Initial random trip stuff....
Trip was great:
- Hanoi was beautiful (the old quarter at least, didn't really get very far out of it). I really liked the weathered old narrow multi-story terrace buildings* (although staying on the 6th floor (12 narrow steep flights of stairs) for one late-night-arrival-with-early-morning-departure seemed like a lot of effort). And narrowish streets and Ah the crazy traffic. And the faith-based crossing of said traffic. The fumes and stinging eyes at rush-hour every day. The cheap beer hoi at dense crowded rowdy sidewalk tables with kid-sized tables and chairs. The French quarter also had some cool weathered old colonial buildings around courtyards.
- Ha Long bay was as picturesque as the travel shows make out (although without the occasional periods of morning/evening smog from nearby cities, could be even moreso) . A bus picked us up at the guesthouse/hotel in Hanoi and then stopped at one or two other places to pick people up. 12 or 15 people on the minibus was manageable. But then the mid-trip lunch stop at the 'Ruby Emperor' MegaStop had 20 other mini- and not-so-mini-buses and a crowd of loud foreigners milling about and garish souvenirs galore and the worst coffee ever and was quite a jolt. And then the final stop at the port to get on our Junk (for an overnight in the bay) had even more densely packed foreigners, waiting and queuing and talking and crowding. The ship cabin was neat and the company acceptable. We caved and canoed. We tried night-time squid fishing but didn't catch any.