Vietnam: Hanoi and Halong Bay

Morgan and I caught a quick flight over to Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, from Siem Reap to explore for a few days. We booked a hotel online for $12 per night and I guess you get what you pay for which in this case was a shower duct taped together, bugs and a nice smell of mildew. Morgan's friend from EHS, Will Akridge, lives in Hanoi and we met up with him our first 2 nights. He introduced us to the $0.25 draft beers on the side of the road which was brewed fresh everyday. Our next day we did a walking tour of the city of which there are almost no sidewalks. The sidewalk is covered up by parked motorbikes which forces you to walk in the road and dodge the oncoming motor bikes and cars, not very safe at all. Fresh pineapple on the street costs around $0.50-1.00. After walking the city, we decided to book the Halong bay tour for the following day. Knowing that all prices are negotiable, we walked to several travel agents and gave them the "we just aren't sure, this price seems expensive". After 3 travel agents, we found one who lowered his price by 15% so we signed up for the deluxe 2 days one night on a junk boat in Halong Bay ($59 per person). We spent one more night in the town with Morgan's friend and this time we saw quite an interesting fight. There was a scuffle at the street restaurant we were at and we watched one man chase another swinging two machetes at him. After hearing people's screams around the corner and only the man with machetes run away, we did what anyone would do, we put down our drinks and got the hell out of there. The next morning we caught a bus to Halong bay to board our boat. Halong bay is the area with almost 2000 islands sticking straight out of the water with 50-100 meter cliffs. We were able to explore a huge cave and do some kayaking in between the islands as part of our tour. Also, you sleep on one of the old fashioned junk boats at night which was actually quite nice since we had a really powerful AC unit. There were people who lived on house boats who would paddle up to your boat and try to sell you pringles, soft drinks and other food/drink. There were also tons of people selling pearls (or fake pearls). The price...only $20 for a pair of pearl earrings (gotta be fake). Today we took the bus back to Hanoi where we will spend another night before leaving to go to either Hoi An or Phuket.