Getting to Hoi AnWe flew Vietjet, a budget airline, from Hanoi to Da Nang airport. We were pretty skeptical of flying cheap in Asia ($49 each), but we ended up with an exit row and had a pretty comfortable flight. We went to the arrivals section to meet our private driver that our hostel in Hanoi had arranged for us. Things turned south when our driver was nowhere to be found. We waited for a few minutes but it was now 10:15 at night. We were frantically connecting to WIFI and trying to Skype call our hostel. Between their broken English and the fact that we did not have a cell phone they could call us back on, we were getting pretty frustrated. We spent over an hour trying to find out what happened to our car. We even bought a SIM card for our phones so we could be called back. To know avail, at around 11:30 we gave up and got a taxi to our hostel. We were stressed, but we've learned to live with the bumps in the road after six weeks of traveling. Our groggy hostel worker let us into our room when we got into Hoi An. It was a large, modern room and we had a pool, all for about $18 a night.
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After a couple days in Hanoi we booked a two-night excursion to the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Site, Ha Long Bay. It’s a four hour drive from Hanoi if you are lucky... The roads our crowded and the lane markings are simply suggestions, so we put faith in our driver and tried not to pay attention to the traffic. At the marina, there were hundreds of boats. We boarded ours, The Imperial Legend, and set sail during lunch. The lunch was served family style and they kept bringing plate after plate out. It was delicious but way too much food! Since it was family style seating we also got to meet a lot of other travelers on the boat. We got some great advice for the rest of our trip and enjoyed hearing about other people's adventures. We cruised for about two hours to a kayaking cove. The weather was chilly and overcast, but not raining so we sat on the top deck of the boat to enjoy the scenery. Ha Long Bay means “Descending Dragon” and it was easy to see what the bay was named that. The estimated 2000 limestone islands look like dragons swimming. It was beautiful to see, and slightly eerie with the overcast. There were tons of boats cruising the islands in the bay, but the kayaking cove only had one or two other boats. We enjoyed being able to kayak right up to the rocks and see the erosion of the limestone. We didn't see anyone rock climbing, but the islands looked like a perfect spot for it! After kayaking we jumped into the bay for a swim even though it was cold out.
When we first arrived to Hanoi we took a food tour to help us learn what to eat and how to eat it. The tour went to six places and we got to try a variety of foods. We started with Banh Coun, a steamed rice rolled pancake you add cinnamon roasted pork and fish oil to. We then tried Bun Bo Nam Bo, beef noodle salad. It is very sweet so you add rice vinegar to it to balance it with some sourness. Next we tried Banh Xeo and Nam Lui. The Banh Xeo is a crispy pancake and the Nam Lui is a grilled pork. We wrapped them in rice paper with different type of herbs and pickled green papaya to make spring rolls. We dipped them in peanut and pineapple sauce. They were delicious! We tried the pork and pate Bahn Mi (sandwich) next followed by Rice Wine and Snake Wine (Chris tried that, not me). Lastly we had a Vietnamese dessert, Che Buoi. It’s a very sweet soup made with green bean powder, ginger, lotus, coconut milk and jelly. The tour was very fun and taught us a lot about food in Vietnam.
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