Despite what many of you may think, cruising around the world is not just one long holiday but rather a lifestyle which is often extremely arduous, sometimes due to weather conditions but mostly as a result of the constant upkeep one has in maintaining the boat in a seaworthy condition.
When we first left South Africa, it had been our intention to take a break at least once a year for one good inland tour around the country we were visiting. During our first year, we managed a great trip to the Iguacu Falls in Brazil and then a couple of years ago, our super camping trip around South Island New Zealand but due to financial restrictions, we've never managed any others. Don't get me wrong, I'm certainly not complaining as we've seen and done so much, it's just that we've always been restricted to coastal excursions and missed any of the highlights away from the coastline.
However, one thing we'd always dreamed of when we got to this part of the world was to tour around some of the Asian countries where we wouldn't be able to take Calypso. And so it came to be - that busman's holiday.
We left our floating home behind in Langkawi and flew to Hanoi in Vietnam to start a trip down the eastern coast of that country. We are joined by two other cruising couples, Myra & Paraic from Ireland and Jason & Karen from the USA.
Hanoi! What can I say? We've had a wonderful few days in that unbelievably hectic city where just crossing a road becomes an adventure. As Paraic says, "to get there, one has to have been born there". It's like nothing else we've seen before. Chaos, pure and simple chaos, but we loved it.
There appears to be no such thing as traffic rules other than the biggest vehicles have right of way. There are 90 million people in Vietnam and 45 million of them have motor bikes! (the remainder have bicycles). The bikes have no rules, they go everywhere and anywhere, including the pavements, forcing any pedestrian to brave the streets. One really has to experience it to believe it. There can be five roads converging into one and the traffic interweaves paying no attention to the few traffic lights in use but somehow it seems to work, they all get through even if they're travelling down the road on the wrong side in the wrong direction. And, as for pedestrian crossings and the little green man 'walk' symbols, ha, what a joke!
We'd arrived late at night so on our first morning, we ventured out into the streets of the Old Quarter of Hanoi to be open-mouth aghast at the activity out there and the sight of what is jokingly referred to as Hanoi Telecom; thousands upon thousands (I promise I'm not exaggerating) of telephone wires haphazardly draped across the streets and tied up in a bird's nest to telephone poles everywhere. I'll post photos when we get back to my PC in Langkawi, be prepared for a bit of amusement.
The Old Quarter is a rabbit warren of narrow roads and alleys and each seems to specialise in one product. The hotel was nestled between shops hammering out tin products hence we named it Tin Street. There was also Silk Lane, Nappy Alley, Shoe Road, Brewers Row - well, you get the idea.
It was surprisingly cold and having spent so many months in the tropics, we certainly weren't used to it. Although we knew it would be chilly, none of us had warm enough clothing to bring with us so we layered everything we could to get more comfortable then all went out to purchase socks and scarves. We'd only taken one small backpack each so space and bulky clothing was limited and we're planning a trip to the mountains further north which would definitely be colder.
We toured the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum, a variety of temples, pagodas and museums, watched the famous water puppet show and tried out a variety of street foods; some great, some perhaps not so great and the guys are in their element - beers are as little as 25 cents.
Next off to beautiful Halong Bay.
