After a very easy 45 minute flight we arrived in Hanoi. We knew we were back in Vietnam when there was more people than there were seats in our minivan to the city center. The streets were noisy and dirty and smelly again and the people rude and pushy. We began to wonder why we left Laos. We had 2 days in the city browsing art galleries and handicraft shops during the day and sitting on plastic stools at one of the many corner shops drinking 10 cent beers with locals and tourists by night. Walk down a 100 meter stretch here and you are sure to see men smoking out of a meter long pipe, people peeing in the street all blurred by 100 or so scooters.

We escaped the city to Halong bay on a 3 day, 2 night tour. a 4 hour drive took us to the serene setting of Halong Bay made up of 2000 limestone islands jutting impressively out of the sea. We were pleasantly surprised with the tour - it was well organized with great food and accommodation to boot. Kayaking through the hidden caves around and through the islands on the calm waters was the peaceful Vietnam we had been searching for. It was heavenly. We spent that night in bungalows on a private island. The following day we were back on the boat accompanied by a German couple, a French couple, and a Spanish/Angolan couple - quite a mix. The afternoon activities included diving off the second floor of the boat and soaking up some rays. We were blessed with one of the few sunsets that occur here at this time of year and we relished every minute with a bottle of fine Vietnamese Dalat wine.On our final day on the boat we took a tour of the "amazing cave", which looked more like something from Disneyworld. After another night in Hanoi, we headed for the hills.

We took the 9 hour night train to Sapa in the northwest of Vietnam. we shared our cabin with a Dutch couple and of course yet another bottle of Dalat wine, for $3 who can resist? We hoped it would send us to sleep but it just seemed to make the rocking of the train even worse. At 5 am we caught the bus up the winding mountain roads. Sapa town towers above the town on all sides. It is literally up in the clouds which creates the problem that you can only see this stunning view for about 10 minutes everyday. The valleys and villages around Sapa are home to a large population of hill tribe people, which is the main reason we come up to Sapa. We hoped to do a trek to one of the villages and do a homestay at one of the locals home. Unfortunately the day we arrived I felt like I had been hit by a truck and was pretty much bed bound for the next 2 days. I was so dissappointed! We did venture out to have a walk around the town - big mistake. It went something like this: hill tribe ladies surrounding us like a plague pulling at our arms - "Hey! You buy something from ME!." We continued up the street stepping over piles of smelly, rotten rubbish and dead rats and hoping to take a short cut home we cut through a back street where we saw two guys plop a whole dog onto a bbq and were burning into his neck with a hot iron. Honestly, this was the most disturbing thing I have seen yet - it looked like someone's pet! Now I was feeling ill before we left the hotel and after our walk I was gagging and went straight back to bed.

On our third day in Sapa, feeling a bit better, we were determined to see the area, so we rented a motorbike for a few hours and took off on the open road. For the first time in 3 days it stopped raining long enough for the mist to clear and give us some great views of the valley as we wound our way down to the bottom. The entire valley is made up of terraced rice paddies with hill tribe people doing some back breaking work in them. We passed kids riding their water buffaloes bareback and locals showering in the waterfalls and to make things more interesting, every couple of hundred meters the road had rivers flowing over it - I think Greg thought he was in Ewen McGregors footsteps in "The Long Way Round." It really is a different world up here, and finally being away from the town, we really liked it. We stopped at an old woman's house for a drink by which time the rain was becoming heavy so we turned around to head back to Sapa. Some hot lemon and homemade chicken soup had us warmed up in no time.After another sleepless night train, shared with 2 Vietnamese women who were obviously afraid of the dark and silence, we arrived back in Hanoi for one last time.

How do you spend your final day of a one year trip? We didn't know either, so we made the most out of being in a third world country and shopped till we dropped and then celebrated with fine vietnamese seafood and of course, lots of wine.So the enevitable has happened and our trip of a lifetime has come to an end. During the last year the things we have experienced and people we have met have opened our eyes and hearts a little wider. But it hasn't all been easy, our patience has been stretched to the limits. We have been exhausted, hungry, smelt horribly and have been broke. But these lows only made the highs better and there have been many. We have been blown away by the beauty of the world and humbled by how little others have and yet how happily they live their lives. I couldn't have wished for a more perfect person to have shared it all with. In a day or two all these experiences will just be a memory, but we will cherish them forever and know that one day we will embark on "Jo and Greg 'Round the World: Part 2". In the meantime however we are ready to come home and start the next chapter - bring on a corona and big fat steak...