Vietnam Nam Phao-Dry Ha Long Bay- Halong Bay-Ha Noi

To get to Vietnam we had to get up 700 meters elevation which was a 200 meters climb. Amazing how the weather, road, people changed after crossing the border! Suddenly it was rainy and quite cold (remember we are used to temperatures of more than 30 degrees C and it was 20-25 degrees), people were suddenly drinking tee, not only beerlao and of course there were much more people to see.

First meters in Vietnam...

First break in Vietnam... and first invitation for a tee

Our first part of the trip was the Ho Chi Min highway. It is a perfect road for cyclists: not many cars, nice  rural landscape, green and very friendly people along the road. You can also get your water and coke in reasonable distances from each other, so no need to carry much of that. You can see scooters full with the craziest load or bicycles too big or too small...

Rice noodels getting dry beside the road...

 The coffee in Vietnam is soooooooo good

Invitation for a traditional soup ended for us with a bottle of self made rice spirit... This day was funny cycling afterwards...

 Piglet transportation...

Our first main goal in Vietnam  was to get to the Dry Ha Long Bay. The last bit ofncycling we had to use the highway A1 and that was a nightmare, no fun at all to cycle there. Thousands of trucks, cars, scooters and all give you the loudest horn possible. And it is dirty, and everyone coming from all directions... Yeah, we were quite tired after these 80km...
Still it was worth it. Dry Ha Long Bay is nice. This region located about 150km from Hanoi is a beautiful calm place. We enjoyed it a lot staying in Ninh Binh and paddling a bit around.

Once again we went through a tunnel-cave on a boat trip with a Vietnamese lady. She was very strong, paddling all the way and in the cave we had only maybe 10cm above us, already lying in the boat, so it was a bit scary and not to be recommended for anybody with claustrophobia.

 From  Ninh Binh we took a bus directly to Ha Long Bay to omit the A1. Then we got on a boat cruise for 2 days to watch the rocks. The natire was very nice, but you should be very careful with the trips like that, it might be very low quality service and at the end a rip off.

 Visiting a very big cave was also a part of the trip

 

After Ha Long Bay and spending one day on a Cat Ba island we started cycling towards Ha Noi. These were nice 2 days cycling with beautiful meetings with the local people.

As we got to Ha Noi a very bad news from Germany reached us. We had to unexpectedly get back home, not knowing what really awaits us there.