The Indochina Adventure, Part 4: Hanoi and Halong Bay

Day 9

We departed from Hue after just one short day! We flew north to the city of Hanoi, which used to be the capitol of Vietnam.  We had to take another tiny plane to get there, so we decided to grab some of our friends and snap a pic on our way out!

Actually we saw a photo similar to the one above in a magazine on the plane, and were inspired to snap some glamour shots with every plane afterwards.

Katie nailed it in this one.

We were picked up at the airport by our new guide, who I think was named Tuan. He was holding a sign with my name instead of the Buhler's. Shows who's the boss I guess!

Our first stop was to visit the Museum of Ethnology, where we learned all about the different native peoples of Vietnam and the surrounding area.  It was really interesting, but I didn't take any pictures...so, sorry.

Next it was off to the Temple of Literature, where we saw the above display. There were a lot of students with caps and gowns taking graduation pictures there.  Our guide assured us they were PhD students, but they all looked to be about 15. 

I reverse photo-bombed them:

We read some giant books made out of roses

Took a few (or a ton of) imitation pics

 Not really sure how good of a Vietnamese character Katie makes,

but she does make a GREAT turtle:

Shout-out to Lindsey Frey:

A Quasimodo pic in front of the bell just for you!

After taking the array of horrible pictures you just viewed, we were taken on a bicycle rickshaw tour of the city!  Here we are geared up and ready to go:

 We cruised through the city on these tiny bikes amongst thousands of motorcycles. At one point I thought for sure I was going to be smeared across the pavement by an oncoming bus. 

 Here are some of the pictures I took on our ride:

So much water, you can't even see the man on the motorcycle 

So many unanswered question on this one...Why is the cow so stinking happy? 

 Carrying EVERYTHING on the bike.

If there were ever a problem, how would the electrician ever be able to figure out what was wrong?

A nice little video to demo the streets of Hanoi. This video really doesn't even do it justice.

Finally we made it to our hotel, the Metropole, which is the oldest hotel in Hanoi. It was located in the French Quarter of Hanoi, named for the French influence seen in all of the architecture.  The hotel was beautiful!

After freshening up, we went out into the city for some more shopping!  There were TONS of cute clothing stores, which I really wasn't expecting. Plus everything was priced between $10-$15 and you could usually haggle down the price a few dollars.  It was GREAT.

The last event for the day was a water puppet show. Apparently it is one of the things Hanoi is famous for.  Although the show wasn't located too far away, we were all really tired from walking around all day, so we decided to call a taxi.

You think taxi drivers in the US are crazy...

Here is the play by play of what happened.
We were sitting at the front of the hotel when we looked up just in time to a see a taxi pull onto the one-way street that runs along the hotel going the WRONG WAY and cutting off 3 or 4 motorcycles in the process. Naturally, this was our guy. We got into the car a little apprehensively (for GOOD reason).  I was not so much fearing for my own life as I was for the poor people on bikes and motorcycles all around us.  The driver had no problem tearing across the 4 lane street right in front of bikes, cars, motorcycles, and even buses!!  We were terrified we were going to slam right into somebody.  By some miracle, we made it to the show in one piece. I think the 3/4 of a mile journey took us about 30 seconds.

Katie snapped a few pictures at the water puppet show. It was pretty cool except I was suuuuper tired and it was a struggle to stay awake in the dim lighting.

The puppeteers basically stood in waist deep water and moved their puppets around from behind a screen. This last picture was taken at the end when they came out to take a bow.

Because of the terrifying taxi experience we had on the way there, we decided it would be best if we walked home.  This turned out to be a good idea because we ran into some break dancers in the park!

We watched them for awhile because they were REALLY good.  There were tons of people gathered at this plaza to watch them!

Back at our hotel I snapped a picture of one of the paintings that was just a little bit strange.

