Day two in Hanoi started with a walk to the market, dodging the hundreds of mopeds on the way. The fact that there are “no rules of the road” feels strangely liberating - you step out and confidently walk to the other side of the road, without rushing, and pray that you are a big enough target for them to miss (definitely not a problem in my case!).
The market was winding down as the locals tend to visit earlier in the morning, in between their exercises (or tai chi) and heading to work at 7.30am. There was an interesting mix of products on offer - mostly clothes, but also some dried meat, fish, shrimps, mushrooms and nuts.
We jumped on a coach at 10am and headed out to Ha Long Bay, stopping at a pearl farm where they artificially insert a starter pearl in live oysters, which in three years can become a beautiful farmed pearl.
We checked in to a hotel in Ha Long and had dinner on the strip. Not at all what I expected - more like Blackpool, just without the donkeys! Looks as though they are trying to develop it into a Vietnam Vegas, complete with house music pumped into the streets until 3am. It was only a short stop though with an early start the next day for a boat trip out on the bay.
The boat trip itself was great fun, we had a junk boat all to ourselves and a friendly crew. The first stop was a small (but perfectly formed) beach, and I decided a quick, steep, climb half way up the limestone rock (I’d call it a mountain) was in order. The octogenarian Chinese tourists who had made it up much quicker and more easily than me were pointing, putting their thumbs up and laughing. Whether they thought I was a physical manifestation of the laughing Buddha, or that I was about to have an imminent heart attack, they seemed supportive of the fact I’d tried...
Having got a bead on, the next stop was the Ha Long caves. This involved yet more steps and my quads aren’t thanking me for it today. Back to the boat for a fantastic lunch and then to the quay to join the bus for the trip back to Hanoi. Not a very interesting trip, until we hit a buffalo! He was stood in the middle of the road and we couldn’t avoid him, but in the end he was only a little dazed and seemed fine...
(The use of the car and motorbike horn in Vietnam is worth a note - from what I can tell it can mean any number of things - “don’t you even think about it”, “coming through”, “you’re an idiot”, “I’m an idiot”, “I’ve got a ten foot cane of bamboo here, so you better not f*%@ing try anything”!)
Next was the overnight sleeper train to Hue, more to follow...