Hanoi

Another 12 hour sleeper bus brought us to Hanoi in the north of Vietnam from Hue. Unfortunately, I didn't get 12 hours sleep, nor did I get 6 hours sleep. I think I may have managed 3 hours sleep in all. The trouble was not the coach itself, although it was yet another coach that turned out to look nothing like it did in the brochure when we booked (Any one thinking of traveling in Vietnam, don't use TM BROTHERS. The majority of there buses are different each time, but all are mostly crap. The trouble with this journey was Vietnamese national highway 1A that runs the length of the country from south to north. The stretch from Hue to Hanoi still appears to have leftover B52 bomb damage on it, there are so many potholes and bumps it is a joke. You couldn't get to sleep for being thrown in the air every 5 minutes. Still we arrived intact though, and that's the main thing....

When we arrived we went through the usual charade of a company rep coming on the bus, addressing the foreigners only and telling us that it is a national holiday (which was true), that everywhere is booked up (not true), everything is closed, 3 times the price or out of the way (also not true), but we are in luck as he has a hotel just outside the coach stop that has wonderful rooms for all of us at the cheapest rates in town............Eri and I did not stay for this superb once in a lifetime offer (much to the guys disappointment due to him losing out on any possible commision earned from us booking at the hotel) and we went off to find our own accomodation.

Its a bit grim in Hanoi, the sun has not shown itself yet and we keep getting showers of rain. It is also cooler, but not cold. We hope that the weather brightens up as we have booked a 3 day trip to Ha Long bay / Cat Ba island. We leave at 8am tomorrow morning. When we came back on Wednesday night went to see a water puppetry show in Hanoi (Like punch and Judy in the bath , only more sophisticated lol). We also went to the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. After surrendering our camera we were marched through his mausoleum were Uncle Ho was laying inside a glass coffin for all to see. Quite a strange experience......


We have also changed our future travel plans and are now flying to Singapore late on Thursday night. We will stop there for a few days before taking a flight to Malaysia Borneo (east Malaysia). We have decided that we are going to take the chance to see the city sprawl of Singapore (which sounds great) and to see the natural beauty of Borneo. Air Asia do pretty cheap flights so it isn't going to cost too much extra to go there. There are forests, mountains, caves and gorgeous coastline aplenty. All the things that we both love. And I would love to see an orang utan in its natural habitat.