Vietnam: Leaving Cat Ba island for Hanoi.
The only thing that made our day are the mates we made during the tour. Here are some snapshots of our tour.
40,000 VDN for a bowl of Pho Bo at this well known store edition of this beef noodle soup.
Deuter backpack which I bought for 24USD. Barely even Rm100 after conversion!!
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Our French speaking friend of Vietnamese origin, Tuan Thong.
Yes, he speaks French! and he's on my Facebook ...
This was sold near the Water Puppet Theatre where we got off and bumped into Tuan. We bought the backpacks after he showed us the location.
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Today we leave Cat Ba island for Hanoi. We left Cat Ba island after waiting for an hour for the earliest boat pick up.
During the waiting interval time, we spoke to a few other travellers of their experience. The males weren't too fussed, but the females had a lower threshold of stress for the inefficient management of the entire tour outing.
What was really distressing about the trip was it was not managed properly where during some parts of the trip, some of the travellers were separated due to lack of seating vacancies.
When people travel to unknown places, they would prefer to travel with the same group of peoples though it was just for a duration of time, and in this instance it was for a two day duration.
It seemed that we weren't the only group that had a cooked up story from the tour guides. Or perhaps it was our unfortunate luck to have booked with this particular tour operator.
The cost of living seems ro be quite high, I believe inflated with the use of the USD to hedge it to the Vietnamese Dong. However from what I have seen of the infrastructure and facilities provided, the government has not done a good job on upgrading it for the benefit of the country.
Would I recommend visiting the country? Well, that is up to your desire and preferences. I actually much prefer South Korea or perhaps Bangkok after experiencing the kind of life during my short visit here.
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