June 13, Last day in Hanoi

We haven't posted in a couple days, because we took a little trip out of Hanoi to Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island that was a lot of fun.

Before we left for the boat ride, we spent June 10 walking around the Old Quarter of Hanoi, taking in all of the sites. And of course, we did some shopping. We found a really great Vietnamese antique shop, with gorgeous embroidered textiles, hand woven baskets, old tools, and various artifacts. We decided to get a couple of things, but were still browsing, when a man came in who struck up a conversation with us. He was originally from New York, but moved to Hanoi a couple years ago to be an antique dealer. He told us that he buys everything in his collection from this one particular shop, but that he sells his wares to Western museums and high end collectors. He looked at the basket we had picked out, and told us that the Natural History Museum had just bought 100 just like it from him, and they were one of his biggest clients. We knew we were in the right shop. Now you will have to come visit our apartment if you want to come to a museum where you can touch things.

That night, we went to a "bar" and had some beers with the locals and a few other backpackers. The bar bore a striking resemblane to the restaurants that we have been eating at- a collection of little plastic stools strewn about the sidewalk, with a woman tapping a keg instead of making soup. The scene was a riot!


Yesterday morning we got up early and caught a bus to Halong City for a Boat Ride around Halong Bay. The trip was half of the adventure. Hanoi is filled with places to book tours and bus tickets, and they are all dirt cheap, but you never really know what you are going to get. First, the vans that they pick you up in are made for 16 Vietnamese tushies, not 16 American tushies, but they squeeze you in anyways. We were lucky that our van was not full.

We made it down to Halong City, and we were handed off to another tour group and had lunch before boarding the boat that would take us though the bay. Once we got to the dock, we saw that there must have been at least 50 boats there, waiting to take tourists out. Every single one of the boats was a huge wooden junker, and ours had about 30 people on it, so there was plenty of room to stretch out on the top deck to get an optimal view. We befriended some other backpackers and watched the view as they jammed out on the guitar, sax, and yukalele. Halong bay is peppered with these majestic little mountains rising right out of the water as far as the eye can see, and in all directions. The scene looks like something out of a traditional Chinese landscape painting. We stopped on one on the small islands and trekked into a cave that opened up into a huge cavern. Though the Vietnamese had put up colored neon lights everywhere for some inexplicable reason, the sight was still amazing.


Then we climbed back on the boat and sailed a little longer, jumped in the waters of the bay just for good measure, and were dropped off on Cat Ba Island. We had paid extra to stay on the boat (as had everyone else we met), but we were told that a boat had sunk the night before and a tourist had drowned. We were skeptical since we had ran into a couple who had been given the same story only days before. In other words, the same ship seemed to be sinking multiple times. Just another scam, but it worked out for the best. Cat Ba Island was hospitable enough. We hit up a local bar with the friends we had made on the boat and had a good time.

Yesterday, we sailed back to Halong City and were driven back to Hanoi. The trip back was fun because our new friends had a travel version of Scrabble. Jillian won, as usual, but they put up a hell of a fight and it came down to the last round.


Back in Hanoi we wandered through the Old Quarter a little more, had another meal of soup with rice noodles (washed down with some gelato) and went back to our favorite street corner bar for some 12 cent beer.


Today, we are going to take a bicycle tour of the countryside, checking out a pagoda, a commune, and some rice paddies along the way. Tonight we will board a bus for Hue and make the 12 hour journey overnight.

That's all for now!
Love,
Jillian and Ari