5th June - Cat Ba to Halong Bay to Hanoi

Following a rather meagre breakfast at Sunflower Hotel we jumped on the bus back to Halong Bay. We hadn't been on it very long before it broke down. A replacement bus was surprisingly quick and about 20 minutes later, we were speeding along as though we were several hours late.

At Cat Ba we climbed on a boat and made our way to the top deck to sunbathe on the very hot wooden loungers as we made our way through the beautiful karst dotted around in the water.

In Halong Bay town we stopped for food at restaurant. The few plates of soup, rice and tofu we were given wasn't enought to sustain the 6 people on our table - so much so that the table next to us resorted to eating the left-overs from a recently-vacated table of Vietnamese.

When I went downstairs, I noticed that our surly guide had a feast of real food and so asked if there was any more to come. He motioned to his food with a gesture that said "You can help yourself to mine you greedy cow" and I resisted the temptation to pick up the lot and carry it upstairs and explained the situation instead.
Back upstairs I explained what had happened to the group and soon a woman from the restaurant came up to check. She screamed and shouted at the poor boy who was waiting our tables and when he came back with the food she beat him. I felt terrible, especially as the addition of more rice, tofu and a small plate wasn't worth the discomfort we all experienced.

The two minibuses taking us from Halong to Hanoi turned into one and it would have been uncomfortably full just with the adults and children that were in there, but with the huge bags under our feet, absolutely no wriggling room and the palpable fury of our fellow passengers, it was crammed to bursting. Every swerve was bone-crushing and accompanied by loud moaning and huffing. Matt and I made use of the time to play an entertaining game of Jenga on his tablet.

Back in Hanoi we could not stand the thought of another noisy night at our hotel and went on the sweaty search for a new one. We'd resigned ourselves to staying in a dorm room and were only slighty comforted by the fact that they had a free beer happy hour when we came across VietFun. Thankfully it did not live up to it's party name and was just a nice but small room with a tiny bath and aircon that we negotiated down to the same price as a dorm. It tuned out to be a very good choice as the staff were exceptionally lovely and we ended up there for 6 days. The only down-sides were the 4 flights of stairs that we had to climb each time we wanted to get to our room.

We chilled for a while and I concertinaed myself into the tiny bath before heading out again. We found an ice-cream place and explored the city a little more clutching tasty, home-made lollies.

We stumbled across Lenin square and could see from a distance that there were loads of people and music playing. We side-stepped the tango dancers on the pavement and dodged maniacal rollerbladers to make it up the steps for a closer look.

It was absolutely incredible and a little like stepping into 1980's America. There were so many bodies, all engaged in their own form of excercise, entertainment and socialising. Teenagers clustered in street dance groups performing all kinds of solitary and coordinated dance forms. I realised that I've never seen breakdancing 'in the flesh' and these ones were absolutely astounding. We also fixated for a while on the groups 'popping'. We even witnessed a 'faceoff' of sorts as one pf the body poppers had a breakdancing dual. If they weren't dancing, they were rollerblading, skateboarding or doing bike tricks.

In amongst all of this there were families teaching small children how to skate and watching or steering countless small children in electric cars. It appears that they get trained for the mayhem of the roads from a very young age and none of them made a discernable effort to stay out of the way of the others. There were countless collisions between old, young and younger and every time they would get entagled, fall and then just get on with it - unapologetic and tear-free.

As well as all of this there were drinks-sellers, people with baskets of trickets and LED toys, observers with tiny children toddling into the thick of things and the occasional scooter speeding through. It was all an incredible sight and kept us entertained for several hours. We got tired from simply watching and left about 10.15pm but everyone was still going full throttle.