Hanoi and Halong Bay

Hanoi is the capital of the north and I expected it to be much like Ho Chi Minh City. I was happy to find it much prettier and easier to navigate with narrower roads for easier crossing. Along the way people kept telling me how cold it was up there, but being Irish, I found that 16 degrees a perfectly normal temperature. At the heart of Hanoi is a large lake, adding to its beauty. Everywhere decorations were being put up for Tet, which is the Vietnamese new year, which this year was falling on the 9th of February. Although it might have been interesting to see, I planned to be well out of the city by then. I'd been told that everything shuts down for the week and it becomes hard to get around. It's there biggest celebration.

While Hanoi I visited a couple of museums, the first being the Hanoi Prison. It had been around for centuries, first used by colonist French to inhabit misbehaving Vietnamese in horrid tiny conditions. Then during the war, used to inhabit American soldiers. The museum boasts of its fair treatment of the soldiers, letting them celebrate Christmas and how the soldiers called it the 'Hanoi Hilton' cause it was almost like a hotel. We were shown videos of smiling Americans having a great time. A quick google search however would reveal a different side to the story, where inhabitance were tortured and forced to sign anti america declarations.

We also visited the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, but thanks to bizarre and awkward opening hours didn't actually get to the Mausoleum part. We did however get to go to the most bizarre museum I've ever been in, which was the Ho Chi Minh museum. It was a strange conceptual place where it seemed that they were trying to bring the audience into his head, illustrating his thoughts and ideas through post modern installations. Bizarre. And to add to the bizarreness I had a couple of different groups of young adults want to get there photograph taken with me. I can only guess because of my white skin and blonde hair. I politely declined.

While at Hanoi I also did an overnight trip to Halong Bay, although it was entirely the wrong time of year for it. The morning we left it was lashing rain in Hanoi, but during the three hour bus trip to the coast it stopped, but remained misty and cloud. It's a world heritage site and in the bay are more than 2000 islands of limestone mountains. Although it was pretty cold it wasn't so misty that we couldn't see anything, it was pretty cool to see these beautiful islands appear out of the mist.

We'd booked our trip through our hostel, it was the 'Castaway Tour' trip and was more expensive than most. Had it been sunny it probably would have been worth the money, as your brought to the hostels private beach on one of the islands where we stayed the night. Because it was so cold the only thing to do was drink, which was basically what we'd been doing the whole time on the boat too! It was good fun and there was a good and very interesting mix of people. My least favourite were possibly the 14 Irish nurses who had been singing our national anthem and randomly speaking in Irish for no reason whatsoever. Being around them was worse than being in Coppers. Another interesting character was a guy with I Love Cork scribbled on his arm, but was infact English. I never saw him wearing a top, just shorts, and it was cold. He had an invisible dog who's name he'd call randomly and run after. He also liked to show you where he wet himself a bit and I heard he had lots of photo in his phone of his and friends penis' dressed up as different characters.
Mostly people were more normal and just good craic. Drinking went on long into the night,drunken deep long conversations were had on the beach.

The next morning I said a sad goodbye to Louk and Karola who were going to Capa as me the Aussies and Rob got the boat back very early to Halong and then the bus to Hanoi. Hangovers all round!

South East Asia begins...

It started with an Emirates flight from Dublin to Dubai. Traveling alone has its plus' but also its cons. My first travel neighbour was a intimidating looking 50+ Belfast man, covered in tattoos and reeking of booze. It would be a long 7 and a half flight I thought. Once we got chatting he was actually an alright guy, if not a little difficult to understand. He soon fell asleep though and I was free to watch movies.
 My 9 hour stop over was nothing compared to Belfast Man, who had 24 hours to wait until his flight to Sydney. We went our seperate ways to get lost in what is an impressively large airport. After walking the whole length of Duty Free, I still had 8 hours to kill. So after a well needed salad, I found a wifi signal which took up an impressive 3 hours. The rest I spent trying to sleep on a plastic chair. It was 4am there, but to my body it was only midnight. Unbelievably it was the cold, from the overly air conditioned airport, that kept me awake. Then at 5.45am the call to prayer was played over the intercom, jolting me from a sort of slumber.

Finally flight number two, Dubai to Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. It looked like I would be sitting alone, until about 40 minutes into the flight an air host came over and asked me would it be ok if a lady came to sit beside me as she was having trouble with some drunk men in the sits beside her. I said of course. We landed later than schedule at 7.30pm. I mostly slept for the flight but we got chatting after. She was traveling alone also but doing a tour starting from HCMC. She said she had thought about doing it all alone but chickened out and said I was very brave. Brave or Stupid? hmm. She was Polish, but living in Dublin. We decided to share a taxi from the airport. She'd also met a bubbly Thai woman in Dubai airport who was on our flight. She told me she had been stopped in Dubai airport and strip searched and they accused her of being an illegal immigrant. Poor thing, I thought. The three of us stuck together going through emmigrations and then our bags were scanned again on the other side. Thai Woman got pulled aside and asscorted with three guards, along with her bag. After about 10 minutes of waiting and soul searching we decided to go on without her, not knowing just how long she would be, or even if we really trusted that it was just very bad luck that she would get stopped twice in her trip.

Both having heard lots of stories of taxi drivers ripping customers off, especially from the airport into town, we tried our best to get a reliable taxi, with a meter. We got one with a meter, but we still got ripped off. Something I actually didn't realise until the day after, mostly owing to the Vietnamese Dong being the most confusing currency I have ever encountered.

I arrived safely to what I thought would be my hostel. But I was told they were going to put me in their sister hostel, that it was brand new and lovely. I said that was fine. What I didn't realise was that I was expected to hop on the back of a motor bike to get there. And so, within 10 minutes of being in HCMC I broke my 'No Motorbike' rule. The traffic in this city is like nothing I've ever seen. There are few traffic lights, or rules seemingly. Its like a constant game of chicken, whether you're the motorbike or a poor pedestrian battleing several lanes of cars and motor bikes with no decent crossing.

I got there in one piece, in what seems to be a work-in-progress Hotel, which is currently operating as a Hostel. It is nice, clean and new. I crashed at 11pm exhausted with jet lag but excited!