Hanoi and Halong Bay

Hanoi, the last stop in Vietnam and the perfect end to a gorgeous vacation! The Aliens and I arrived in Hanoi on Thursday evening and were immediately pounced upon by multiple taxi drivers offering to take us into town. The going rate seemed to be $10USD which sounded a bit steep especially having just come from Cambodia. So we insisted that we pay via the meter instead. We regretted that decision about 20 minutes into the drive when the meter mockingly flashed 1.6mil dong ($10) before rapidly continuing on. Our driver then managed to burn up even more meter time by what seemed to be the most indirect route to our hotel. Our second mistake was telling our driver that 2 of us did not have hotel reservations but had picked up a name from the guide book that they wanted to check out. The driver had been yakking on the phone to someone while we were on our way to the hotel. Apparently he had called his buddy who was waiting for us in front of the supposed hotel we had requested. Curiously the hotel name we were parked in front of did not match the one we wanted. The guy had a business card of the hotel and told us that the hotel name had changed and all of the rooms were booked but he could take us to another hotel across the street. Fortunately this exact scenario was described to us in our guide book where taxi drivers try to redirect tourists to shady hotels to benefit from profits. Elena, the revolutionary one in the group immediately sniffed out the scam and demanded that the driver take us to the real hotel. She also declared that we would not be paying the meter and that we would only pay $10. Our driver then got more agitated and starting cursing us (or so it seemed) and long story short we finally arrived at our desired destination and chalked the experience up to a lesson learned. At least we got a mini tour of the city with all the driving that we had done!

The next morning we met up with Sarah and Tyler at the Huc Bridge over Hoan Kiem Lake. We spent the morning walking around the Old Quarter and making arrangements for a tour to Halong Bay.

I finally got to try Mangosteen which is Sarah's favorite fruit. Look how pretty they are!

Scenes in the Old Quarter:

A blurry shot of the water puppet show:

I have to admit that I was not that impressed by the water puppets and found myself dozing off a bit (ha ha - I'm sure that my friends Joe and Jody would not be surprised by that) Everyone else seemed to love it though and Tyler says that I have lost "my sense of whimsy" Ha ha, perhaps I have but I blame my anti-puppet disposition on a long day and an empty stomach!

The next morning we awoke bright and early to hop on a van to take us to Halong Bay. It is about a 3 hour drive to get to Halong City where we boarded our boat. Our group had about 16 people - the others were from Israel, the UK and Japan. The boat was alot nicer than we were expecting as we had bedrooms with private bathrooms. The upstairs deck was where we spent most of our time:

Halong Bay was breathtakingly beautiful and the photos don't do them justice. I definitely want to go back here and spend more time cruising through the waters and soaking up more of the scenery.

Boat jumping time for brave souls. I was not so brave so happily took on the role of photographer:

Our final day in Hanoi was spent back in the Old Quarter looking for last minute souvenirs. Elena and Reiko found an awesome little boutique called Le Vent where I spent over an hour trying on their gorgeous clothes. I bought so much there and spent so little, I was in shopping heaven! I'll have to show and tell when I get home. If you are ever in Hanoi you must pay this store a visit! It is on 103 Hang Gai in the Old Quarter.