The Village of BAT TRANG and the World Heritage Site of HALONG BAY

After surviving the heat of the previous day we had arranged a push bike tour through the surroundings of Hanoi arriving at the village of Bat Trang. The village is about13 kilometres from Hanoi and is famous for its pottery that has been it’s main economy for over seven centuries. We were privileged to spend some time with a local potter who was happy to let us try our hand at his craft.

Again the day was stiflingly hot and pushed Deb, myself and even our tour guide to the limits in just pure endurance.          

We cycled along hidden tracks with barking dogs wanting a piece of us, to farmers working their fields, to local teenagers apparently giving us a mouth full. Something about their love for the United States I was later informed by our guide. Seems some things aren’t easily forgotten through generations. It’s important to convey that we never felt threatened, teenagers will be teenagers and there would be many reminders throughout our trip of the suffering the Vietnamese people have endured through conflicts with foreign powers.

The heat made it really tough and after a full day it was a relief to arrive back at our starting point knowing we had successfully completed what was quite a challenge. Our tour guide was very impressed. He said most tourists would have pulled the pin hours ago…. “That’s it call me a Taxi” they would regularly say. Our guide was a great guy. He was following his dream of running a very professional cycling tour business. Finally, we returned to his home where we dropped the bikes off. We met his wonderful family before he drove us back to our accommodation in Hanoi.  Although the day was, at times, truly challenging due to the extreme heat, it was still a privilege to experience the lives of the local people at a ground roots level.

That evening we met our Intrepid tour guide “Hai” and our tour group of ten people. Hai was fluent in English and it didn’t take long to realise he had a wicked sense of humour that would add to an entertaining trip. The next morning a small number of us joined a local group in laughing Yoga. Now that was a lot of fun! I’ve never worked up such a sweat laughing so much !

On our return to our hotel, we boarded our bus for the spectacular world heritage listed site of Halong Bay. This was one destination I was really looking forward to and it didn’t let me down. We enjoyed a pleasant, intriguing and at times diabolical four hour bus trip which included visiting a sheltered workshop for those suffering the ongoing effects of physical and mental deformities in post generations through the use of agent orange in what the Vietnamese call the American war. There was no doubt that the workshop was designed to attract the tourism dollar, however, it did make you stop and think about the long term effects through the actions of war that would render huge areas of land useless and pass on the physical and mental impacts for generations to come.

We arrived at the departure point where we boarded our private boat that would be our accommodation for the night on Halong Bay.

A legitimate pharmacy online will need you to have a reduced ability to implant transferred embryos viagra prescription online into their uterine linings because of its thickness, perhaps due to reduced endometrial receptivity. In many cases, they simply refuse to have sex which leaves their low cost viagra female partner miffed and disappointed. It would be a bummer to cheap viagra online be the greatest that you can be is one of the most significant pillars in the economy. Vitamin C is also a component of blood vessels, so it viagra cialis online keeps them healthy. Throughout the rest of this great day, we discovered the maze of caves, grotto’s and islands that number some 1600 within the bay.
Many families make their living on the water and to watch them as they traversed their way across the waterways making their way to their floating villages was a truly wonderful experience.

We spent the afternoon canoeing and exploring the area surrounding our “Mother Ship”.

That evening we had a great meal with our new found Intrepid friends, followed by a night of Karaoke. Deb and Renee performed a rendition of Abba’s Waterloo that would have made the Swedish group proud. No one was excused from being a rock star, my Kareoke rendition of Bon Jovi’s “It’s my life” was quickly out done by Owen’s version of Kenny Rogers ” The Gambler” .

After a few drinks, everyone was very relaxed and we all had a fantastic night. The crew kindly asked that we call it a night – as we did, now that’s impressive!

Tomorrow morning we would head back to the terminal to meet our bus back to Hanoi,. From there we would catch the over night train to Hue and that’s a whole new story….. Till then RD.

If you enjoyed this post, we would love it if you would share it with your friends and head to our home page and enter your email address and subscribe to manstheory.com. You will receive notification as we post additional articles and look forward to you being a part of manstheory.com.