Leaving Hanoi and Ha Long cruise

By Monday, when we were due to leave Hanoi, we had had enough of the breakfast at the hotel. On Saturday morning, we were asked "Eggs?" when we arrived at breakfast, so we said "ok", although I really wanted the noodles with beef, chillies, peanuts, and beansprouts that the staff were eating when we arrived. Eggs arrived. Absolutely destroyed, drenched in grease, two horrible fried-to-death eggs. This was accompanied by two slices of poor white bread and sweet red stuff that was probably supposed to be jam. We got coffee because we had already discovered that it was not possible to get the nice looking green tea that the Vietnamese were all drinking; tourist are given Lipton tea, which is like Tetley, but not as good. So on the Sunday morning I had asked "Is there any choice, could we have a Vietnamese breakfast?" - "No. Eggs." so we had the same again.

So on Monday we said "No eggs, thanks" hoping we might get more bread instead, or something else, but it was just two slices of bread with red sugary stuff. Apart from the hotel breakfast and their refusal to give us green tea anywhere, I was quite sad to be leaving Hanoi; I don't think we really saw enough of it, and I felt like I was just getting to know it -- and it seems like a fun place, where the cheap food was good (apart from hotel breakfast). However we have to keep moving to get places, and we were stll keen for warmer weather as, although the 20C we were blessed with in Hanoi was a huge improvement on the freezing temperatures in China, it still wasn't really the beach weather we were keen to get some of.

We caught our bus to Ha Long Bay, where we were going on a boat trip. Half way to Ha Long we stopped at a service station. By that time we were already starving, having foolishly rejected the eggs that morning. Unfortunately we had run out of money, so all we could afford at the very expensive tourist trap full of vases and the like, was a wee packet of biscuits between us. We hadn't thought to buy food in advance, but we did make sure we had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of lemonade, along with our usual supply of water, as we were sleeping on the boat that night and figured that the booze would be as expensive as their captive consumers could stand.

Floating village next to fish farm

We were able to draw money when we got to Ha Long Bay then, on the boat, we realised that the booze was not as dear as we anticipated, but their was corkage charged on your own supplies, which we resolved to keep hidden. After a quick visit to a fish farm run by people who live in a floating village (cheesy techno blasting out of the wooden houses), lunch was on the boat: an unappetising mix of unpleasant fried (whole) fish, fried peanuts, chips, and some salad; not the Vietnamese food we had been buying on the streets of Hanoi, and of course Lipton-not-green tea.

Backlit "Dragons" in Ha Long Bay

A few Chinese people had told us that they call Ha Long "Yangshuo in the water".

It's true that the Karst formations look almost identical to those around Yangshuo, but they are the more beautiful for being in water, or maybe it was just that we could see more of here. Ha Long means "Descending Dragon", a reference to the collection of unusual peaks in the water, which are supposed to be dragons. We sailed through the dragons long enough for us to take far too many pictures of them, which of course we did. The scenery really was stunning, though.

Lime formations

Next stop on our wee cruise was a cave. We've all seen plenty of caves before, and it was like that -- except maybe with a bit more neon that your average cave. After the cave, those of us who had elected to sleep in a hotel, rather than on the boat were dropped at Cat Ba, leaving only a few people, including a pair of Dutch guys we'd been speaking to earlier, Marty and Jochem. They are four months into a trip, which started in Turkey and followed the Silk Route through lots of countries ending in "stan", and lots of places where bribing officials in a daily requirement.

Jochem and Marty (and Santa!)

It sounded like fun though -- maybe for the next trip! We settled into sharing our sneaked vodka with them, and chatted until it was dark (probably about 6.30pm). It gets dark here early in winter, due to the extra hour west of China they've set their clock, despite not being west of China. Back in our wee room on the boat, the staff kept us awake watching loud TV on the deck, but we just finished off vodka and secreted the empty bottle in the same cupboard as someone else had left their empty vodka bottle, and an empty whisky bottle.

Leaving Hanoi and Ha Long cruise

Ha Long, Vietnam