Hello!

Yet another update on the past week or so!

We went on our boat trip to Halong Bay, which was so beautiful! We were on a tour, and I hadn't done anything so touristy in all my travels! We were on a boat with about 8 other people, but unfortunately no young people really. We did enjoy watching Olivia speak French across the dinner table to a delighted french couple though! Anyway, Halong Bay is being voted for to go into the 7 natural wonders of the world, and it definately belongs there! If you don't know what it looks like already then google a photo, although it probably won't do it justice. We arrived on our cool boat, had our (fishy) lunch and sat up top and took in the views whilst having a read.

We arrived at a dock where millions of tourists (flowery shirts, beige trekkers, cameras around their necks, socks and sandals) and ourselves, where going to walk around some caves. They were amazing, but the hordes of people sort of ruined it. So after apprectiating those for half an hour we were back on the boat, a quick drive and then we were off kayacking! This was great fun, I've never done it before and what a place to do it! We were sat out in the middle of the still, turquise waters just chatting and watching the fisherman go by on their rowing boats, nosing into their houseboats, exploring around the limestone rocks soaring from the waters etc etc. The sun was setting after that, so we hopped back on the boat. Fizz was stood outside our bedroom and, after just escaping the people trying to sell stuff, she was bombarded by a women on her rowing boat (filled with Oreos, Pringles, Batteries etc): "YOU BUY SOMETHING?!" Fizz said no and she rowed off, only to float back asking the same thing! It's hard for them to take no as an answer.

The sunset was amazing. Everyone was up on the top deck, chilling, enjoying the view and reading. We stopped to have a swim, although I couldn't be bothered and just watched Fizz! Then we had another really good meal and were in bed by about 8pm! We had a few late nights and it had obviously caught up on us. Olivia and I went to sleep in our room, and Fizz went to sleep in a room shared with a Vietnamese man. Gutted!

We woke up at 5.30/6am for the sunrise...AND IT WAS BLOODY DAYLIGHT! Everyone missed it...don't know what happened there but we went back to bed untill breakfast time. This day we didn't really do much apart from drive about on the boat, went back to Halong City for lunch and then caught our bus back to Hanoi!

That night we bought a sleeper bus ticket to Hoi An, as we're really running out of time so wanted to get a move on. The bus was so much better than any other bus journey, because we had beds! Saying that, we were all on the backseat spooning eachother...which is fine except I'm not one for spooning with a random Vietnamese lady...

Anyway, that morning we were in Hoi An! Yay! We were excited as we had heard lots of good things about here, and really wanted to get some clothes made. The town is fairly quiet, but really nice. Very French-esque and nice little shops everywhere, and right along a river. The first day we just had an explore, and as we were all pretty tired (and nothing was really going on), we rented a DVD player and I got the girls addicted to Grey's Anatomy. The next day we woke up late and watched Grey's untill 5.35pm. Then we went for BREAKFAST/dinner and then WENT BACK AND WATCHED more. We had problems. The next day though we did go to the beach. The other two rented bikes but I was too scared as I am utterly s*** on a bike and couldn't do it anywhere other than a flat, quiet (or dead) carpark! I hopped on the back of a moped and met them there! The beach was lovely, on the horizon are little islands, the water was warm and we chilled after a swim reading our books on the beds. Then we treated ourselves to a slightly more expensive dinner right on the beach...we love seafood! We splashed out (and by splashed out, I mean my bill came to about 3pound) and headed home.

Olivia and Fizz both ordered dresses so the next day was taken up by them getting their fittings, us wandering around the town doing some shopping and having lunch and visiting our favourite place in Hoi An: THE BAKERY! We went there most nights. Quite often we were feeling depressed about how much more expensive having clothes made were, so we treated ourselves a lot to fufill our 'ESTROGEN RUSH' as we liked to call it. Anyway, our last day was filled with last minute shopping, eating and waiting around for our bus...and then we were on our way to Nha Trang!

Which brings us to now! We arrived here a couple of days ago after a 12 hour journey on a very different sleeper bus (this on was like bunk beds...and you get your own little section!) at 5am. We were driving past a huge lake that the sun was just rising over which looked great. Anyway so all the Vietnamese people were awake - crazy- and coming back from their morning beach exercises - cool, but they are still mad! We walked along and checked into hotel right on the beach front. After catching up on our sleep we went for something to eat. We walked for about 10 minutes and came across a cafe/bar called the Rusty Nail. We've now named this our local! The lady who works there, Heng, is an amazing cook! It's really cheap and we've had the best food there, every meal tastes so good. She told us of a shopping centre to go to so afterwards we walked for ages trying to find it but couldn't and came home....but that night we went back and she offered us all a lift there the next day! So nice. We ate there again and met some guys, chatted to the English guy who owns it (and used to live in Boscombe), met someone else who lived about 5 minutes away from me...small world! We drank their 30p drinks dry and moved onto the next bar and the next bar untill it was late and we crashed out at the hotel. The day went the same the next day as we ate breakfast and tried out this shopping centre...TACK GALORE! Think diamonte dog statues and diamonte head bands and diamonte buddhas and just tack. So yep didn't buy anything there, although it was entertaining and we had a laugh; especially when OLIVIA of all people had to buy EXTRA LARGE pants. Hilarious! Silly tiny Asian people.

We stayed in Rusty Nail that night until it shut. Met the same guys as the night before and had so much fun watching them (and Fizz) SNORT VODKA! It really was horrendous. Also it was fab getting to choose our own music as so many bars play stuff to drive us out!

And the past couple of days have been fun, but equally uneventful. Just now we ate in a DIFFERENT restaurant. It was disapointing, i'm never doing that again! We've just booked a boat trip for tomorrow which involves snorkelling and stuff...an all dayer for just $6! Hopefully it will be good. The day after we leave to go to Mui Ne, famous for some cool sand dunes so we're hoping to do some sledging or something there. Then we head to Ho Chi Minh City to fly to....BANGKOK! GREAT! Yeah not sure what's happening there at the moment, I'm a bit scared but my bag is there and I would really like that. Also run the risk of missing the flight whatever my options are so WISH ME LUCK!

xxxxxxx