My Exchange Semester in Taiwan: Week 20 + 21: Hue, Halong Bay, Hanoi (24.1

My first plan was to go to Sapa, a city in the north of Vietnam. But in order to get there you need to take a 8-10 hour bus journey. But I thought that I will lose too much of time when I go there as I only had 10 days in Vietnam. After a short look I found flights to Hue which had a decent price, and I booked the flight. So I flew on Saturday afternoon to Hue and stayed there until Monday evening. Hue as a city is nothing special and there it has not so much to see, but the Imperial City is on the other side of the River. The Imperial City is quite big and it has some beautiful places, to get inside you have to pay an entry fee of 105’000 VND (around 5 USD).

After Hue I spend one night in Hanoi before going for a two day trip to Halong Bay. I booked a tour at a tour operator. To get to the Bay takes around 3 hours by bus and then there are the boats waiting. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy all the time. But Halong Bay was really nice, in the tour we visited a cave, a beach (or you could go to climb a hill), an oyster farm and you had the chance to go kayaking. In the two day tour we were back at the harbour at 1 pm and were back in Hanoi around 4.30 pm. There are one day tours as well which leave Hanoi around 8 am and return at 7 pm, if you don’t have the time for more days I would definitely go for a day trip (to be honest I am not sure if you really see that much more on a two day tour).

After the tour I spend one night in Hanoi before flying back to Taipei on Thursday morning. Vietnam had some really beautiful places unfortunately my 10 days were not enough to see everything. But Vietnam will stay on my list and I will have to go back some day to see other places as well.