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Beach Bound
Saturday night in Hanoi was like something I have never experienced. It was Full Moon Party in the streets which meant full mayhem by 8pm. Cars, Motorbikes, People, horns, masks, balloons. If you weren’t careful, you would get pinned and not be able to move… at all! (picture below) We narrowly escaped this and headed for higher ground – a terraced bar. From here, we watched the show with amazement. Took out half a million dollars from the ATM today – that was fun. (really is was only equivalent to $250 cad) (Val – you will be pleased to know that we couldn’t find the North Face Factory so I still have money and no more coats to add to the collection)
The noise of the city has finally got to us. We have decided to head to the beach – Cat Ba Island. Getting there was a bit of a mission. It involved a bus that after 2 hours just dropped us off in the middle of an intersection in some town that we had no idea where we were. Thankfully, a very nice Vietnamese student came to our rescue – he was watching us walk in circles from the other side of the road and spoke good English. He hailed us a taxi and directed us to the pier. This is when we really got screwed. We bought a ticket for the high speed boat to take us to Cat Ba Island…only, when we walked to the end of the pier, it was a huge rust bucket – the kind that CNN always reports that sink! (picture below) We reluctantly jumped aboard and laughed. It was only minutes before a New Zealand couple who was also douped, joined us. Us four tourists and 200 locals. We finally made it (2hr later). So much better to be on the island. Not much noise or traffic – perfect.
This is a video of a normal traffic intersection. No “right-of-way”…just organized mayhem. Click on the link…
Vietnam traffic (it will open another page…then, click on the link again)