Advantages: breathtaking landscape Disadvantages: quite hard to get there
...In the northern side of Vietnam, apart from Hanoi-the capital, Sapa, Halong bay is another worth visiting address.
How to get there
Located near Vietnam's north coast.The nearest city called Halong ( just the same name). If you were in Hanoi, it just take two hours on the bus to go to Halong- the city and then one more hour on the cruise to the bay. All cost about 10$( if you want a nice cruise, you'd better pay more).
Landscape
Known as Natural World Heritage site, Halong bay consists of over 2000 islands and islets as well as some limestone rock with hundreds of different shape. As you are on the cruise , you can see them closely and relise that they even have their 'soul'. Each of them has its own name such as:
*Hon Trong Mai ( the cock and hen islet ).
*Hon Thien nga ( the swan islet).
*Hon Dau nguoi ( the human's head...
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Advantages: Exciting, Chaotic And Delightful. Disadvantages: Leaving Town.
...Hanoi is often the first taste of Vietnam that many tourists get and if you were to go by first impressions your stay there would probably be a short one. Hanoi is the capital of the north and can be a little overwhelming. The city is overrun by motorbikes which makes the task of crossing the road an arduous one. Add to this the thousands of touts flogging every product imaginable and you have a cocktail of noise and interruption. In saying all this it is hard not to love the place.
For a city of 3,500,000 million people the pollution levels are nowhere on the scale of, say, Bangkok. Hoan Kiem lake in the middle of the Old Quarter (where most tourists base themselves) and is a beautiful place to relax and ignore the cavalcade of engines that buzz all around in every direction.
Getting into the city from the airport couldn...
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Advantages: weather more temperated than in south Disadvantages: colder people
...At the end of my presence in Vietnam I could return in Hanoi.
In spite of/ its statute of capital this city is less populated that Saigon.
CLIMATE
Moderate, the north of Vietnam possessed 3 saisons.My trip occured at the end of May.
General impressions:
magnificent green Rice fields , one can see almost everywhere from the road the fieldsworkers men and women crouched down to plant rice or by pair with the help of big baskets with pendulums drawing water in the channels to send it in the fields of rice.
All women carry here the cone and the men the viet green military colonial helmet .Contraste astonishing of the colors with the south dry at this very moment of the year.
Poverty is here more important than in the south.
Food, and lodging seems cheaper than in Saigon but clothes and jewelry etc...
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Axl Rose once admitted that the only reason that Guns n' Roses became successful was because of the void in the market that had been left empty by the demise of Hanoi Rocks. There may be other reasons for the formers success but it is easy to see Hanoi... more
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