Hanoi & Ha Long bay

I made it very safely to Hanoi after a long but uneventful 24 hours in my bus

The difference between Hanoi and Laos is immense. Hanoi is truly mental, with endless scooters & traffic, noise, and smells. It was pretty overwhelming.

I had a day to kill before my friend Beth was due to arrive so I took the opportunity to wander round the city. I saw St Joseph’s cathedral, the most important catholic building in Vietnam. I also visited the Hoa La Prison, nicknamed the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ by American soldiers during the Vietnam war. It was very interesting, albeit incredibly biased. (The french are “brutal oppressors” whilst the American soldiers were treated with nothing but care and respect… I have my doubts).

Other sights included the Opera house, and beer street (a street that exclusively sells beer). In fact one of the coolest things about Hanoi is the how certain streets only sell certain goods, so for example there is shoe street, silver street, I even saw a grave street.

When Beth arrived we spent some more time looking around the city, and visited train street. It’s a very narrow street that has a train track running straight through it. We grabbed lunch and waited for the train to come. Turns out the train is both massive and fast, see if you can spot me jump when it comes past in the video.

Having had our fill of Hanoi, Beth and I booked on to a 1 night 2 day excursion to see Ha Long bay, which is about 5 hours away from the city.

There’s not really much to say about Ha Long bay other than that it is beautiful but hard to capture on camera.

We stayed on a private island for the night, went swimming at midnight to see the bioluminescent plankton, had fantastic seafood cooked for us, and kayaked in the morning.

We are now in Phong Nha, a national park famous for its caves, and are slowly making our way down south for the next 2 weeks

-Eleanor