Hanoi and Halong Bay

The last five days or so we have spent in Hanoi and Halong Bay, at the moment we are in Sapa. Halong Bay was quiet the experience. As with many places in vietnam you do need to be careful of scams- all I would say is travel with a reputable company like we did, your experience will be more pleasant! We booked our tour through the Charming II Hotel in Hanoi. The staff there are very helpful and really go out of their way to make your time in vietnam enjoyable which we really appreciated.

When traveling in Hanoi you need to be very alert of your belongings. Bag snatching and slashing is very common. One of the tourist we met along our travels had their bag slashed in the night market and all their belonging taken including their photos from their entire trip. Many taxi’s in the major cities in Vietnam have dodgy metres- if you can walk then walk, or get your hotel to call and negotiate a fee for you. Around the train stations in Hanoi there are people who pretend to be staff and aggressively demand tips for taking you to your train. They did to us and to their surprise they didn’t get any from us LOL!!

There are some great places to eat around Hanoi. We loved the french bakeries and think we have eaten a few too many, hopefully the trekking over the next few days will burn it off!

Here are just a few images from Halong Bay and Hanoi, we will post some more on facebook once we have access to it again. Looking forward to sharing our experiences from Sapa 🙂

Amy xx