Hai phong

We have one rule, after you get off the bus - first start walking, otherwise it gets a lot harder to avoid all the taxi drivers offering you a ride. After Cat Ba, a boat and a bus eventually led us to some boat port in the edge of the town, or in other words - the middle of no where, so we started walking. After a few minutes and several taxi dodges, we reached a place that looked like a travel agency, but I guess it wasn't , since no one was there other than an old lady with no English who was yelling something to somebody. Just when we were about to give up on her, some random car parked next to us, and not just any car - a large white ford, not something you see here very often. A guy came out and started speaking broken English with us, and eventually offered us a free ride to the center of town. Turns out he is a manager at the port and was just passing by or something , anyway, again, we beat the system! Hai phong is a big city, it reminded us of Tel aviv a little bit, except there were no western tourists AT ALL, not one, and barely any hotels. We don't have many exciting stories from there - one empty club louder than the gates of hell, and a whole lot of heads turning to look at the weird couple of westerns with huge bags on them, but we are starting to get used to it by now. Next stop - Ninh Binh, the greatest adventure we've had so far!  (just a teaser for the next post)