Ha Long Bay

Up and seeking coffee at 7 am, we prepared to visit Titon mountain. The island was named in honour the Russian general that was friends with Ho Chi Minh. 

It's a little more than 400 steps up to a panoramic viewing platform. We arrived and made it to the top less than 5 minutes before another two or three sets of your groups joined us. I was busy stalking birds on the way up and didn't have much time to snap photos before the droves arrived. 

This is a bird I stalked for a weird amount of time

Back down at the bottom of the stairs is a man-made sand beach. After getting all tomato faced and incredibly sweaty from the short hike up, I was ready to plunge into the water. But first we had to jump the gate of the inexplicably locked change room. 

Plunging into the tepid water was lovely! It was like taking a dip in a warm bath. As the wind slowly started to pick up, we started losing bathers to the "cold" until it was just the Canadian girls and U.S. gal left. 

Back on the boat we had just enough time for a quick shower and check out before another five-course meal (brunch). 

There's not much on the agenda today besides the 4-hour drive back to Hanoi and an 11.5-12 hour overnight train to Hue. 

But we had about 1.5 hours in Hanoi at our disposal. So a couple of us went to find the old food market, try to find and eat snails (a local treat), buy food for the train, and check out the floating temple in the lake. We did find the place selling snails but there was no room and no time, so sadly we had to miss out. 

Birds at the market

Traffic was crazy bananas in the city!

As mentioned in my Hanoi - Walking Tour post, the temple in the lake is in honour of King Le Thai. In order to help him defeat the invading China, the Dragon King gave Le Loi a sword of great power. When the Chinese were defeated around 1465, and Le Loi was crowned king, he was boating on the lake when a golden turtle came to retrieve the dragon sword. King Le Thai To renamed the lake ‘The Lake of the Returned Sword’ (Hoan Kiem Lake).

The little temple has many dragons, turtles and swords. It depicts the four sacred animals on many surfaces as well: tortoise (or turtle), unicorn (horse body with dragon head), phoenix, and dragon. 

We were pretty successful except for the snails. We found the best/only restaurant serving snails and clans but it was packed and they couldn't seat us. And we were out of time. So I picked up a turkey kabob in honour of Canadian thanksgiving and it was off to the train. 

The train wasn't bad. Four sleeper car compartments and the obligatory awkward and somewhat gross bathroom. I did not sleep much on our overnight journey, but mostly because of heavy smoking somewhere up or down the car from us and a cat being kept under the sinks that meowed all night. I kept waking up to tell my kitty to be quiet and stop the racket. Sorry Dashy!