Day 18 – Ha Long Bay to Hanoi

January 11th 2009

Firstly I'm tapping away at the computer on the open deck of our junk cruising through Ha Long Bay. The sun's out, wind has dropped and the French are incredibly curious as to what I'm up to – it doesn't get much better than this, well other than WiFi of course, but we'll let the Vietnamese off for not providing that out here I suppose.

Breakfast is indeed at 7:30am, simple but fills a hole. It's explained that the reason it's so early today is because our trip also includes lunch, which will be served at 11am – so we need a big enough gap to get hungry again!

On deck and some of the passengers suddenly shoot off on the small boat. We're puzzled but not alone on the boat so wonder what's going on. A bit miffed, Sarah establishes from our guide that they're going off to see something that's not really worth looking at while we cruise to the next stop. Once there they return and we all go off to visit a one entrance in/one exit out lagoon which is also the home to some small monkeys which thankfully we don't get too close to!

On deck again now, just stopped to take my millionth photo of the rocks – you just never know which one will capture it properly – and catch up on some blogging. Going to sit back and relax and enjoy the quietness of the cruising before we head back to Hanoi for our last night in Vietnam.

Following our early lunch we depart the junk almost exactly 24 hours after we got on, there's no doubt another set of overnight trippers waiting to come straight on as all the rooms have been cleaned while we were on deck, keep 'em coming through...

We meet up with our driver and are soon on our way back to Hanoi, the air con has stopped working, but with the windows down it's fortunately not too hot today. Rather than falling straight to sleep, sleep was at a premium last night as the boat was pretty noisy, we're actually quite awake and engage Dwan in some conversation. I establish that some billboards I saw on the way from the airport were indeed for “Vietnam Idol”, of which they've had 3 series so far – this causes great amusement of course and I explain the concept of Strictly Come Dancing, thus preparing him for what is inevitably coming their way. Also I ask the question over western style wedding dresses – as we pass yet more wedding parties going on by the side of the road. He explains that previously the bride would wear a long red dress, which they still do for the engagement ceremony as this is the most important part; red is a lucky colour here. The western style dress is now worn for the wedding party, it's always hired as “you only wear it once so why would you want to buy one?”

As we do start to drop off we stop at another of the roadside disabled worker warehouses. This one seems to specialise more in sculpture but also does the range of silk prints. Is amusing as the chatty sales person disappears swiftly when we explain we already have 2 and won't be buying anymore!

Back at our hotel for the last night in Vietnam, bigger room this time, not sure what we did to deserve that. It looks like there's a connecting door to another room, not unusual in itself except the noise from the street is very loud, it's as if the door is actually to the outside itself, which is a little more strange.

We select a very nice sounding restaurant that both our guidebooks agree on. It's a slight risk as it's in the opposite direction to the city centre, but the writeup is excellent so off we go. Quick look outside the hotel reveals that our door is actually the door to a disused balcony, now filled with an air conditioning unit – so that at least explains that one.

The Seasons of Hanoi restaurant certainly doesn't let us down, is excellent. For want of a better descriptive term, it's “posh”, excellent menu, beautiful décor, and the food of course is absolutely delicious, my sauted chicken with peanuts is to die for. This is a truly fitting way to end our Vietnam culinary experience.

Just time for a last Ha Noi beer in the hotel bar – solely to get rid of some Vietnamese Dong of course – before we settle back into our room to try and catch up on some sleep. The alarm's set for 6:45am again as we've yet another 8am pickup to take us to the airport and... Hong Kong!