After a long train ride, where we had to get off for border checks at 1am and 4am, we got into Hanoi at 8am. Not much else was on the agenda for that day as we were pretty buggered.
The next morning we got up bright and early and did a walking tour around the old quarter where we were staying. That took the best part of the day visiting such areas as the lake. All the streets in the old quarter are named after the product in which they used to sell (and some still do)for example cotton street, aluminium street, herb street.
We really noticed the humidity coming back into Vietnam, so we had a bit of rest time in the afternoon.
Over the next couple of days in Hanoi it rained on and off. We did go to an australian run street kid restaurant called Koto. It had really great food there. There was a tour group there also from Australia, there tour leader was a vietnamese chef who used to appear on the bert newton show (I cant remember her name).
We booked a trip to Halong Bay through our hotel (we shouldn't have booked it through them in the end.) So the next morning we got a very bumpy minibus ride to Halong City at 8am.
We boarded our boat at around 11am and our group consisted of 16 of us. 10 of which were Aussies. We settled in for an early lunch we were seated with a Swiss couple in their 40's who turned out not to eat meat or seafood so we had a lot of food to eat.
We headed off cruising out to Halong Bay for the next couple of hours. We got off to have a look at the suprising cave and then an hour of sea kayaking before settling in for some beers. The Kayaking was fun but limited to where we could go.
We all got to know each other a little better after some dinner and drinks. Only one brave soul did kareoke, some people went squid fishing the rest of us just chatted and drank.
The next morning we left a majority of the group and were left with us,the swiss couple and another young australian couple. We were headed to Cat Ba Island. Our days activities included a 20k bike ride, which turned out to be 6k's. A trek of Cat Ba national park, which ended up being a stroll on a track into the start of the forest. It was pretty disappointing. In the afternoon we were dropped at our hotel and left to our own devices.
Matt and I showered and rested before heading off to explore the esplanade. We enjoyed a 2000 dong bia hoi (draft beer in a mug- $1 is around 15,000, very cheap beer.) Which we followed off with a $5 cocktail overlooking the ocean.
We caught up with the swiss once more over dinner and then said our goodbyes as we were heading off in our own direction the next day.
