Halong Bay, Sapa and some unusual wine.

I'm back in Hanoi now after spending 5 days whizzing around 2 of North Vietnam's highlights.

First I went to Halong Bay - a spectacular area as the photos show. The geology is similar to Yangshuo but in the sea. The only way to visit (apart from chartering your own boat) is on a tour. But fortunately the tours here are excellent - well organised, with small groups and fantastic value. Our vessel was a beautiful wooden junk with confortable cabins (better than most hotel rooms I've stayed in.) Crusing around soaking up the view was the perfect way to spend a few days. We also stopped off at some caves and on the second day did some mountain biking, hiking and kayaking. So it wasn't all lazing on the sundeck (though there was some of that too.)

The second night we stayed on Cat Ba island where we met the owner of the Ocean Tours company. He's a real vietnamese entrepreneur - with fingers in lots of pies and big plans for the future. As well as asking us about how he should expand his business, he showed us his collection of Rice Wine. It's a big thing here to take unusual wildlife and stick it in a jar of rice spirit to let the flavours (and special properties) infuse. You see snake and scorpion wine everywhere - for tourists to display on their mantelpieces rather than drink. He also had maggot wine, sea-horse wine and pride of his collection: lion penis wine. We did try some bee wine but left the others well alone.

I returned to Hanoi for just a few hours before setting off on the night train to Sapa, right in the northwest corner of vietnam. This is an area of hill tribes, where each village belongs to a different minority group with its own languange, culture and dress. The landscape is beautiful, covered in rice terraces a bit like Bali. The area is heavily visited now meaning the villagers are well versed in sales techniques. For a large part of the trek we were followed by groups of women selling handicrafts. But much of the rural lifestyle seemed untouched and was fascinating to see.

We spent one night staying in a homestay in one of the villages (basic but comfortable) and trekked about 25km in total.

Now I have a last day in Hanoi before heading south on yet another night train (fortunately they're pretty comfortable) for Hue.