allowed back in to the area with out ID or proof of need. Having just left to get breakfast I had no guidebook, couldn't remember the name of the hotel, had no mobile to call with and was being obstructed by police telling me to go round (both sides told me this repeatedly.) Eventually I narrowed the requirements to getting through this barrier to having a business card of the hotel, calling them and getting them to accompany me through the barrier, or convince them of which hotel I was staying in. As the last seemed the only option, I grabbed the first tourist I saw with a lonely planet and got the address and phone number for the hotel and decided to make another attempt before finding a phone to call from. This did in fact work with only a little extra persuasion. It was a slightly eerie experience being inside a police blockade where the normal hustle and bustle of Vietnamese streets had dropped to a whisper (well if you ignore the few hundred protestors 3 doors down anyway). We found out that the blockade was due to protests by the catholic priests regarding land in the street, it even made the world news a few days later. ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7632095.stm )
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