Friday 1st November
After a lazy start, we decided to do one of our very favourite things - explore the markets! And after a twenty-minute walk in the boiling heat we eventually found it (Ha Noi streets are EXTREMELY confusing). And you know what, it was a bit of an anticlimax, maybe because we have already seen various Asian markets and, to be honest, the market in Da Nang was cleaner, better organised and more interesting.  By the time we left and wandered towards the lake, we were parched and exhausted. Officially, this is the beginning of winter but when it is 29-31 degrees each day, that is a bit hard to believe! (Alfred: Though it does get a LOT colder once winter actually starts, falling as low as a freezing 13 degrees celsius, at which point they start to close schools! Ruairí wants to come back in late January (when it is coldest) and walk around in a t-shirt just to annoy the locals).

Nems

Anyway, we went to a café on top of a big building near the lake and had some beer, water and nems (fresh - not deep-fried - spring rolls and possibly our favourite Asian food) and chilled out. Even here, a complete tourist trap, three beers and a giant bottle of water and a plate of nems was about 7 euro. But the high point was when two German women walked past our table, one of whom was carrying two ski poles. We have still not come up with a good theory to account for this.  Then back to the hotel, booked tours for Saturday and Monday and out for some fast food.

Bun Bo

Vietnamese fast food consisted of one of my favourite dishes, Bun Bo, a dish from Hue. There are restaurants that only serve this, so you go in and sit down at the one long table and they plonk a dish in front of you two minutes later. You eat and leave. The whole process took ten minutes from start to finish and the food was delicious!


Ha Noi traffic lights
There are some traffic lights in Ha Noi but I am puzzled as to what exact purpose they serve. Cars do stop and so do about 80% of motorbikes and bicycles. The other 20% pay no attention and weave their way through the traffic as they do where there are no traffic lights. I could understand if no-one paid attention but there seems no pattern as to the 20% who do their own things - age, gender, vehicle. But the traffic is amazing!! Our guide told us there are 4 million motorbikes in Ha Noi, 6 million in Ho Chi Minh City and a total of 40 million in a country of 90 million. That seems like a lot but maybe so (Alfred: Maybe it is like Facebook accounts - there are that many of them out there but how many of them are actually in active use??)

Food and Drink
I knew the food was going to be good from our last visit and I have been cooking Vietnamese and Laotian food since I got back from the last holiday. The beer is good too, though Bia Sai Gon is to be avoided - bland and tasteless. Bia Ha Noi or Bia La Rue are my favourites (Alfred: And yes, the Vietnamese word for 'beer' IS the same as the Irish word for 'food')

Towers of Ha Noi

Ha Noi City Palace Hotel

The style of architecture here in Ha Noi (Alfred: Style? You think that is the right word? Melange would be better). Alfred has a point, there is a crazy mixture of every kind of style you can imagine. But the dominant feature is that buildings are usually tall and incredibly narrow. Our hotel is actually the width of our bedroom and this is quite usual. Maybe all land is divided into plots this side, goodness knows. Also, they usually don't put any windows on the side walls so light is at a premium. For our hotel, it means that only our room and the one above it have any light. The internal rooms have no windows at all and the ones at the back are advertised as having windows but actually these open into a narrow one-metre gap that separates the hotel from the building behind!

Crossing the countryside you see the same style: tall, thin houses standing individually in the middle of nowhere and with solid side walls, no windows. And I was reminded of the mathematical puzzle called Towers of Hanoi - does anyone know why this puzzle is called that? Is it because Ha Noi houses resemble the three rods needed for the puzzle?

Saturday 2nd November
Early start today and off in a minibus to the temples of Hoa Lu, Vietnam's ancient capital and the boat trip up Tam Coc, often referred to as the inland Halong Bay. We raced to be ready for the 0745 pickup and then kicked our heels for thirty minutes as we turned out to be the last to be picked up!  It was a little like being back in Rwanda as the only two seats left together were in the back corner and we squashed in there as best we could (Alfred: For a whole hour. Poor Ruairí and Martine. And then they moved to nice, comfy seats at the first rest stop so we can all dry our eyes). The other tourists were a Japanese couple, an Indian couple and two elderly gentlemen travelling with very young female Asian companions.

At the first rest stop  (Alfred: Really? You are just going to leave it at that? It was creepy! OK, one of the couples may have been genuine as it was really hard to tell her age and they didn't seem to be behaving as if their relationship was on a 'business' level, but the creepy guy in the back?? Pleeeazzee!! No wonder you had a shower when you got back to the hotel) ... at the first rest stop we wandered around the shop/cafe/tourist trap and saw two things that caught our eye:











Personally, I found the idea of Fifty Shades of Grey being on sale here far more upsetting than the dogs being fattened up but maybe that's just me. (Alfred: Yes, it's just you.)

The temples at Hoa Lu weren't the most amazing thing ever. The site may be historically important but absolutely nothing remains of the original buildings from a thousand years ago as everything was recycled to build the new capital of Ha Noi. But it was a pleasant stop with the offerings and carved figures and colourful Buddhist temple flags.

After a really nice buffet lunch in Tam Coc (Alfred: Ruairí really pigged out on the caramel pork!!) we headed off for our boat trip. I really was hoping for a life jacket but these were only available for the Chinese tourists who had presumably booked them in advance so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best! It was an amazing experience, easily one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The two of us in a sampan being rowed by a middle-aged women ... with her feet! I have never seen this before, the feet aren't even attached to the oars by straps or anything and they are incredibly skillful. The scenery was stunning as you can see from the photos (Alfred: taken on Ruairí's Smartphone as the idiot had forgotten for two nights running to recharge his camera battery!!). Guidebooks and Tripadvisor had warned about the intensive hassle from vendors but, to be honest, unless you had never travelled before it was pretty mild stuff! And the sight of people wading across the river did banish my 'I don't have a life-jacket' fears.

 Then we went for a short cross-country cycle which was really good, both for the exercise as well as the scenery and then bus back to Ha Noi.




Football
That evening I donned my Chelsea shirt for the first time and went in search of somewhere showing the Chelsea-Newcastle match. Unfortunately, I found one and watched my team being humiliated by a poor Newcastle side while drinking beer in the company of two Ethiopian Waste Water Management specialists who had just finished a two-week training course here in Ha Noi. I told them there were job opportunities in Dublin at the moment if they could cope with living in Ballymore-Eustace!