The night train got us from Huế to Hanoi in only twelve hours and was not too bad. We shared the cabin with a Vietnamese couple who did not speak much English, which was ok since we slept through most of the trip.
The downside of the night train was that we arrived in Hanoi at four-thirty in the morning. Try checking in at the hotel at five, they will not be thrilled. We left our backpacks in the lobby and went out to explore early-morning Hanoi. As we reached the Hoan Kiem lake it was still dark but the sidewalks were bustling with people out on their morning run around the lake. Groups of people were practising Tai Chi. It was amazing! Old ladies in groups of up to twenty were doing their morning gymnastics. One square was filled with younger women doing something that looked like a mixture of Tai Chi and aerobics. It felt as if the whole city was up and exercising before going to work.
After watching the crowds for a while and walking around the lake, we visited the Ngoc Son Temple (The Temple of the Jade Mountain) which is located on a small island in the lake. By nine in the morning, we had already seen a lot of the Old Quarters and the area around the lake and went for a second breakfast before checking in at the hotel.
Hanoi is much nicer looking than Saigon is. A lot smaller, prettier houses and less traffic. Unfortunately for us, Hanoi has four seasons just like Europe. Even though the winter is short and a lot milder than at home, 12 degrees is rather cold if you are not dressed for it. We were so cold!
But Hanoi has some nice cafés where we could warm ourselves up between our sightseeing walks. Some Hanoi pics:
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| The Hanoi Opera House |
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| The garden of the National Museum |
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| Courtyard in the Temple of Literature |
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| Temple of Literature |
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| Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum |
Since it is really easy to get to the Halong Bay from Hanoi, we decided to go on a 3 day cruise even though the weather was not ideal for it. According to the weather forecast the Sunday would bring more sun than any other day in the next two weeks, so we booked a cruise starting on Friday.
The bay really is amazing, even if the grey skies did their best to ruin the trip for us. We spent one night on the boat and the second night in a bungalow in a very secluded bay on Cat Ba Island. When we woke up on the island we were finally rewarded with blue skies and sun (but it was still really, really cold!). On the boat trip back to Halong City we could really enjoy a beautiful scenery! See for yourselves:
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