North Vietnam

It’s been over a week now since the last blog entry and to be honest, it feels like a month. We’ve been moving pretty quickly and seen 3 new spots. First up was the city of Hue. Lovely little city on the river. The Nuygen dynasty made this their capital in the mid 1800’s and built themselves a fort based on Beijing’s Forbidden City. Their defense system was quite impressive – a moat, then a huge perimeter wall, then a no man’s land, then another moat, then another huge wall. Unfortunately it didn’t stand up too well to the American bombers in the war, so it’s in a bit of a mess now. The following day we rented a boat and went for a trip up and down the river. Nice day out. That evening we went out for a few drinks for Micheal’s birthday and met another 4 Irish people – Shane, Ciaran and Brian from Ballina and Sarah from Meath. They were with us for a week, but we left them now for “safety reasons”. So after that it was back onto the sleeper bus to head to the Northern city of Hanoi. Of all the places we’ve chatted to people about, Hanoi’s Backpackers Hostel was the most highly recommended. It didn’t let us down. Happy hour was 5-6, which seemed a bit early, but was good fun. Very easy place to meet people. The main nightspot was an Irish bar, which has been something we’ve tried to avoid so far, but in fairness it was a nice spot. Good mix of local and home specialties.

The main attraction of Hanoi is as a base for a trip to Ha Long Bay, so the following day we set sail on a ship out to the bay. Absolutely sensational scenery. Lots of tall islands sticking out of gorgeously warm water. The first day on board we went kayaking to a cave. The bay has about 1,000 locals, who live on boats, many who claim to have never been on the mainland. When typhoons hit the area, they use the caves as shelter.

That evening we stayed on the boat, and the 9 Irish quickly mixed with South Africans, Scottish, Canadians, and Aussies to make quite a party. Started off with a few drinking games, onto another danceoff, and then eventually some Olympic diving off the 25ft boat in the middle of the night. The following day we headed to Cat Ba island. Here we went for trek up a mountain. Sounds exciting but found out pretty quickly that "trekking" is just another word for "walking" and walking up a hill in midday heat here is pretty tough. The island is a bit quiet so we just sat on the pier for the evening and sang a few tunes.

So after a 3 day trip, it was back into Hanoi and time to end the Vietnam leg of the trip. Next up is Laos which is very inaccessible. The only alternative to flying was a 24 hour bus journey, which we have been warned is absolutely horrendous.