Winging It and Walking It: Day 32 - 35 North East and North Central Vietnam

Hanoi

The bus to Vietnam from Vang Vieng takes 27 hours.

After much (painful) deliberations and discussions about what to do, we decided to fly instead.

For an extra £50, we'd get an extra day in Vietnam and Jack wouldn't be spewing for 27 hours.

We had to get a 3 1/2 bus journey to Vientiane, then had a couple of hours to kill before the airport.

(I can't remember if I've mentioned how crazy the roads are here and the insane amount of motorbikes and scooters you see aimlessly flying across the road in all directions, like the drivers have a death wish.

It still shocks me to see young children on them, without anything protecting them or keeping them on, other than their parents arm).

We got to the airport really early and it was mega quiet. It's only a small airport and there were only three flights leaving.

We were waiting for the passport control section to open, when an announcement came on the tanoy;

"Can Sophie Christina Smith please come to the check in desks immediately" - repeated twice.

We all walked with sweaty palms downstairs, thinking I was either gonna get deported or someone's framed me with a backpack full of coke or something.

I got to the desk and could hear a really loud ear piercing sound.

My rape alarm had been disconnected in my bag and they thought it was a bomb.

I've never been so red in all my life!

I felt a bit strange about flying. The mysterious and horrible disappearance of the Malaysian Airways flight has been discussed in lengthy amounts, with every group of travellers we've met since it happened.

We thought if there was ever a safe time to fly though, now would be it, with the level of security surely being much higher.

But they barely even checked our passports or searched us.

We did make it to Hanoi safely though and in less than an hour.

Hanoi is a very busy place. The streets are bursting with energy and the roads here are on another level of busy, with motorcyclists seeming to have a death wish for pedestrians, as well as each other.

Aparantly beeping isn't a sign of road rage but more of a friendly warning and cars and motorbikes pretty much do it every few seconds.

We explored and did a walking tour around the old town (without the tour guide).

Every street is full of shops, that seem to have the same theme, Like one row will be full of shops selling teddies and another selling wire baskets.

Street food is available everywhere you turn too. You have to have a strong stomach and a blind eye towards their animal culture (or cruelty) here.

On our first night we saw a man driving a motorbike down a busy street, with about 40 ducks tied to the seat. They were still alive and looked so out of place and confused.

We passed this lady with a netted bag full of frogs on the floor. Some were still alive and climbing over the bodies of the ones that had already died. Similarly, some big fish in a small bowl of water were still swimming whilst the dead ones were floating on top.

Meat is cut and prepared on the streets too.

The beers here are pretty great! Especially the draft aparantly, which I'm yet to try. But so far Halida and a couple of beers here and Beer Lao, from Laos, are much better than Thailand's Chang... and the 'Chang-over' that comes with it!

They're only about 50p too.

Just walking around was fun and I really liked it here. I like how different everything is and seeing the culture change from one place to another.

Some people didn't like it so much though.

The change from smaller touristy places to a big city was maybe a bit too much. Your bed sheets feel damp too because of condensation and at night everywhere can seem a little dirty. Plus everyone beeping outside wakes you up quite a bit.

Our hostel (Hanoi Backpackers Hostel) was cool and full of travellers from all over the world. We went to a comedy night there which was good.

Jack and the lads went out on a bar crawl organised by the hostel, then he came back and woke the whole corridor up on a long Skype call to mum at 3am! (Until he got told off by a girl haha).

The next morning, we left Hanoi and headed out on a boat trip to Halong Bay.

Halong Bay

We were originally planning to do a 'Castaway trip.' But we researched it and found loads of reviews saying you're basically just encouraged to drink none stop and not really see any of the islands properly.

So, we decided to go for a much nicer trip where there'd be no doing shots of peoples nipples or bums (as quoted from Trip advisor).

It's cold in North Vietnam at this time of the year. Some people moaned about this full stop but I didn't think it stopped the islands looking beautiful!

We went to some caves, which were cool but not as death defying as the last ones mind you.

We went kayaking which was funny. It was raining so we got soaked and me and Marie got stuck on some rocks but it was fun and the eeriness made us feel like we were in a Pirates of the carribean film.

We couldn't wait for the hot shower we'd been promised when we got back, especially after boasting to everyone how great our shower looked.

It was freezing cold.

Tea was lovely and never ending. Then we had wine, played cards and the 'name on the head game' until we were awkwardly told to go to our rooms (we didn't know we were getting on a boat where everyone goes to bed at 9pm).

The next morning, we went to a pearl farm and saw them find one inside an oyster! Then we had a cooking lesson and headed back to the harbour and Hanoi

We wanted to go straight from Hanoi to Hue but the bus was full, so we had to spend the night in Ninh Binh.

This was actually our original plan but we realised there's more to do and the weather is much better down south.

Even though we were only on the bus for a couple of hours, we still got a bed and blankets. Me, Jack and Marie ended up with three beds together at the back which was funny!

Ninh Binh

It was pretty much as we thought in Ninh Binh, there wasn't much going on but we did find some amazing street food.

We really wanted to go to Cuc Phuong National Park, which is close to Ninh Binh and is supposed to be lovely and full of amazing animals, like leopards and lions and exotic birds.

But the local bus only stops 20km away and the taxi would aparantly cost $9 each, which is insanely expensive around here.

After pondering about what to do for a while, we decided to go for it anyway, as we didn't want to waste a full day doing nothing.

I'd have paid $9 just for the taxi ride there to be honest, our driver played better songs than we've heard in ages and we had a great time!

When we got to the Nature Park, we figured that it was probably really great 15 years ago but not so much now. There wasn't really anything there and you had to pay if you wanted to go to anything worth seeing.

We did do a stare-death-in-the-face walk up to an observation point though which was fun (once we were all alive on the floor)