Last night with the intrepid group so are treat was a visit to the Water puppet show! It was deffinately a skill but not necesarily entertainment especially when it is an hour long. It is worth a look but a planned escape route is a deffinate. Had a meal at Kotos where Caroline unvelied her bruise (see pictures) it took over her whole leg so she became the freak show for the night while we all took photos for our own amusement. This was not an accident as you might think from trekking but actually falling out of a bath!

Next day set off to Halong Bay. We met a nice group of people (it was a very mixed bunch). Halong Bay was stunning but the water wasn't the clear blue we were expecting so didn't want to take up the offer of jumping in. Especially after we were informed there were lots of poisonous sea snakes. Spent a night on Cat Ba island the sunset was beautiful. We celebrated my birthday with some people we met by drinking an awful lot of wine untill the clock hit midnight when we returned to our room and passed out. There are a lot of so called Karaoke Massage bars around the bay, there deffinately isn't much Karakoe and they weren't bars either! It made one of the lads on the group think twice about having a massage.

Next morning woke up ten minutes before we were going on a trek still feeling the effects from the alcohol the night before. Due to this we felt we were perfectally capable of climbing a mountain in the blazing heat. This was not a good idea the hangover and the heat was not a good combination but we did manage to make it to the end but only just. Later we went cruising on the boat and stopped to do a bit of Kayaking. It was fun but we needed a wide turning circle and struggled to bring the Kayak in without crashing into the harbour much to the anger of a 5 year old.

We are now back in Hanoi where we went out for an Italian with Caroline and Emily who were still around. They put paper table cloths and crayons to entertain you and Caroline drew an impressive elephant which the waitresses tried hard to avoid putting food on all night.

Thanks for all the birthday messages from everyone I will try to get back to everyone soon.