I didn’t really realize how quick our visit to Northern Vietnam would be. We had just a day in Hanoi and an overnight on a sailing junk (and I’m not being sarcastic… they really are called junks!) out in Halong Bay. All in all this short visit wasn’t so bad, since it was mostly gray and raining all over northern Vietnam, but it unfortunately meant that I didn’t get a chance to connect with Le, Courtney’s Vietnamese exchange student. Sorry, Le! I promise to stop by next time :)
Our whirlwind tour of rainy, humid, but cooler Hanoi included visiting Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum (which was very Soviet and honestly, a bit creepy to see a man lying in state 30+ years after his death), walking through the Old Town (a mixture of French and Vietnamese architecture), and seeing the infamous Hanoi Hilton.
Since pictures are apparently worth a thousand words, I’ll share some impressions of Hanoi and Halong Bay in photos.
The walls of buildings in Hanoi are covered in this type of graffiti. I don’t know what it means, but I thought it was visually interesting.
Hanoi: City of a Million Motorbikes
Wall and Roofs in the Temple of Literature, Vietnam’s oldest university
“Bia Hoi” means “Fresh Beer”, draught beer that sells for 1,000-4,000 Vietnamese Dong per glass (6-25 cents). These stands are everywhere in Vietnam.
The outside of the “Hanoi Hilton”, most of which has been torn down to make way for an office tower. I didn’t go in, but some of the others in my group did, and they said it was interesting. Apparently they play videos of American soldiers playing volleyball and having a grand old time while they were incarcerated here… hmmm.
“California” is Vietnamese for “cheap electronics” :)
I was really excited to visit Halong Bay, a World Heritage site famous for its thousands of limestone karst islands which jut dramatically from the calm waters of the South China Sea. Unfortunately, the gray weather from Hanoi followed us out to the bay and so it wasn’t quite as striking as I wanted it to be. It was still a beautiful place, though, and our boat was impressive, as were the 10-course seafood feasts that they plied us with – 3 times in 24 hours!
An inlet in Halong Bay
The limestone karst islands also have an abundance of caves. See the people in the middle of the picture? The place was huge!
After climbing 400+ steps to the top of a karst formation. Whew!
Local fisherwoman with small fishing boats
We kayaked into a beautiful lagoon in the center of a hollow karst formation.
Our boat (the big, pretty junk sails were folded down)
Halong City, on the mainland of Vietnam near Halong Bay, is one of Vietnam’s busiest ports. Our junk passed a number of these absolutely enormous shipping boats on our way back into the harbor. I’d never really appreciated their size until I saw them from water level.
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