Vietnam Part II

After some days in lovely Hoi An we spoilt ourselves with a jetstar flight to Hanoi.

On our arrival at the airport we were very cautious and we booked a pick up from the airport in

advance. Yeeessss, this was the best way to avoid the so called Airport Taxi Mafia in Hanoi...

Hanoi was a positive surprise for us. Apart from the big amount of motor bikes we found it quite more charming than Saigon, even with a little lake in the Old City Quarter.

Hanoi is the perfect base to plan the two obligated tours to Sapa and Halong Bay. Both

destinations are beautiful. Sapa is a little village in the mountains in the Northern Part of Vietnam and a 12 hours train ride away from Hanoi. It is a perfect place for some nice and easy trekking.The landscape is stunning, it is surrounded by thousands of lush green rice fields

and little villages with different tribes.Every tribe has its special tradition clothes which makes the scenery even more colorful and vivid.Of course we booked a three days trekking tour in this beautiful, peaceful place of Vietnam. And our sweat was compensated with nice views and unforgettable moments looking at the playing children or watching the every day life of the villages. Our accomodation were home stays in the villages, which was nice and exciting, because in the middle of the night we were woken up by a nice little rat trying to get through our mosquito net.

So the next tour was of course -Halong Bay was very relaxing. Our sailing boat was one of the posh ones.I insisted to book a expensive and safe one after the horrible accident in February in

Halong Bay where several tourists had to die because of the lack of safety minimum standards. But it was the money worth. We got plenty of really nice food and our cabin had even a shower with freshwater :), one of the activities that was part of the trip was the "amazing cave" we thought it might be just another tourist trap but it was breathtaking it can only described by the pictures we took. Coming to the end of our trip in Vietnam we both struck by raw beauty of the country, however a word of warning we felt that it was also the most difficult country to travel in south east Asia.