Vietnam - Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

Streets of Hanoi by night

After we said our goodbyes to everyone who was going back to the States or traveling somewhere else, 5 of us were off on a trip to Vietnam. We arrived in Hanoi, which is in northern Vietnam, in the afternoon. After looking at a couple of hotels which were a little TOO cheap, we found an awesome one, with great staff, for about $15 a night each (Hong Ngoc Hotel, for those that may travel there in the future). Exploring the city was interesting, as the streets just go all over the place and everyone rides motorbikes, without any specific rules directing traffic.

A more peaceful street by day

  To cross the street you basically just walk at a steady pace and have the motorbikes go around you. The city itself is definitely less developed/modern than the other cities I've been to - no fancy malls anywhere, way less good cars or restaurants. But we dove right into it :) Had some delicious noodles right on the street while sitting down on tiny tiny stools and walked around the night market, trying the delicious egg custard desserts.

Cobra we were about to eat!

Next day was spent also walking around/losing ourselves around the dusty streets. Was a quite fun even though we never got to our destination! I even ran into a girl who went with me to high school and college - and later was on our boat around Ha Long! In the late afternoon we went out to find us some cobra to eat. After talking to the cool hotel staff, we were taken by taxi to a village right outside of Hanoi. First we weren't even sure we were at the right place since the driver spoke no English, but he just kept pointing at this one building, so we hopped out and hoped for the best. We came into a room that was actually a reasonably clean lobby, with the staff dressed very cleanly and treating us very respectably. We told them we wanted cobra, and the guy pointed to a cage where they had cobras and some other snakes.

Cobra menu

After picking out which cobra was going to soon be our delicious meal, the handler chopped off its fangs and let us get a closeup look at the thing. They then filled up two glasses with rice wine (?) (or some other alcohol), slit the snake's throat, and let it bleed into one of the glasses. Cobra blood shots. It's bile was put into the other glass - very green and bitter. There was a long list of dishes which were then cooked with the cobra that we got, and they were brought out one by one. Very delicious! Cobra soup, sauteed cobra, cobra in spring rolls etc. Much more appetizing and fancy than I though it would be. Super satisfied with the crazy experience. As we were leaving - we saw many families coming up. Apparently this cobra stuff is what many people do everyday - hah! No big deal.

We experienced some of Hanoi's nightlife and met some cool people from Singapore while at one of the establishments.

Next day was the beginning of our trip to Ha Long Bay. It's a beautiful UNESCO world heritage site that is a bay with many rocky structures covered with greenery, with caves, and cool beaches and islands. After a 3 hour ride to Ha Long City, we got on our boat, where we would also sleep on our first night. Though it was raining, we enjoyed the kayaking, swimming, and cave touring on the first day. All our food here was served family-style, and we had to keep some of us from eating other's portions hah...


The cruising was very fun, and we just chilled in our rooms when we were not out doing stuff, watching the other boats and the islands go by. After dinner, we had a fun kareoke session, and afterwards a dance party was approved by the captain. Some of the crew joined in on the mostly-American dance beats. They even had a disco ball!

Fun climbing!

The next day we arrived at Cat Ba Island, located in Ha Long Bay. There, it was still pouring rain, but we had no qualms about doing the couple hour hike and getting some mysterious-moving-fog views of the surrounding area. Our group decided to relax in the hotel and skip the monkey forest (as we've all been monkey-ed out by this point), and went to check out some local establishments, nap, and plan our extra day of stay on the island for rock climbing purposes. We arranged this through a trip agency located on the island, it was above a cool bar, and chill climbing dudes from Europe and California worked there.

The group at booty beach

The next day, wishing for minimal rain, we took the boat with a few other climbers to Booty Beach. Our leaders were cool - one was a Californian and one a local Vietnamese. The Vietnamese guy had impressive climbing skills - he climbed and set everything up with just flip flops!

The beach/island was tiny, but the climbing was great. First time I ever did it anywhere other than a rock wall. It was tons of fun even though I got a bit scratched up. We spend the entire afternoon there, after which we took a larger boat back and spent most of the next day making our way back to Hanoi.

Little boats across the flooded road

At one point the road was flooded so we had to get across the flooded portion on little boats. Oh the fun!
We went back to our previous awesome hotel in Hanoi, ordered some delicious food, and spent the night relaxing and playing card games.
Goodbyes were sad of course, especially after we've all shared such an adventure. My flight the next morning made me get up at 5:30 am ><