Jade: On a lighter note, we also checked out the Vietnam History museum which is highly recommended for seeing some beautiful Cham sculptures and a very flamboyant lion…. (see below)
Greg: The second and most enjoyable part of our Hanoi trip was the finale: an evening street food tour byHanoi Street Food Tours. We were met by Andrew Conn (friend of Mitch & Tanya, of Bai Xep fame) and our delightful guide, Sunshine, and spent 5 hours consuming our way around the street stalls, bars, and nameless eateries of Hanoi. The selection of food was supreme, and Sunshine was indefatigably enthusiastic. Each stop brought new and wonderful delicacies, and we ate until we could no longer.
Jade; Sunshine and I realised we shared middle names ‘Jade’, only hers was the Vietnamese word which is Ngoc. She took us to sticky rice pancakes, soup noodles, spring rolls and more! Amazing! Topped it off with fresh fruit and coconut milk, coconut wrap with honey and sugar cane. Rice beer and then amazing Ca Phe Sua Chua – frozen yoghurt coffee!!! Kind of like an affogato. YUMMmm this was at the famous Cafe Kong, which is all Vietnamese war themed, there are bars on the concrete windows, and waiters all dress in old military uniforms, uber cool cafe for the young vietnamese kids.Greg:Towards the end of the evening we ended up in the aforementioned war-themed cafe, where the others enjoyed a last drink and we said our fond farewells.
HaLong Bay
Wouldnt this look awesome in our house?!
First sheep experience, we were ferried off on buses out of Hanoi, to a handicraft workshop for do advantaged and disabled people. Joining throngs of other tourists and seeing giant wooden Chinese bling chairs, which we were enthusiastically informed could be shipped to anywhere in the world…hmmm. We were greeted with even more glee by the staff on board our boat, but were also pleased to see the level of hygiene and cleanliness was on par with what we’d hoped. Some of the other boats looked pretty dicey with regards to staying afloat. We sailed out to Halong bay and ironically it was so foggy, we couldn’t see a thing. Oh the irony.They took us to a fairly sad looking beach where a few people braved the freezing waters to swim. (europeans of course). Then we got to kayak around a beautiful inlet lake. Great fun, Greg “feels like we are in a bonsai display”. After dinner we were promised activities, like squid fishing – where staff said you could catch 30 or 40 in an hour. They showed us how to slap the water with a fishing rod, and a large light but the squid never appeared…I wondered if they were somewhere else laughing at us…
I did learn however there are many different ancient tribes in the area and the steep and sharp limestone rocks make climbing and settling on the islands impossible. So they are all based on the water.
With beautiful rocks and limestone peaks Ha Long Bay is amazing, however I would definitely check what season to visit in, I hear Autumn is best. This time wasn’t great, foggy, overcast and not much visability. As you can see Greg took almost no photos (shock horror gasp!).
Soon it was time to leave, and we headed onwards through South East Asia to ……Laos.Read all about it in our next blog Loving & Living in Luang Prabung.As always comments and messages of awesomeness are welcome ; )Love Jade & Greg
Subscribe to Jade & Greg Travel and get them sent to you!
We promise to send you only great monthly emails. Unsubscribe at any time.
