Hanoi

Well, we were lucky! Half an hour before we were due to land in Bangkok, our plane was diverted to Singapore owing to riots in Bangkok. As you probably know, Bangkok airport was closed by anti-government protesters and has still not opened. On arriving in Singapore, we were able to organise a night in a top-class hotel and a direct flight to Hanoi the next day, all courtesy of British Airways!

Hanoi, Vietnam's capital, was a culture shock after the wide open spaces of Australia. There are over 80 million people living in a country the size of Norway, and a lot of them seem to be here. The roads are packed with cars, scooters, mopeds, bicycles, women carrying baskets on yokes and people everywhere. You take your life into your hands every time you cross the road dodging the traffic. Amazingly enough there are few accidents, they seem to have perfected the art of weaving in and out of the traffic around them in the most nonchalant way. The pollution is such that your airways notice it almost immediately, and many people wear masks covering their nose and mouth. Having said all that, it is also a fascinating place once you get used to it. There's so much going on. People preparing meals on the pavement that smell wonderful, others sitting around chatting, a constant racket from tooting horns and calls from street vendors.

After a good night's sleep we met up with another of our nephews, Lawrence, who is travelling through Asia at the moment. We spent the day feeding him up and giving him some culture, as well as organizing tours to Halong Bay. We visited the Temple of Literature and wandered through the fascinating back streets in the old quarter of Hanoi. There are streets which just sell shoes, others which sell only hardware, toiletries, clothes, spices etc. and of course those selling silk and lacquer ware. We ended the day watching a performance of the Water Puppets. This is an amazing puppet show conducted in a pool of water beside which a traditional Vietnamese orchestra plays.

The next two days were spent in Halong Bay, a 3 hour drive from Hanoi. The bay has almost 2000 small islands and islets like wooded mountains rising straight out of the sea. Legend has it that a dragon came down from the mountains and ended in the bay, and the islands are the spines on his tail. It is a magical place despite the amount of tourists that insisted on accompanying us! We spent the rest of the first day on a junk sailing round the islands, kayaking and watching the sunset from Titop Island. We also spent a chilly night on board the junk. After breakfast our lovely little guide Nga took us to Hang Sung Sot cave, an amazing series of limestone caves with among other things a rock called "the penis rock" - it looked just like one too! Then it was back to the shore and the bus to Hanoi.

I started today early at Hoan Kiem lake, which is in the centre of Hanoi. It was just after sunrise and the park area around the lake was full of people walking, running, sitting and meditating or playing badminton on any available paved area. There was a group of old ladies in their winter coats and hats doing Tai Chi, old men flexing their joints and a whole crowd of younger women dancing to Boney M. And for once there was almost no noise of traffic on the streets. After breakfast we went to see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum and the Presidential palace. Many of the people queueing up to see Uncle Ho were Vietnamese, he very obviously plays an important role in their national identity.


Tonight we take the night train to Lao Chai and Sa Pa where we are going to do some trekking in the mountains. It'll be the first time we have to put on our winter woolies! After that we head south.