Looks like some giant mutant bunnies and some lady with binoculars, with a small helicopter and wait...ARE THOSE LOUIS VUITTON LOGOS IN THE SKY?

Yes. They are.

Feel free to interpret the symbolism here, because it's got me stumped.

Day 10

We checked out of our beautiful French hotel room and headed off to Halong Bay, about four hours away from Hanoi.  When we got there, we were advised to bring only a small bag, so I threw a few things into my backpack and we headed out to our boat, the Halong Jasmine.

There were 24 rooms total on the boat, but I'm not sure if all of them were full or not. There were more people there with us than I expected, but it made for a really fun time because everyone was from all over.  They serve tons of seafood on the boat (surprise!!), and most of it is pretty good.

Halong Bay is STUNNING!  There are thousands of islands scattered all over the place and it's not like anything I've seen before.

This is a picture taken from the upper deck of the boat.  Everyone loved to just lounge around up here and enjoy some drinks and the sun.

After a little R&R we visited this gnarly cave on one of the islands.  It was really big and apparently some human remains had been found there dating back a really long time, so they think it was once inhabited by humans!  We snapped a normal smiling picture...

Then it was time for more urban shots. It was the PERFECT setting, so we couldn't pass it up.

Maybe I'm a vampire or something.

Cave creatures.

Reed even got in on this one!!

I also did some fake exploring.

After the cave visit, we were taken by rowboat to a floating village!  This was absolutely crazy.  This village had 108 inhabitants in a bunch of houses lining a small cove.  We were told that many of the citizens are born on the water and live there their whole lives, without ever really visiting the mainland!

 A few of the houses in the floating village

 They gave us some nice life vests and hats to protect us from the elements while in our rowboat.
Lookin' fresh as always.

 A lot of the houses even had pet dogs!

 All the kids were waving at us and yelling "HELLO!"  So so SO cute.

 We saw some MASSIVE jellyfish.

We were able to stop at one of the houses and have a look around. Somehow they managed to get a working TV out in the middle of the bay!

 The kitchen of the house

 A view of almost the entire floating village. I could not believe how resourceful these people were!

We headed back to the boat and snapped this pic of our room. Pretty classy eh?

 Then we got to swim at sunset!  We were in the middle of the bay and they allowed us to jump off the boat and swim.  There was a man keeping watch for jellyfish, which made me a little less nervous but I still had trouble keeping my mind off of the 2 foot wide jellyfish we had seen earlier that day.
The water was the perfect temperature and beautifully clear.  I think this experience was my definition of paradise.

Day 11

We got up early to attend a tai chi class on the upper deck.  It was slightly drizzling the entire time, which added some extra fun.  The teacher didn't say anything the entire time, we were just expected to follow her movements.  I think tai chi would be really cool once I've had some practice, but for the class I was absolutely horrible.  

After the class we were taken to a beach on one of the tiny islands in Halong Bay. We were able to climb some stairs and then hike to the top of the island, where a gorgeous panoramic view of the bay greeted us.  The 10-minute hike was probably the most energy I had expended since coming to Vietnam.  

 Katie and I at the top of the island

View of the other side of the island.  It was incredible.

After a little swimming and sun bathing, we headed back to the Halong Jasmine to return to the mainland.  Because the bay was such an awesome place, I really wished we could have been able to stay longer!  Upon reaching land, we met up with our driver, who took us back to Hanoi so we could catch our flight.  This was the last day we would be in Vietnam, and I was really sad to leave!

We were sent all over the airport looking for our flight (the driver failed to give us ANY information about it...he didn't even know the airline we were flying on), so after about 30 minutes of walking around and asking everyone in sight about flights to Luang Prabang, Laos, we figured out that we were switching airlines and flying on Lao Airlines instead of Vietnam Airlines, like we had been the whole time.  This flight turned out to be almost completely empty, and it was another prop plane.  I don't know how I forced myself onto so many terrifyingly tiny consecutive flights...

To be continued