Indo China - Hanoi

We start from Hanoi and book a out of city tour of Tam Coc and Hoa Lu the local people also call by this name Halong Bay on land. The hotel book us for this tour at US$31.00 per person. Once out of the city we were able to see the agriculture farmland of Vietnam, everywhere are rice fields. We arrive at Hoa Lu in about 1 hour, and visited a temple and tombs of the olden days fuedal dynasty. After an hour of sight seeing we leave for Tam Coc and at the jetty we see a big crowd waiting to go into small sampan on the river Boi. I am very impress with the tourist in this place. At the jetty we were allocated 2 person to a sampan build of metal sheet. It is a flat bottom boat with 2 Vietnamese using the oars to row us. Along the river were high mountains and hills, some forming a cliff drop on the river. We can view the rocks formation out of the river but the water are not very deep. The boatman and his assistant try to sell us t-shirts , hand painted umbrella, vietnamese hat and other souvenirs. The whole journey takes about 3 hours and hard rowing passing into tunnels on the river trip.

After our lunch we start to drive back to Hanoi. This journey back to our hotel takes longer than our coming trip. The van became very hot as this aircon becomes non functional. By the time we reach the hotel we are fuming hot.