I haven’t fallen off the edge of the world, merely slipped into the Southern Hemisphere. But before that happened I had a great time in Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Singapore.

At Hanoi Airport you are told how much the taxi will be, in dollars. The taxi seemed to go on for miles, so you start wondering if all is as it should be and also know it’s gong to be a roller coaster ride when the driver puts on his seat belt. The Old Quarter is tiny streets and alleys, so the hotel took a bit of finding, luckily the taxi driver took my luggage in, as it was the wrong hotel despite its name, “we have another Hotel round the corner”. I had read about scams like this!! Anyway they did, and though the taxi driver tried to extort twice the agreed rate out of me, I stuck to my guns, but he more or less threw me out this time!!

This was just an overnight stop, as I was off first thing next morning to Halong Bay. A “must see” when in the North, Vietnam’s umpteenth World Heritage site, and I had treated myself to a 3 day Cruise on a Luxury “Junk”. We paddled, (well, I didn’t, as the guide I was sharing the kayak with asked me to stop paddling, because we were going in a very wiggly line) through little tunnels almost having to lie down in the kayak, into lagoons, saw floating villages, how pearls are created and had a trip to an enormous cave. Those and of course eat a lot of delicious food and drink at huge expense (a bottle of Champagne was $50.00), made a great holiday.

The drive to Halong Bay was interesting as it showed how industrial the north is. Still rice fields and vegetables being grown but huge factories, cement works, dirty, dusty and driech. Obviously no building regs, houses all over the place with no order, or worse still deserted half built developments. Very depressing.

Back to Hanoi, and time to get my head round the streets, also time to eat real street food as I only had three days left. I took parsimony to a new level. A guided walk at 6.00 a.m. with breakfast. Then street lunch and a haircut, at the end of the day street supper including a beer, all for $12.00. The reason I really liked the Old Quarter, is that it is not a tourist ghetto, but still a working part of the City. As in a Medieval city the streets each have one sort of shop. The local people are also there in the evenings drinking and eating. It took me the three days to realise that Bia Hoi (the local draught beer, not too strong or fizzy) costs between 5000 and 12000 dongs, and I had been paying 20,000 ($1.00) for fizzy Bottled Tiger beer. Silly me.

Having thought I had got to know my way around, realisation dawned when going back to the Airport, all I had done was the London equivalent of knowing a bit of Covent Garden and perhaps discovering where Soho is.