What a fun time we had last night, drinking G&T’e on the deck of the boat looking out on the islands in the bay before singing karaoke until late!
The morning started early with a 7.15am boat trip the Hang Sung Sot caves, some of the largest in Northern Vietnam.
In an effort to avoid the heat of the day, along with the crowds, we arrived at the caves for 7.30am and entered into a magical world with some of the most spectacular rock formations backlit to produce a range of stunning colours.
Walking around, the place had a moon like feel and was on a scale we hadn’t expected with huge voids going off into the darkness.
The roof of the caves had a waver like effect, resulting from a high water table in the past causing this ripple effect.
After an amazing hour in the caves, we popped back into the sunlight and caught a small speed boat back to our boat and slowly started our return to the mainland.
How the other half (Chinese) travel…!
The cook on board the boat was able to create some of the most amazing shapes from vegetables making a fishing net, flower and a rose – incredible to watch him in action.
After a 3hr drive back to Hanoi and a quick change we headed out to properly explore the bustling city that is Hanoi. As we only had a few hours, we spent all our time in the Old French Quarter.
Many of the streets continue to sell the same things as they have done forget hundreds of years – so there is an art street, craft street, shoe street, even a sunglasses street!
We had been told about the special coffee they sell in the city, essentially egg coffee which tasted delicious and was like a meal in itself. Best described as custard with coffee!
We then spent the next couple of hours wandering through the these amazing streets full to the brim with activity and interesting shops and bars.
We came across a really interesting shop seeking Hanoi monopoly and found some playing cards, to replace those taken by the Laos police at the train station.
With a night train journey to Hue to look forward to tonight, we stopped off at a restaurant with views over the nearby streets and treated ourselves to some local beer and spring rolls and soup.
After much searching we eventually found the infamous Train Street where trains pass through a very narrow bar laden street. narrrow
After exploring the city, we then found ourselves on the way to the train station for the 9pm sleeper train to Hue and a 14hr journey through the countryside. What an experience. Not the most roomy of trains, but it was still first class with 4 bunk beds to a 6ft x 6ft cabin.
Ready for the next part of our adventure and the former royal city of Hue. Hopefully we will say goodbye to the heavy rain too, as it’s currently coming into the train cabin and making the floor around us all wet!!!
@travellingwiththeateam 