Hoi An, Hue, Hanoi and Halong Bay

We travelled on the night bus to Hoi An from Nha Trang which took over 12 hours (which we thought was bad at the time but we had no idea of what was to come). As we are running out of time in SE Asia, we have decided to skip through the rest of Vietnam in order to spend some time in Laos and Thailand before our flight out of Singapore.

As we arrived in Hoi An at six in the morning, we spent the majority of the day in bed but managed to get up and have a look about in the afternoon. Hoi An consists of narrow streets with 'french colonial architecture' and a river that runs through the middle. Not to mention the hundreds of silk tailors that try to drag you in for a tailor made suit or something like that. Unfortunately we dont have any pictures because our new digi camera broke. After one day spent in Hoi An, we spent the next day doing much of the same before catching another bus, this time in the afternoon but only taking 4.5 hours.

We only spent one day in Hue and got another night bus up to Hanoi, this time it took 13 hours and because we were one of the last on the bus, we were stuck at the back where the noise was enough to prevent anyone to sleep let alone the state of the roads and suspension and the fact that Servane had to almost sit on the lap of an old Vietnamese man the majority of the way.

Hanoi was by far the coldest place we have been so far. We didnt actually spend too long in the capital itself as we booked to go on a 2 day boat trip to Halong Bay. This is a 'world heritage site' which consists of 1500 small islands sticking out of the sea, most of which have caves and we managed to go inside the biggest one. We managed to get our camera sorted out in Hanoi before we went.

Halong Bay
La Baie d Halong

The biggest cave in Halong Bay
La plus grande grotte de la baie d Halong

The school in the middle of the floating village
Ecole au milieu du village sur l'eau

The kissing cocks - the symbol of Halong Bay
Les coqs qui s'embrassent - le symbol de la baie d halong

The boat we travelled and were staying on, with bedroom next to the engine room
Le bateau sur lequel nous avons voyage et dormi, avec chambre a cote du moteur

After this we started our trip to Laos.