Gerry was really short of time in Hanoi, so we decided to go straight to Halong bay from the night bus, which worked perfectly. We were dropped off at Sinh Cafe, booked the trip - to leave in an hour - and walked into the Old Quarter to find some breakfast. We were confronted by an old Vietnamese man in the cafe who tried to speak French to me - probably because I said "Merci" when he directed me in French to the toilet! Luckily Gerry spoke French so she sorted that out! We headed back to the office to board the bus, sitting for a coffee with a very cute little woman who had a doorway shop on the main road. We'd ordered iced, it came hot, never mind!

The bus to Halong Bay was pretty annoying, it was a minibus, full to bursting, with Gerry and I sitting on the seats that fold down in the aisles, that have no head rests! The Vietnamese woman sitting next to me was very rude and kept knocking my book with her elbow and at one point actually elbowed me in the face! We were very relieved when we got to Halong Bay, to discover this bus load was not our group for the two days, instead we had much friendlier Vietnamese and a few other westerners - Sarah and Daz from Eastbourne, and Justin (who we'd already met in Nha Trang - but he didn't remember, as he'd been drunk!).

The boat trip was really relaxing, there wasn't a lot to do! The boat was a traditional style Junk and we had a great little cabin downstairs with en suite bathroom. We started off with an interesting buffet lunch that had rice, noodles and chips, amongst other things - fish, morning glory etc. They took us to some caves on one of the islands. They were pretty impressive caves, and I've seen a lot on this trip, but the memory of this trip is more about the baby I saved!! As we followed the path down into the cave, sticking to it as instructed, I saw a man nip down the other side of a big rock as a short cut, holding a baby as he went. There wasn't much I could do, I just thought he was an idiot and carried on round the rock. The next thing I saw was him sitting on a rock, still holding the baby, but rubbing his knee, which he'd obviously twisted while running along the wrong way... One of the women with him took the baby but as soon as he was walking again he took it back - why? who knows...anyway by the time he was walking down the next flight of stairs he was limping and barely able to walk, so I took the baby, who suddenly appeared in a lot of danger, and carried it to the end of the cave. I don't know why the woman - presumably its mother/grandmother - hadn't done that before! She just took a photo of me stealing her baby and smiled lots!

Later that afternoon we arrived at a place to hire kayaks and we grabbed a 2 person one and headed off round the little rocky islands. We weren't given any sort of direction on where to go or how to kayak - luckily I'd done it before! We paddled through a tunnel in the rock into a little lagoon area where one of the locals was having fun fishing out a MASSIVE jelly fish from the water. On the way back we watched the Sun setting over the islands, and the sky was a great colour of red, unfortunately, my camera is not waterproof and had not come on the trip! Back on the boat I was too desperate to shower and too conscious of giant jelly fish to swim, but lots of the others did. We had a dinner, pretty much exactly the same as lunch and drank over-priced tiger beer until we got sleepy and went to bed. The following day was equally as relaxing and involved lying on the deck whilst we set off back to the harbour. We were really lucky with the weather, it was beautiful sunshine the whole trip! Back on dry land we had lunch in a strange restaurant where they sprayed a mist of water over everything from the ceiling before again boarding our unfriendly bus back to Hanoi. The same rude Vietnamese woman sat behind me this time, which you'd think would stop her elbowing me, but this time she sat with her hands over my head rest so I couldn't put my head back without squashing them - I did this anyway, enough was enough, I'm sure she was infringing my human rights!

Back in Hanoi we head for the Boutique Hotel that Sarah and Daz had recommended, luckily it was right by the city gate where we were dropped off. When the others turned up we convinced them to stay another night and set off to watch the water puppets. We finally found the theatre by the lake after a few detours and discovered the office shut until half an hour before the show. By the time we came back they had sold out of cheap tickets and could only offer us seats in the aisle, which turned out to be a pretty good view! The show was mad, but awesome! It started with a small solo by an unidentifiable local instrument - very cool but very whiny... following this was the puppet show - puppets controlled by sticks under water. It was amazing, dragons spurting fire and water out of their mouths, villagers picking rice, golden turtles, great! It only lasted an hour, which was probably about right, as it may have got a bit samey after that!

Gerry's last day saw us trying to go to see Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum. This was a mission. The hotel organised a taxi for us (against my better judgement, from previous experience.) The Taxi driver dropped us off in the middle of no where, and had no change, so we ended up paying him in dollars which meant we paid more. We trudged through the city for about half an hour in the vague direction (bearing in mind it closes at 11!) and finally found out from another tourist that it was closed on a Monday - something the hotel, taxi driver and several people who had given us directions neglected to tell us!! that was that. We ended up going to the prison museum which was quite interesting - where John McCain was imprisoned, then went for Cha Ca la Vong - A Hanoi "must eat" before heading back to the hotel. As Gerry left, I waited for Sarah and Daz to start their day and headed off with them to wander the Old Quarter and had a "coke float" while they had pizza. They then left at 5 and Justin arrived after his 3 day Halong Bay trip. We head off on motorbikes to Hanoi Backpackers for happy hour, bumping into Elaine and Ellie from Nha Trang on the way, Charlotte, from Phnom Penh and Hoi An and Freddie from Siem Reap - very small world day!! Ellie, Elaine, Justin and I then went off for dinner and some drinks at the only place in town where beer was affordable!

The following day I had booked on a day trip to Nimh Binh. There were two girls I'd met in Hoi An on the bus - Mich and Hannah, and two other "westerners" - Amara - NZ and Mike - Brazil. We had a great day, first visiting some temples,then going to Tam Coc, otherwise known as Halong Bay on the rice paddies. It was incredible, we were rowed around the rice paddies (forwards - in a weird Vietnamese rowing style) and through 3 caves with spectacularly beautiful rice paddies in between - all being harvested. So there were boats paddling around with loads of rice, people using machines to separate the grass from the rice and loads of other activity going on whilst we sat at our leisure. Obviously, being in a rowing boat, I had to have a go, but rowing forwards, with only string to push against, it was a lot harder than it looked and my knees where forever in the way -with no where to go! They made it look so easy - especially when they paddled with their feet!

This was my last evening in Vietnam, so I enjoyed a final noodle soup in our favourite restaurant - New Bay, then headed to bed for my early flight to Bangkok - to go and meet Justine, yay!