Hanoi and Halong

A short flight from Hue airport and we were in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam and its cultural heart.

We settled into a small hotel right near Hoan Kien Lake in the historic quarter of the city. Like many of the buildings in Vietnam the hotel was in the architectural style of a tall, narrow ‘Tube House’ – our small room was the entire width of the building.

The central location of our hotel was great for walking around the historic quarter and there was always something interesting going on. Many of the streets have clusters of shops selling the same thing. We saw streets selling lights, hardware and even headstones.

On our first day in Hanoi we asked the receptionist at our hotel for a lunch recommendation and she sent us to a nearby restaurant which soon became our favourite. The ‘kitchen’ of the restaurant was in the narrow alleyway that you walk through to get to the small room at the back laid out with small tables and tiny plastic chairs. We returned to this restaurant a number of times, it was always busy but they never failed to squeeze us in.

The restaurant serves only one dish, Bun Cha. This is a Hanoi speciality of noodles and grilled pork balls served with herbs and a spring roll.  All the components are made separately and then added into a delicious broth and it was really the depth of flavours that impressed. The restaurant is called Bun Cha Hang Quat and we recommend this very highly to anyone visiting Hanoi (it’s only open between 10am and 2pm).

In the Northern part of the Historic quarter is the Dong Xuan market. This is a big non touristy market selling everything from food through to hardware.  There were some stalls with big tanks of seafood and cages in the front holding freshwater turtles. That’s the first time we’ve seen that.

Something that Northern Vietnam is famous for is Water Puppetry. This is an art that has been practised since at least the 12th century. Historically, ponds or flooded paddy fields were used for the puppet displays using puppets carved from fig tree timber (which is water resistant) and suspended on poles from behind a curtain. Now a pool of waist deep water is used in a theatre. The puppets are used to tell the stories of legends and depict pastoral scenes.

We visited the Municipal Water Puppet Theatre for a performance of their Water Puppetry which was entertaining and definitely different. There is lots of splashing water and thrashing puppets. The best bit was the music and singing which was performed live by musicians at the sides of the stage using traditional instruments and was very good.

Situated just over two hour’s drive South of the city is the province of Ninh Binh (pronounced Ning Bing).  This area is famous for its karst mountains and rivers that cut through them. It is a very popular place for a tour from Hanoi and having seen the pictures we decided to check it out for ourselves.

Our first stop for the day was Hoa Lu which was the first capital of Vietnam between 968 and 1009. There isn’t much left of the city that once existed here and covered 300 hectares but there is a complex of temples which are dedicated to the first emperors of Vietnam.

We cycled to the Hoa Lu from a restaurant a couple of Km’s down the road and after seeing the temples we looped back to the restaurant via some rice paddies and around some of the karst outcroppings, where we stopped for lunch. Like all the tours we have been on, it was a fairly bland buffet which didn’t reflect the beautiful food of Vietnam very well.

After lunch it was time for the highlight of the day which was a boat trip on the Tam Coc river. We were duly loaded onto a small boat with room for only two-three people and the rower. The interesting thing about these boats is that the rowers use their feet to push the oars. Some use a bicycle motion and others push the two oars together.

The river winds its way through the karst scenery and passes through several caves where you have to duck your head even sitting in the boat. It’s a beautiful ride.

Our final stop of the day before heading back to Hanoi was the Mua Cave. Now the cave is not much to get excited about but here it is possible to climb up to a high view point on one of the karst pinnacles and the view of the rivers and paddies around is spectacular.

There is a dragon statue at the top of the pinnacle but the path up to it is very narrow and there was a queue of people wanting to take selfies so it didn’t really move.

From Ninh Binh we went onto one of the top tourist attractions of Vietnam, a boat cruise around Halong Bay. This is an area of karst outcroppings that form small islands in the sea. There are a lot of boats here that are basically floating hotels that vary in size, quality and of course price.

As we thought this was probably something you only do once, we decided not to cheapskate it and splashed out on one of the more exclusive boats called Nostalgia, which only had 10 cabins and a jacuzzi on the top deck (much needed as the weather wasn’t great).

The Journey from Hanoi to Halong Bay is around 3 hours by minibus. On arrival at the port in Halong City we were transferred to a tender boat which took us out to the main boat. All of the ‘hotel boats’ stay out in the islands most of the time and don’t come back to port unless they have to.

We arrived at Nostalgia and were greeted with a lovely lunch. The food on the boat was absolutely fantastic and the service from our stew, Green, was friendly and very attentive.

Our first excursion of the day was a visit to Cat Ba island (the largest island in the Halong Bay area) and Trung Trang cave. We left the main boat on a tender and headed to a bay on the island and were then taken by bus {along with people from other hotel boats) to visit the cave. The cave was ok but we have seen far more spectacular cave formations.

After this it was back to the main boat and time for the Jacuzzi while have sundowner cocktails on deck and watching the sunset.

The boat had moved into Lan Ha bay which is a bit further afield than Halong Bay and a little less busy (supposedly) but there were still lots of boats there.

On Day 2 we started with an early morning Tai Chi lesson on deck and spent the rest of the day on a big day boat. The day boat headed further into Lan Ha Bay and we were dropped off at the other side of Cat Ba island where we did a cycle trip to Viet Hai village in the interior of the island. The scenery on the way to the village was interesting and it was nice to have the opportunity to cycle however the village itself was not particularly interesting. We did however get to try Snake wine (wine made in a vat of dead snakes) which was predictably not entirely pleasant!

Back on the day boat we had lunch followed by the chance to go kayaking around some of the karst islands. The weather wasn’t brilliant but we jumped at the chance and set off around the islands in a double kayak, which we really enjoyed.

After the kayaking we headed back to the main boat for sunset (although this didn’t happen as the weather really came in), a cooking class where we learnt to make Vietnamese spring rolls and dinner.

The next morning we were given another opportunity to go kayaking, at 7.30am. Either the early time or the persistent drizzle failed to entice the rest of the guests onboard but we had a lovely kayak around the bay, which was particularly peaceful at that hour and gave us the chance to see some local fisherman and watch the birdlife. We were quite wet and cold by the time we returned to the boat but that was soon remedied with a dip in the jacuzzi followed by a warm bath back in our room.

After this, there was just time for an early lunch before we were leaving the boat and reversing the journey back to Hanoi.

We both really enjoyed the trip and the service and the food on the main boat was very good. However it did feel a bit rushed despite having done the three day/ two night trip. Many people only do two days/one night trip and you barely arrive before you are leaving again. We were there in low season and unfortunately the weather wasn’t the best but there were still a lot of boats. High season must be very crowded.

It is also worth mentioning that we were offered the chance to swim off the back of the boat every day. No one that I saw took this up on our boat or any other. This may have been due to the weather but I fear it was more likely due to the state of the water which didn’t look particularly clean and had a lot of plastic waste and polystyrene floating around in it which was sad to see. The impact of over tourism is definitely being felt in this area.