Hanoi

Day 59 / Day 18 of ATID – Hanoi

We travelled (you don’t need me to say how by now – private bus, obv) to Hanoi in the morning/early afternoon and after check in all headed on a bit of an orientation walk with our tour facilitator, which ended in a very yummy lunch at a little street-side restaurant of  ‘Bún chả‘ (grilled pork and noodles and soup!), which I loved. Most of us then went and got tickets for an early evening water puppet performance…more on that in a moment.

Halong Bay

Day 58 / Day 17 of ATID – Halong Bay cruise

So this post is going to be short, in that it’s only going to cover one day – which we spent most of on a cruise along the beautiful Halong Bay – not an optional activity but included as part of the tour. We got off the sleeper train at 4am in Hanoi on this day and then got on a private bus to make the 4 hour journey to Halong Bay. Once we got there, well, there’s not a huge amount to do in the town itself so we checked in and then were back on the bus, heading to the shoreline to climb aboard our rather snazzy cruise ship.

Huế

Day 56 / Day 15 of ATID – Hue

On this day we took a private coach to the city of Huế, Vietnam, which was once the imperial capital of Vietnam. On the way, we stopped off at a lovely viewpoint in a high area (so lovely, in fact, we spotted a brave couple trying to get their wedding photos taken…) by way of a break, though I regret to say I was so grumpy from the bus journey, I wasn’t paying attention to where it was. Here are some pics, though!

Hoi An

Day 54 / Day 13 of ATID – Hoi An

We got off the sleeper train (that we’d got on at Nha Trang) at Danang and then it was a forty minute drive to Hoi An, our next destination. Dave and I and four others had opted in to do some abseiling and so after checking into our hotel and a speedy breakfast, we were on our way in a minivan with a couple of members of the Phat Tires team to the famous Marble Mountain.

Ho Chi Minh City (cont) & Nha Trang

Day 51 / Day 10 of ATID – Ho Chi Minh City

After breakfast at the hotel, nearly all of us had opted in to visit the famous Cu Chi tunnels for a half day and so jumped into our private minibus with another excellent local guide to travel there. This particular guide was fond of making ‘beep beep beep’ noises loudly to get our attention in the tourist crowds, mimicking the constant beeping of the Vietnam traffic…it wasn’t as annoying as it sounds, at least not to me, and he really seemed to know his stuff as he chatted to us on the bus and then guided us around the Cu Chi tunnels site.

Cần Thơ & Ho Chi Minh City

Day 49 / Day 8 of ATID – border crossing and journey to Cần Thơ 

So this was the day we crossed over the border into Vietnam, again by private bus to the border itself and then on foot, before getting on another private bus on the other side. The border crossing was from Bavĕt to Mộc Bái and was similar to the last, only this time we had all got our visas in advance. It did involve a fair bit of walking in the sun and lots of checking over of things by far more staff than I think were truly needed, and we did each pay up one dollar to speed up the process (ahem), but there weren’t any issues per se.