Warming up to the cold north…
After the pure relaxation of southern Vietnam, we decided to not take the 12 hour bus ride and instead caught a flight north to Hue. It was a bit drizzly and cool there. This was odd to us as we hadn’t seen any type of precipitation for quite some time. Still, we enjoyed ourselves, rented bikes and made the best of it.
After Hue, we again forewent the 16 hour bus ride and caught a flight (good thing the domestic flights are reasonably priced!) to Hanoi. We land… over the load speaker comes “it’s 5 degrees outside”… quick conversion makes that aound 42 degrees F outside… and it’s raining. hmmm. Unexpected to say the least. So, dressed inappropriately, we head out to get a transport the city. We find a mini-bus that will take us for 2USD per person so we hop in. The way mini-buses work is that they wait to fill up before they head out. So we wait.. and wait. Finally, almost an hour later, we’re off. We get to the city center and it’s drizzling like in Hue, only it’s the kind of cold that goes right to your bones. After the calm beach atmosphere of the coast, the hustle and bustle has us a little caught off guard but finally we find an accomodation and settle in. Of course, this city doesn’t seem to have heat (at least at our price range), so it was very good that we had sleeping bags 😉
We took a walk around the late in the Old Quarter and found some decent food. The next day we checked out the water puppet show that is famous in vietnam. It’s looks something like this:
The next day we left Hanoi for a boat tour around Halong bay. Halong bay is quite beautiful. It reminded us of the ferry from the North Island to the South Island of New Zealand. With the wind, being on the boat was quite cold. It was OK though as we had some good company with a few Ausie’s and Germans we made friends with. Also, the guide on the boat gave us a good lesson on how to speak some vietnamese which was nice.
When we arrived back in Hanoi, the rain had let up and it was nice out. The temperature had risen and we started to feel the life of the city. It was a very nice city once we settled into it.
Now we’re off to Laos which should be warmer. Can’t wait!
Dan
Tags: hanoi, hue, Vietnam
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