'SA PArt of Vietnam

Hooray we finally got to go on a train! We took an overnight train from Hanoi to the far north reaches of Vietnam to visit picturesque Sapa.

1st stop on the sightseeing tour.

Sapa was a lot cooler than Hanoi - a bit like Britain in the summer, when it's warm. I guess we'll just have to let the pictures speak for themselves here...

View from our balcony

We climbed up through some pretty gardens to the top of a hill to get some views of Sapa from above.

Sapa at night from our balcony

One night we wandered up to the town square to investigate the Autumn Lunar festival. There were loads of glowing models of dragons, horses, mice, stars, Winnie the Pooh and even a knight on a fire breathing horse!

We went up to a local weekend market at Bac Ha which was full of the colourful Flower Hmong coming to buy and sell their wares. It was manic there - full of raucous music, pigs in sacks, smoke and ladies in the Flower Hmong garb.

We hired a motor bike once more to explore the outer reaches of Sapa - visiting Fansipan (the highest mountain in Vietnam) waterfalls (big surprise) and the expansive tiered rice paddies for which Sapa is famous. We were lucky to get there when we did, as all the fields were being harvested and burned, so we got to see them at their most interesting.

Stopping for a brief picnic - i think a creepy stalker must have stolen our camera and taken a picture when we weren't looking... either that or Matt used the timer...

Pho the love of Hanoi

Pho - Beef Noodle Soup (actually pronounced 'fah' but the possibilities for puns aren't nearly as fun)

Vietnam's capital city is busy and bustling and mental - but in a very different way to Ho Chi Minh in the south. After establishing lodgings in the Old Quarter, we got ourselves on board one of the many ships bound for Halong Bay.

 

We went for a brief spin around the Bay before heading to an impressive, albeit crowded, cave, complete with awed crowds of oohing tourists...

 

Then we just let the ship cruise around as we watched the sun go down with some new shipmates on the deck.

The next day, after a refreshing kip aboard the boat, we got up at sunrise for a spot of early morning kayaking to take in the views...

... then a trek through Cat Ba Island's national park. Argh rickety stairs!

 

But the views from the top was worth it.

After a hard morning's trek, we chilled out for the afternoon on one of Cat Ba's beaches.

 

As we waited for our chariot to bear us back to Hanoi, we had a few swift local beers with the captain of our ship!

The next day we headed back to continue our  Hanoi adventure...

Crazy Cyclo Man

  

 

Opera House

 

ANOTHER Notre Dame Cathedral

 

Temple of Literature 

 

 

 

Matt being a bit of a bell... 

Of course we couldn't visit Vietnam's capital without seeing Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum complex. Unfortunately his embalmed body had been sent to Russia for maintenance, so we weren't able to view that but we DID see a lovely statue of him and some rather morbid paraphernalia  including the lamp used to preserve his body at the hospital and the embalming fluid bottles they used on him...

 

 

Hanoi from on high 

 

Matt and a giraffe in Lenin Park 

 

Jenny and some 'things'