Hanoi and Halong Bay

Sunday 28th February

Up early for breakfast then minibus to small boat back to rendezvous point. Slightly misty with the karst islands at distance appearing to float above the sea. Reached the Halong Phoenix Cruiser where there was a demonstration of how to make Vietnamese spring rolls. Much enthusiasm for making them, but significantly less for eating the results. Sailed back to Halong city and then minibus back to Hanoi.

Saturday 27th February

Sleep disturbed by the patter of tiny feet on the deck overhead. I knew we weren't sinking because the rats had swum out to join the ship, they were not leaving it.

Woke up later amongst a flotilla of junks in a flat calm anchorage surrounded by islets. After breakfast, cruised to a rendezvous point where we transferred to a smaller boat. Sat on roof as we sailed amoungst islands and sea stacks to monkey island. The boat attempted to make land, but either the tide was wrong or the gangplank too short depending on your point of view. Watched monkeys chase tourists along the beach, and tourists chase them back. The monkeys didn't throw rocks, the tourists did.

Docked at Cat Ba island and a short minibus hop took us to the Holiday View Hotel, a 13 storey 1980's brutalist building but with good size, well appointed rooms. After lunch we hired a tandem and wobbled around town. Although there were 3 gears on the crank wheel and 6 on the rear axle, it was stuck in one which meant pushing uphill. When we returned it, the guy talked us into renting his scooter/moped/motorbike thing. Luckily it had automatic gears and we wobbled off even faster and into the national park along a road only one moped wide. Then we turned towards the sea and completed a tour of about a quarter of the island before it got dark.

Friday 26th February

Minibus picked us up at hotel and drove to Halong bay through a picturesque landscape populated by thousands of peasants planting rice by hand in the paddy fields. Such a waste of human potential and with education, the seedbed of aspirational trouble in the future.

The 'Halong Phoenix' cruiser is a wooden craft built like a Chinese junk, but with spacious, well appointed cabins and very good food. The scenery was magnificent with hundreds of limestone islets with precipitous sea cliffs rising out of an almost calm sunlit sea.

In the afternoon we went by lighter to the Sung Sot cave, a stupendous series of limestone caverns with rippled roofs due to former wave action. The lighter then took us to platform where we embarked in kayaks for a 'hollow' island. The entrance was through a cave, and when you emerged the other side it became clear that the whole of the centre of the island must have been a collapsed cavern. Apart from a handful of kayaks, the only other inhabitants of the island were monkeys although we didn't see any. However above us sea eagles soared imperiously, spiralling skywards on up currents next to the cliffs.

Thursday 25th February

Walked to Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum, a massive Soviet style building with stern faced armed guards. Ho looked serenely avuncular in his glass coffin. His house, cars and lifestyle were spartan and his philosophy possibly as Confucian as it was communist. The adjoining museum was splendid with historical artefacts, art and philosophy all displayed in exciting and entertaining ways.

Then walked to the Temple of Literature which was effectively a Confucian university founded a thousand years ago, failed to book train tickets to Hue, then lunch at the same restaurant as last night.

Back at the hotel, Sandy the friendly receptionist, found that she could only get tickets for us on the King Train to Hue on Monday. However she moved our last night at the hotel to Sunday and booked us a three day trip to Halong bay in between. So we will keep busy and the schedule has only slipped one day.
Then off again to start a walking tour of the old quarter, including a stuffed 250Kg turtle at the temple on the lake.