The wonders of Vietnam

I am back from my travels!

Not only was it an incredible trip, but I am desperate to tell everyone. However, I did so much that I don't want to overload the blog with pictures and so am dividing it up into only two or three posts. For those of you who don't know, I travelled around Vietnam and Cambodia with a company called Gadventures, who I would really recommend if you want to do this kind of travelling.

The first? Vietnam! The land of lush greenery, top gear specials and more conical hats than you can count.

The first stop on the tour was the city of Hanoi. It is the official capital of the country and is firmly in the North (what was the pro-communist/Viet cong side in the war).

The pace of Hanoi is non-stop, but in the midst of it is the Old Quarter. Here I found the remainders of the old imperial city and the influence of the French (who occupied Vietnam for 100 years) alongside the life of the locals, which carried on around us tourists!

He crept in the photo at the last minute!

Sadly I was only in Hanoi for one day, but there was a reason for this.... the next day we stayed on a house boat in the beautiful Halong Bay, considered to be one of the wonders of the world. I hoped it would live up to the pyramids!

It certainly was beautiful:

Halong Bay is made up of nearly 2,000 'islets' in a kind of avatar-style maze. All of these floating islets are naturally made, can you believe it! A bit too high for humans to live on mind you, but until recently the bay did hold several floating fishing villages, where fishermen would live out their whole lives on the sea. Sadly the government removed them all last month.

Our house boat for the night!

To you lovely readers I will say that Halong Bay is worth a visit just to see it, but the area itself is so touristy! Now all of the fishing villages are gone there are very few locals there, so I was disappointed to find a lot of tourist boats going to and fro instead. With better weather and a bit of space from other boats, it would be a dream location for a romantic date!

The next stop? Hue (pronounced 'Hoy').

After an interesting night on a sleeper train that was reminiscent of 'An idiot abroad', we arrived in the town of Hue. Straight away we were out on motorbikes, exploring the countryside and stopping for some local handicrafts.

Me in the black, pretending I know what I'm doing

We saw a woman who was born without her right hand and is a hat maker, using amazing techniques to master a needle and thread:

Had a go at making incense:

Totally made all of these myself

Lunch was at a local buddhist nunnery, where the women had shaved heads and once our food was prepared, they went to pray:

Finally, we stopped off at the tomb of the fourth Vietnamese King for some nitty-gritty history (just what we love!). This man had an interesting life. He was a polygymer, with 500 wives and around 150 children. Despite his comparatively low success rate, he had enough children to continue the dynasty, and he was buried in this monument, guarded by clay soldiers who were around his height (hint, he was very short):

Our final stop was the old 'Tiger and Elephant colosseum'. Thankfully it WAS the colosseum, and stopped these crazy fights in 1930! Tigers and elephants used to fight for public sport here, but as the elephant was a symbol of royal power, the tigers were always injured enough to make them lose :(

The following day we visited the site of one of the fiercest battles in the Vietnam War - the Imperial City. It used to be the residence of the Vietnamese King and his family, where no one other than those approved by the royals were allowed in. Thankfully the whole palace is being restored bit by bit, so we can see its former glory:

Next post....the rest of Vietnam! See you there!