Day 19 - 25/04/2018 - Halong Bay to Hanoi

Halong Bay is peaceful and relaxing and the boat we are on is beautiful. There seems to be a combination of cloud and pollution in the sky and I wonder if it is the time of year or if it ever really gets clear blue skies. The main disappointment for me though was the amount of rubbish floating around in the water, there is a lot of it and it does spoil it a bit.
When woke this morning it had been raining overnight,  after knocking on the kids door a few times with no answer I went and did the morning Tai Chi class on the top deck of the boat, Malayah was very disappointed to have slept in and missed it. However there was one more excursion we could do before heading back to land, swimming or hiking. Due to the rubbish in the water I didn't think swimming would be a good idea so the boys chose to stay on the boat and Malayah and I went and hiked the 400 steep steps to the top of Tip Top Island.

The water was a little bit cleaner on this beach.

Its a bit hard to see in this photo but Sam is waving from our balcony, the second on the middle level.

Every time you get back from an excursion you are greeted with a cold towel.

Its hard to tell in the photos but we arrived back in perfect timing from the final excursion as it began to rain and only got heavier for the rest of our time on the boat.

Waiting for our van back to Hanoi, it is pouring rain outside but we are back within range of a wifi signal so Isaac is happy. poor Malayah is very sleepy as I gave her travelcalm before we got off the boat thinking we were getting straight onto the van but instead we are being fed lunch and the van will come in an hour.

Part of the road flooded from the rain.

Since our first night in Hanoi was a disappointing street food tour I decided to try and make up for it and did a bit of research before setting off on a street food tour of my own for our final night.

We were dropped off at St Josephs Cathedral.

First food stop Banh Goi,  a Vietnamese fried dumpling with pork, mushrooms and noodles. They were delicious.

Next stop had us sitting at a table with tiny little stools, smaller than the usual small stools you see everywhere.

This place uses the old style rice mill to make their rice flour crepes, although this one spins itself.

Banh Cuon, rice flour crepes with mushroom and pork and we also ordered the lemongrass skewers which were very good.

Spring rolls

 The step into this spa is actually a fish tank.

Last stop pork skewers

 We then went to the Water Puppet Theatre which is an ancient tradition using wooden puppets. We were all very tired and the show was in Vietnamese, the music and puppets are good but were glad it only went for an hour.

The Hoan Kiem lake looked beautiful all lit up at night, unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the road to get good photos and the traffic to try and cross was crazy.