A 30 day Chinese visa takes 6 days and cost $45 and so we had time to spend in and around Hanoi, if not money.
In Hanoi, each respectable tourist operator / hotel has a dozen copycat companies with the same name and logo and we learnt this the hard way. Three nights spent sleeping with several hundred ants later, and we had a face-off with the owners who were trying to charge us a massive $3 extra! We argued and pointed at things for 30 minutes until they gave it up as a bad job. In the last 6 weeks of bargaining I've been practising being indignant in a vaguely friendly way handing out peace-keeping cigarettes with careful timing.
After plenty of shopping around and bloody bargaining, we booked a 3 day, 2 night trip to Halong Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for $40 (travel, accomodation, sight entry, activities and food all inclusive). I was a spectacular trip. We travelled and ate (rice and cabbage and some tofu, which nobody ate) on a junk, a rickety old ship with 4 levels. Our first stop was a gigantic cave which we explored with an wise guy guide. We then moved on to stay in a hotel on Cat Ba Island to be ready the next morning for a hike up a rocky hill in the national park. At the top of the hill was a rusty 30m tall tower with a sign posted at the bottom that said it could hold a maximum of 5 people without collapsing. Kae and I climbed it and shared a collective nervousness with the 3 other people at the top before getting the hell back down. Back at base camp we shared our 3rd consequetive meal of rice and cabbage and climbed back onto the junk where we stayed for the night. We had a comfortable room, but the Vietnamese, ever ready to scrape every penny, turned off the electricity at 10pm just as Kae and I were halfway through our smuggled stash of rum (they charge $10 for every bottle not bought aboard).
The next day we cruised between the awesome craggy islands of Halong Bay, stopping next to a floating fishing village and poked our noses in via sea kyak. This was great fun and I didn't even mind being sold a rotten pineapple for $1 by a sweet little devil child who did rub it in a bit by shouting, laughing and pointing throughout her getaway.
The crew took us back to the harbour, and herded us to a restaurant for our 5th and final consecutive rice and cabbage, and by now everyone was tired of the budget level Vietnamese tourist industry.
We were lucky to bump into a creative couple (Kris and Neko, not to forget Kris' bro, Joel) who (coincidentally for Kae) had friends in animation studios in Bristol and a bunch of other shared interests. We spent an evening with them and were grateful to be invited to tag along for a tasty meal in a private room with their family and friends in Hanoi before we left for China the next day.
