the Capital and the Bay

The train ride was again long. Longer than any before it. 14 hours, in fact. It was also the last we would take in Viet Nam. Our last 5 days in this country were spent in the north, the bulk of this time in the country's capital, Hanoi (admittedly, before I got to Vietnam I thought the capital was Ho Chi Minh City - an honest mistake I feel since Hanoi is actually smaller than HCMC).
We arrived into the city about 5:30am, again by bus, and a little too early to get breakfast so we all spent some time in the hotel discussing our dismay at the lack of guidance given by our "tour guide" Nguyen. Lee, Carmel, Jason and I decided to take a taxi to the country's Intrepid office first thing to have a chat with the head of the branch. He was really helpful and understanding and even offered to pay for a group dinner that night, which we graciously accepted but made sure he knew that they couldn't just fob us off with dinner and that we demanded action. Again, I don't want to go too much into detail but as a result, Nguyen and the company came to the agreement that his contract would be terminated in 10 days. This came as a bit of a surprise to me but I think it was probably for the best; if someone is not willing to put in the effort, especially in a profession like this, they should not be employed as such.
With that unpleasantness aside, the city of Hanoi is much like HCMC.. It's noisy, dirty, crowded, crazy.. The difference being that there seems to be a lot more French influence on architecture, and the drivers pay even less attention to you as a pedestrian! You really have to watch yourself here and I can attest to that: I saw a girl get knocked down by a motorbike on a roundabout, a woman with her bike underneath a truck, an 18-wheeler truck which had driven through the front of someone's house, and a man laying on the road who I seriously suspect had been hit and killed a minute earlier. That was actually quite a horrible sight if my suspicion is correct.
The rest of our time that first day in Hanoi was spent trying to follow the walking tour as suggested in the LP book.. A bit of a waste of time in terms of interesting sights, but good as far as an orientation of the city goes. In the evening, most of the group went to see a water puppet show - a Vietnam special, started many many years ago as a source of entertainment in the rice fields - and then the group dinner as organised by Intrepid before popping into a popular jazz bar for a few swinging hits.
Jacob's 19th birthday was on the 21st and we celebrated in the morning with the traditional handing over of gifts. There was a remote-controlled helicopter, a really annoying squeaky hammer and, from me and Lee, a bottle of snake wine. We all then jumped on a bus readying ourselves for our time in Halong Bay.
Halong Bay - a World Heritage Site - is one of those utterly majestic places that you have to visit within your lifetime. I likened the Bay a lot to New Zealand's Milford and Doubtful Sounds, but simply much larger in scale. Shear cliffs jutting dramatically out of the Gulf of Tonkin through the morning mist, thousands of them, one or two boats in the distance dwarfed by these massive islands. The word spectacular comes close. After sailing out into this wilderness for a good couple of hours, we docked at one of the islands for a walk through the biggest cave I have ever seen and some swimming a little later on - although I didn't swim, I was merely a spectator to the antics of the daring few that went diving off the boat into waters the locals were saying were too dangerous due to rocks.. They did it anyway, and everyone survived!
An hour or so later we had arrived at our accommodation for the evening on Cat Ba Island in the bay. The bus driver was insane travelling at around 60km/h around sharp bends - which may be OK in a car but not with a busload of people - so much so that we had to ask him to slow down, which he did for a few minutes.. The island itself was just as beautiful as Halong Bay in that the terrain was just so rugged and for the most part uninhabited. After a short walk around the seafront and the markets, we all caught up for dinner and drinks. I played many-a-game of solitaire with Beth in the local bar and the best we could achieve was 2 pegs remaining. Disappointing.
The next morning was unfortunately rained out and so our optional activities of a bike ride or kayaking were cancelled. Because of this, we basically did nothing for the rest of our time on the island until our ferry back to the mainland at midday. I would have loved another day here as there is a National Park and a few smaller settlements that I wanted to explore. Oh well, maybe next time... But for now, our journey takes us back to Hanoi for the final few days...

Photos:
1. the Water Puppets
2. Bjorn and Anders having a Titanic moment
3. Our captain
4. Majestic
5. Awesome
6. Just beautiful
7. Jeronimo! Anders taking a dip
8. Hang Sung Sot cave
9. Rock star
10. boats in Cat Ba bay