17th July - There were a few places we wanted to try in the Old Quarter for food, as well as pick up a few bits for the apartment. First things, always food, it was lunchtime, we had found a good restaurant that specialised in Pho, which we had yet to try properly. So we had a little wander around Old Quarter to find this place. We went up and down the road trying to find it, assuming it was tucked away somewhere down an alley / in someone's loft or back room. It wasn't until we had a closer inspection of the picture that we found the place had not only closed down, but something else had reopened in its place. Thanks google. Luckily enough, there were plenty of places to go and just around the corner was another place which Hannah had read about on a blog, called Bun Bo Nam Bo, which was appropriate because that one dish was also the entire menu. We got there and it was pretty packed and when we got the food we realised why, it was amazing. We would definitely be back here again. 

We decided to spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in a cafe and watching the world go by, so naturally we sat in the dark corner of one reading our books. Once we finished doing that, turns out it was quite late in the day, so we headed out for that traditional Vietnamese dish, the Kebab.

19th July - With our diving course approaching in Cambodia, we decided to brush up on our swimming before we hit the open seas. We headed to a local pool south of West Lake. No buses there, so we took a grabtaxi, who managed to drop us off around the corner, so we had to navigate alleys to get there. Not a problem in of itself, but it was made infinity more difficult by the scooters wizzing down and around them. We finally got to the pool, which was as you'd expect from a public pool. Pool was fine enough (pretty sure rather than clean they just kept adding chlorine), but the facilities left a bit to be desired. Anyway, started having a little swim and two things became clear. 1. Hannah was lightyears better than me and 2. I, given my 15 year hiatus from swimming, was terrible. Luckily enough, there was an American there called Steve who comes to teach the local kids how to swim, so i got some free swimming lessons and made some decent progress. Hannah also got a few little pointers, so progress all around. 

After we finished swimming, it was most definitely lunch time, so we walked up towards the lake to find a cafe. This walk however, was significantly further than we expected and given the lack of anywhere either being open or serving food, it was 3pm before we called it quits and got a taxi into the Old Quarter, to Noodle and Roll. Bearing in mind we had been walking around for an hour in 40 degrees C heat (with the humidity, according to the internet the feels like was 50!). But finally we got to Noodle and Roll, ordered some Bun bo nam bo and satiated our hunger. After feeling the heat of the day, we thought perhaps outside wasn't for us today, so we headed home to recover in the cool apartment.  

20th July - We wanted breakfast out this morning, so we headed to Tru Bac, which is essentially a little psuedo-island in the southeast of West Lake. The little island is pretty much restaurants, cafes and cars, so we didn't have trouble finding somewhere. We had a place in mind though, Ma xo cafe. Pretty decent place, although I'm guessing in Asia there must be a tax on the length of table and chair legs, which is why they are all only about 4 inches from the floor. I had a scrambled eggs, bacon and bread (all scrambled together, not just the eggs) and HR had a pumpkin rosti with poached eggs, both pretty good. Again, the temp today was scorching, so we thought a little walk and then relaxing back home. We walked around Tru bac and made our way to Tran Quoc Pagoda, which is the oldest Pagoda in the city at 1500 years old. When we got there, we saw quite a few people milling around, clearly a couple of tours. We thought that perhaps the pagoda was opening soon.. It would later turn out however, that they had actually shut for lunch (despite advertising as open all day) and would be another 90 minutes before they opened again. Very odd the tour guides didn't know it was shut, doubly weird that the tours groups just looked like they were going to wait in the blazing sun for it to open again. Not for us!

That evening we decided to go out somewhere a bit more upscale (it was Saturday night after all) and found a chinese dumpling place in the expat area called Bao Wow. The building (and i use that word loosely) it was in didn't really have a roof, which was very interesting when they had to pull the cover over when it started raining. Essentially the food was like tacos, but with Chinese Bao rather than tortillas, very good, if rather expensive for Hanoi. Still really nice evening with good food and good drinks.

21st July - Today we were meeting up with the girl we had met on our first day in Hopebox, Ellie, for some food and drinks. We were meeting in Tru bac, so like deja vu, we made our way down there. Our walk from the bus stop to our meeting point was made much more eventful by seeing a man fishing in the river. Now apart from why in all hell you would do that, given the state of the water, what was very pleasant was the fact that he seemed to be just flinging fish out onto the pavement. So there were a few bloody, not so dead fish covering the pavement for us to dodge. On reflection, I'm not quite sure why this surprised us, given everything we'd seen of Hanoi so far. We met at a restaurant which had a speciality for deep fried deconstructed pho made of noodles (rolls off the tongue). Apparently each district has it's own speciality dish and Tru Bac's are these. They were really very delicious. After scoffing down a plate of this (they do know portion size here) we made our way to a nearby bar, who did some nice craft beer and even a mango / pineapple cider (both pretty much the same sweet cider). A friend of Ellie's from Oz also joined us. It was nice to have a couple of beers in the sun, but luckily enough, every one had to make a move, otherwise it could've turned into something a bit more messy.

