Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island

Normally, we would prefer not to join tours. In this case though, we were glad we did. Trying to visit Halong Bay independently would have been far more complicated and we suspect, less rewarding. Instead, we enjoyed the best of both worlds by joining a tour through the famous bay and visiting Cat Ba island on our own. Through our helpful guesthouse, we organised to spend 2 days and 1 night on a tourist "Junk" (Big Chinese looking wooden boat with funky orange sails) and a couple days on Cat Ba Island, the biggest and only inhabited island, before being taken back to Hanoi.

Halong Bay is all that people say and should not be missed. It is probably the most beautiful scenery we have seen on this trip to this point and will be hard to top. As our ship was quietly gliding through the tranquil silver waters, finding a path between the hundreds of vertical karstic formations, a french woman was pacing the top deck, soaking it in and repeating in a quiet voice, over and over "ce que c'est beau, oh la la, mais ce que c'est beau..." Her simple words summed it up as sometimes this kind of beauty just needs to be looked at, admired, taken in rather than explained.

Towards sunset, a predictably beautiful time, we all boarded kayaks and went for a quick paddle around some of the islands. We then had a surprisingly feastish dinner, followed by a couple beers with a lovely Swedish couple with whom we exchanged tips and travel stories. They had somehow managed to save up enough money to go on a gigantic trip around the world including S.E.Asia, China, Tibet, Everest Base Camp, Japan and a few other places by working in Norwegian supermarkets for 6 months...Apparently it pays to work in Norway. At a somewhat embarassingly early hour, we all retreated to our lovely little cabins from which talking of a view of the water would be a slight understatement.

Around 10am the next morning, we were dropped off on Cat Ba Island. As our "tour" was then interrupted until we were ready to be picked up from the island, there was a bit of confusion as to what to do with us exactly and we somehow ended up joining the group on a short but steep walk up to the highest point on the island. The view was pretty good although, surprisingly, we could not see any water around. After the trek, we were taken into the centre where we quickly found a guesthouse and started walking around.

Life in Cat Ba is full of contrasts as on one hand, the area around the town is slowly but surely being covered by fancy resorts and ugly hotels, while the rest of the island remains home to a number of small fishing villages scattered around. The main specialties are seafood and Nuoc Mam (fermented fish sauce) as well as pearls although they are of low quality. The town market is full of fresh fish, crabs and squids as well as all of those things in dehydrated form including starfish, cute seahorses and stretched out lizards. We spent a whole day driving around the island on a scooter. We figured that it would be one of our last chances so we made the most of it and had a great time driving up the coast and down through the centre. We finished the day by going to the beach where the water was surprisingly fresh and wavy.

The next morning, we got back on the boat and slowly made our way back to Halong city before catching a bus to Hanoi. The feeling I had was a bit like going home after a week-end away, looking out the window as the outline of the freakish rocks became fainter and fainter until they disappeared completely and we were back in our river of scooters.

Hanoi, Vietnam

We arrived in Hanoi in the early hours, after a long bus trip from Da Nang, a boring town between Hue and Hoi An, which is mainly used as a transportation hub connecting the North and South. After a little bit of searching, we found a decent enough room at "Real Darling Cafe" in the Old Quarter for what was supposed to be an impossible price when we mentionned our budget to Hanoites. The first thing we did was to start the process of getting a Chinese Visa which was to take 5 working days but in a week peppered with public holidays, it meant we would have a bit of time to kill...



We started our explorations of Hanoi by walking around the Old Quarter which is a bustling hub of narrow twisting streets full of scooters on the road and all matter of goods on the footpath. Trying to navigate the two is a challenge at the best of times. The French Quarter, on the other hand, is like a sterile version of Paris with wide streets and handsome buildings without the heart and soul. The city centre is easily manageable on foot and combined with a more agreable temperature, we were able to give our flabby legs (from all the sitting on buses and not a lot of exercise) a good work out.



The next couple days were filled with touristy activities which was also a bit of a novelty after a long stretch without entering a single museum. We started by visiting the National Art Museum which was ok but not great. It seemed that although it could have been a decent collection, none of the artworks were very well preserved or restaured and the general standard of the works was pretty low and crude. On the other hand, some of the art galleries we visited in the centre show that Vietnam has some wonderful contemporary artists, as well as some very crafty copiers of classic works.



We have also taken a new liking for any type of shopping centre to the point where we can not resist visiting one if we even just catch a glimpse of the escalators. We love how delightfully cool and orderly they are. If they have a Nike store or any other brand we know, then it's the jackpot and we spend a few minutes perusing the neat racks of predictable merchandise. It's embarassing but it's true!



On our third day, we woke up especially early to go visit Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum complex and although the waiting lines were a bit frightening, we were both glad we stuck it out as the experience was both sobering and memorable. Uncle Ho's body is displayed at the centre of a dark cool room, inside a glass coffin with uniformed guards at each corner. His face and hands are lit and he appears to be glowing. As thousands of people walk around him everyday, the leader that the Vietnamese revere looks sound asleep. Even the crazy Korean woman directly (and I mean directly) behind us stopped pushing and calmed down for a while.



As usual, the rest of our time was filled looking for good breakfast, coffee and lunch places to add to our list. We succeeded partly as the coffee in Vietnam is divine, strong and sweet. Pho, the staple dish is always a good fallback and we are enjoying the last of our baguette opportunities (before heading to China).



As we seem to now accumulate them wherever we go, we were in the Capital City in time to celebrate two public holidays with the crowds. The first one was "Liberation Day" on the 30th of April, which marks the day when the Viet Minh conquered Saigon and defeated the American army. We celebrated with circus performances and fireworks around the lake. Never had we seen fireworks being greeted with so much applause, cheers and cries of joy. That was something else and we were both stunned, expecting the Western blase attitude to such things. Afterwards, the streets were like a river full of scooters but it wasn't flowing at all. We spent 5 minutes on one street corner contemplating how we might get through as there was not a single gap left between the bikes, only chaos. The next day, we celebrated "International Labour Day" which I suspect people only bothered with because the stage for performances was already set up from the day before.



Our last day wasn't great since I seemed to have an adverse reaction to the widespread use of MSG in the kitchen and spent the day in agony with a terrible headache and nausea. We planned a trip to Halong Bay to fill the remaining time until our passports can be picked up and also worked out the next couple months, through China, Mongolia, Russia and Scandinavia which should get us back to Nice sometime in July.