Day 4 - Sunday, May 3, 2009 - Halong back to Hanoi and on to Hue, Vietnam

Woke up around 7am on the boat, packed up my stuff and woke James and Meghan up to get ready. I thought we needed to get out of the room before breakfast, but it tuned out we didn't. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, toast, cucumber, and coffee. The coffee was quite bad, but Hong Kong has prepared me for even the worst bitter motor oil brews out there.

After breakfast we hung out on the top deck and talked with the others on the boat as the boat putted its way back to the harbor to complete our day. On our way we dropped off 3 people on Cat Ba Island so they could continue on for another night and leave the next day. The docking procedure was a crazy chaotic mess. We watched a lady on another boat that came in too fast fall down a flight of stairs and another woman on the roof almost fall off the front as the boat they were on barreled in to fast to get a good position and rammed the cement pier. There were so many boats in Halong Bay, the tour guide said anywhere from 500-700 boats like the one that we were on. We continued on to the port and had an alright lunch of seafood again. We departed the ship as we crawled and hopped a labyrinth of planks and halls over other boats to make it to the pier. We slugged through crowds of people waiting to depart on their own Halong Bay experience as we were leaving ours.

We met at a van and loaded up on our 3 hour trip back to Hanoi. We lost 2 of the Swedish guys and had to wait around for a while. Finally they showed up and we were off at around 12:30, down the slow and rugged highway. I slept most of the ride, thankfully. We stopped halfway for a break, I bought an ice-cream cone and a Taro/coconut bar for 30,000 VND. Then we loaded up once again and continued our way back to Hanoi.

When we got back, James and Meghan went to find a post office so I stayed back and ordered some food, a dozen spring rolls, sweet and sour pork with rice and a can of soda for 80,000 VND (18,000 VND = 1 USD) The travel company is supposed to come around 6 to bring us to the bus station and our overnight bus to Hue. We bought bug repellent and sunscreen to get ready for Laos.

The spot tracker seems to be a big hit, both James and Meghan have given the link out to their friends and families, it's too bad the computers here don't display google maps very well. Hopefully the overnight bus will be comfortable tonight.

Day 3 - Saturday, May 2, 2009 - Off to Halong Bay!

Woke up at 7 to pack up and eat breakfast. I had an egg & cheese omelet and a fresh baguette with Vietnamese coffee. The van picked us up and we drove around Hanoi to pick up a few more people that would be on the cruise with us. There ended up being 16 people in that 15 passenger van with all their gear too.

It was almost a 3 hour drive to Halong Bay, but it felt pretty quick (probably because I was sleeping like a bobblehead doll in the middle seat of the van). We passed through all the craziness happening on the pier, boats going in and out people boarding and exit all around, and loaded up on our boat. We relaxed for a bit with a cool towel and some flat orange soda, before we took off out to sea.

After an hour or so our lunch was ready. We ate shrimp, rice, tofu, and fish. It was decent food, but there wasn't a lot of it. We went to a spectacular cave first ****(I can't wait to post pictures of this Halong Bay trip and the cave, it was one of the most beautiful breathtaking views I've ever seen).

After the cave we went kayaking in these dual seat, heavy fiberglass boats with 15lb fiberglass paddles, haha. After returning from our hour of kayaking we were able to jump off the top of the tour boat. I jumped off a few times and Meghan has a water proof camera so she got a few shots of us from the water.

After swimming was finished dinner was served and we had fried shimp, beef and vegetable, Bok Choy type steamed greens, this food was also very tasty, but alas left me wanting more when it was gone.

James and Meg taught me to play the card game euchre, i think i almost have it down. Pretty soon our tour guide Kip busted out the Karakoke dvd for a while and some people went swimming again. A 7:30 breakfast tomorrow as we make our way back to Hanoi and then on to Hue.

Day 2 - Friday, May 1, 2009 - Exploring Hanoi Motorbike Style

I want to start posting what I have completed. This post is unfinished I still want to add pictures to it when I get to a computer with a USB drive and if my USB stick isn't toast...

Also keep in mind this is a flashback post...queue harp arpeggio and wavy lines fading to black...

I awoke at 9:30 after a good night's sleep. We headed down for our complimentary breakfast. I had an omelet with cheese and bread with black Vietnam style coffee (which is brewed individually in each cup with a small tin filter that you pour hot water into and it drips down through, almost like the inner cup part of a percolator, this also creates that fine coffee slurry at the bottom of your cup)

We decided to rent motorbikes to explore around the city. The hotel called up a company and within minutes a man showed up ready to rent us 3 bikes at $6 each for the day. James signed them out and we were off in no time. Our first challenge was finding a gas station which wasn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. We pulled in and 50,000 Dong later I had a full tank which was maybe 2 liters of gas.

We cruised around randomly for a while and then parked our bikes by the lake near the bustling downtown area of Hanoi and went to the markets. We were bombarded from all directions by street vendors trying to sell stuff. A lady walked by me with pineapple baskets balancing on a long strip of bamboo, plopped it on my shoulder and threw her hat on me for us to take a picture of. She also wanted to sell 2 bags of pineapple for 50,000 Dong, I wasn't sure if it was a good price or not and ended up buying some (I later found out that I could get the same amount for 18,000 Dong or $1 USD) Oh well you live and learn...



We went over and bought tickets to the famed Hanoi Water Puppet Show

We wandered around some more and ended up walking through a fresh food market and buying some mangoes and some army green with the red star Vietnam hats. We sat with the locals on the street for a bit before mounting up again in search of "The Museum of Literature"

It took us a little while to find it, we parked our bikes and spent a few hours wandering around the museum.

As we were leaving we met a Vietnamese man by the name of Duc (prounuced Dook, very quickly) He was from Ho Chi Minh city and was in Hanoi for a few days working for an electric company. He offered to show us around, so we followed him for a bit and ended up back at the lake that we were dropped off the night before. He had some work to take care of, so we parted ways with plans of meeting up after the puppet show.

We took off on our bikes yet again and ended up coming out on a road that ran up the coast. After a few miles of riding we pulled off at a restaurant that was on stilts over the water. We didn't stay very long (there was no English food menu) and the sun was going down. The bikes were also due back at 8pm. We made it back by the deadline only to find out they weren't going to pick them up until the next morning and that we could use them more if we wanted to.

We left the bikes at the hotel as we made our way to the water puppet show starting at 9:15. We bought some mini-pizza things and made our way to a more commercial restaurant serving Vietnamese food but in a more Western (Gweilo) setting and method, but it was still pretty tasty. I had a beef and noodle dish with mixed in vegetables.

We went down to the theater and made it to our seats, it was a smaller venue, probably 200 seats and there was a live traditional Vietnamese band providing the music and lyrics to the scenes of the show. None of the words or songs were in English but I got the idea of the performance. It was pretty good I'm glad I was able to see what the water puppet theater was all about.

After the show Duc called us up and we went cruising again. He brought us to the Hanoi brewery but it was closed. So we stopped at one of the roadside sitdown places. We talked for a while and Duc ordered a bowl of food for all of us to share, we were still pretty stuffed from the dinner we had earlier so we didn't eat much.

We were all pretty exhausted from a long day of constantly being on our guard riding the motorbikes up and down the busy streets. Duc showed us back to the hotel and we bid farewell to our gracious host. Off to bed for our early rise on the way to Halong Bay tomorrow!