22nd July - Today was our second swimming day, trying to get the practice in before diving begins. Think we both made more progress, it is amazing how quick you can get back to the muscle memory. When leaving this time, we didn't mess around and caught a taxi straight to a street food place, didn't want to be caught starving again. It was a noodle soup place and was reasonably nice, with the exception of the miscellaneous bits of smooth meat balls in there, that was less enjoyable. We also did our good deed for Hanoi, the guy next to us was driving off on his scooter, when Hannah noticed he had left his wallet on the table, so I ran after him and flagged him down. Just call me Saint Christopher. After this we headed back to the apartment. 

That evening, we found a pretty good sushi restaurant down the west side of West Lake, so we took a (relatively - no fish but lots of motorbikes) nice stroll around the lake. It was very nice, and there were loads of cafes and pubs with people sat along the lakeside, looked very nice. The Sushi place (Sushi-Holic) was clearly, as was everywhere, someones not so well renovated house. However, the food was excellent, we could watch our sushi being made in front of us, which was a nice touch (although i assume because they had nowhere else to do it).  

23rd July - Yesterday we had booked ourselves onto an egg coffee course, to learn how to at least start making them. Whilst I didn't imagine they would be as good as the Cafe Dinh ones, at least we would then know the starting ingredients and proportions. We did it at one of the hotels in the Old Quarter overlooking the church, so pretty nice views. We got there and, as we suspected, were the only ones there. We met the head bartender and away we went. Turns out we both made some pretty good ones, even got a certificate to prove it.

We thought today we would head to the tallest building in Hanoi, with one of the nicer shopping malls and supermarkets in it, the Lotte centre. First though, as we didn't fancy spending ridiculous money on food, it was back to Bun Bo Nam Bo. Considering the dish is only £2 each, it's such good value for money. We got a taxi to the Lotte centre to have a little shop. It was fairly nice and upmarket without being ridiculously expensive. That being said, it was still UK prices, from rather big prices for Hanoi. We decided just to get the swimming stuff we were after and call it a day

24th July - Today was the day for the start of our trip to Halong Bay. Halong is a UNESCO heritage site and in a huge bay filled with little Limestone islands, 1,969 of them to be precise. It looked amazing and one of the things to do whilst here. Unfortunately, it did mean an early start to the day, up to the Old Quarter for 7am. Eventually somewhere closer to 8:30, the bus came to pick us up (seems pretty typical of our experience out here so far). Pretty nice bus, better than most of the others we've seen going to Halong Bay, it was also quite a bit smaller, with space for about 20 rather than 50-70. It was fairly full, though weirdly with just Spanish or English people, not exactly a diverse group. 

So we headed off for Halong Bay, which was about 5 hours or so away by bus, then ferry, then bus, then another boat. After a few hours driving we got to the ferry port, which was pretty busy. The guide explained that at peak times, you could wait 5 hours to get on the ferry across. I've never been on any type of ferry, but I assume crossing from Dover to Calais is a bit more sophisticated, all the cars essentially had to go down a ramp, with the boat boarding ramp then awkwardly led on top with 2 blocks of wood which were moved depending on the width of the vehicle for the tyres to go over. It looked and felt pretty precarious. We did get off the bus on the boat to have a look at the view, which was pretty decent. You could see the huge towers which are going to be a cable car to take people across, but who knows when that will be finished. Only a short 20 minute trip, then off the bus onto the small island of Cat Ba which the boats leave to get out into Halong bay proper. On the island you could see the beginnings of the scenery, with the mountainous landscape. Then we got to our final boat ride, which was a little boat to take us to our boat, as ours was too big to land in the port.

We got onto the boat, had we're given a little orientation by our guide, what the plan was etc. We then got our room keys and headed down for a couple of hours to relax. We got into our room, which was pretty well put together considering it was on a boat. Decent space, decent bed, the usual glass walled bathroom. Best thing was that the exterior wall was just a window, so we could see right out into the bay. We decided that we didn't want to spend much time in our room, so we went to get a beer and sat on the deck admiring the view.

Later on that afternoon we headed out to kayak through the bay, so we left on the smaller boat to go to a local who supplied the kayaks. A little side note, there are quite a few people (mostly men) who actually live in the bay on floating houses. So me and Hannah got into the kayak and started racing about, which it turns out we weren't supposed to do. The weather was amazing and the scenery was absolutely stunning, rowing through these tall islets. However, it turns out we are not good at kayaking (or maybe we are individually, but definitely not as a team). Whilst we could hit some pretty decent speed, that wasn't always (or often) in the direction we actually wanted to go in. The group did stop a few times to get out and swim in the bay, which was nice, although the advertised snorkelling didn't last long when you realised you couldn't see your hand in front of your face, let alone any fish, the sad effects of pollution. Safe to say, when the kayaking was done, we weren't too upset. Back on the boat it was get ready for the cooking demonstration and then dinner. We had a quick shower and went up to the deck for a drink beforehand, we both went for cocktails, which was a mistake as they definitely weren't very good at all (Hannah may have mentioned it being the worst Pina Colada she'd ever had). Stuck to beer from then on. The cooking demonstration was not the most impressive we've seen so far, pretty much just making spring rolls for dinner, which turned out to be just rolling up some pre-made filling. But we headed down to dinner, where they had a nice BBQ, as well as some starters and noodles. Pretty OK food. We spent the rest of the evening led on the top deck, looking out at the bay and the stars. It was very nice, due to the lack of city, there was very little light pollution, so the sky was very clear. What didn't help was the party boat nearby belting out 90's pop (Hannah was less sad about that seeing as she knew all the words).