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Vietnam

Hanoi
	On the airport in Hanoi we bought a ticket (US$2) for the minivan which should bring us to the centre of Hanoi. The woman said the bus would leave inmediately. Not completely true, because an English girl was already waiting for 2 hours; the bus would not leave when it was not loaded. After 15 minutes a man said the bus would leave...but we could not come along, only the English girl. Of course we complained, and after a few minutes we were taken to another small bus. That one was already complete full. But a few locals were sent out of the van and we could sqeeze in. Anyway, after appr. 1,5 hours later we finally arrived in Hanoi.
I must say the first impression of Hanoi was that is was too busy, too loud, too dirty, too 'everything'. We did arrive just at rush hour, which means that every street is completely filled with bicycles and cars. We also got used to the quietness of New Zealand, so I think even Amsterdam should have scared us after that. We did find a nice hotel for US$10, not the cheapest one but we had a big room, small fridge, it was not (very) noisy and close to the (tourist)centre. The next day we did a 'walk around the city' tour. Things to see are e.i. the HoChiMinh Mausoleum, the lake, lots of small shopping streets (very cheap CD's en DVD's !!!), war museum, etc. All together Hanoi is not that bad, big and noisy ok, but still it has its charm.

Halong Bay
	We also booked a 'One-day-trip' to Halong Bay, because unfortunately we had to be back in Hanoi the next day. I should advise : DON'T ever do this trip in ONE day. First of all you will sit in a bus for at least 4 hours, than 3,5 hours on a boat and than 4 hours back !!! That is pretty exhausting. Secondly, it is more cheap to do a 2-days trip. Our trip cost US$26 and the 2-days trip was about US$18 !!! Strange but true. Third, you get the most terrible English speaking guide of all. Sometimes this was pretty funny, but he kept talking and no one did understand him. But he tried his best.
Halong Bay itself is amazing. It is very strange to see these limestone rocks comming out of the water like that. Some other tourists told us it just looks like Krabi in Thailand, so maybe when you have seen that, it is no use comming here. We also did not have clear wheather, so the view was not spectacular like you see it on all postcards and books !!. We first stopped at 2 big caves (our guide was talking about '2 kap this, 2 kap that'), containing a lot of stalagnites/-tites. Before we arrived at the caves we had no idea what our guide was talking about, untill we saw the caves. Inside the first cave the local touristcentre put down a number of green, blue and red lights inside. That was a shame, because now it looked like a discotheque. Nearby there was also a floating village. About 10 'boats/houses'were floating around, completey packed with dogs, kids, chairs, containers, nets.... People here live only from fishing. Here we were offered to go on a ride with a smaller boat to go into some small caves. A few hours later we drove back. Finally we arrived in Hanoi, at least that was what we thought. WE only had to cross one more bridge, but they were reconstructing the bridge and it was not allowed to cross the bridge with heavy vehicles. Our driver tried to bribe the policemen, unsuccesful. This meant that we had to take another bridge, some 15 kilometers further away. That took us about 1,5 hours more. After such a long day that is not very pleasant.

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