Hello!

eugh I am poorly so I am afraid this will not be a very sprightly blog. I think I have food poisoning which is not particularly good especially when it kicks in at the start of a bumpy four hour bus journey. I did however manage not to throw up on the bus which I think is an impressive feat and also retained my popularity with my tour group.

The driving in Vietnam is even worse outside of the city. It's like a big race and vehicles overtake each other continuously, and they don't care whether there is anything coming in the oppostite direction. There are 9 million people in Hanoi and 5 million motorbikes. They carry everything on the backs of motorbikes. I saw several trees, packs of about 200 toilet rolls and even a dead cow strapped to the backs.

I went to Halong Bay on my three day trip which was pretty cool. It was also the most sun I've seen in a long time (discounting the sun in Mongolia as I was wrapped up in five layers and it was bloody cold) but was kind of funny as everyone else was complaining about how cold it was. It's very pretty out there as there are thousands of tiny islands (apparently created by a dragon walking round the bay, I love these legend thingies). We went kayaking which I always get excited about and then realise how much effort it is and a few of us went swimming. This may have caused my illness as I possibly ingested some water and it was quite dirty....

One of the guys had a guitar with him which I'd first thought was a bit stupid as I've got enough to lug around with my bag and taking a guitar backpacking seems pretty silly. However we had a bit of a sing song in the evening which was fun. We got so carried away we did an accapela version of Bohemian Radsody. We learnt later that we could be heard from neighbouring boats. It was good as I managed to leave my MP3 player behind at one of the ger camps and have been missing music greatly.

Second day I went to Cat Ba Island which is the biggest one in the bay. Only two of us from our group went to the island and it was a bit weird as we were both imagining some desert island type thing straight out of Treasure Island/The Beach/Lost where we could sit and reflect. Instead we found ourselves in a resort akin to Costa Del Sol. Still, it was quite good, and we did a trek in the morning to the top of this big hill thing which was all jungly. I found a couple from Lancashire at the top of the hill which excited me as I hadn't met anyone from the north of England for a long time, it was good to hear some familiar accents. We went out for a very cheap beer with them on the evening (over a pint costs the equivalent of 12p).

Other than that I've been vomiting and sleeping so nothing too exciting to report I'm afraid. It also means I'll be stuck here for a while as I want to make sure I'm better before I book onward travel. This is particulary annoying as Tet or Chinese New Year is coming up and I'm likely to get stranded so wanted to get down to Saigon for that, grr. Anyway I'm tired now so I'm going back to bed.