In Singapore we get two days off for Chinese New Year, so I decided to seize the opportunity to head up to a country that I've always wanted to see ... Vietnam. Unfortunately, due to the short timeframe, we had to prioritize what we wanted to see, so we chose Halong Bay - which I had heard from many people was the highlight of their SE Asia trips.

We landed in Hanoi, and had about 24 hours before we needed to meet our group to travel to Halong Bay. Not realizing it when we had booked the trip, we arrived just in time for Tet, or lunar New Years. After dropping our stuff at the hostel (a FANTASTIC place called Hanoi Backpackers) we headed out with our new friends to grab dinner, drinks and catch the fireworks by the lake. Several beers later, we were ready to make our way down to the lake ... with about five thousand Vietnamese. Eitan and I ended up getting separated, but Katie (this girl I met at Hanoi Backpackers) and I sprinted down to the lake in time to catch the fireworks. Watching the fireworks was fun, but watching the people around us was even better. The streets were literally packed with people and everyone was ooohing and aaahing and giving each other hugs. Katie and I befriended some random Vietnamese people around us, who explained a bit about the holiday and walked us part of the way back ... since neither of us had managed to bring a map or guidebook during our mad dash to the lake.

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a bar where we ran into our backpacker friends from Cambodia ... what a strange coincidence. They had just finished a 30-day motorcycle tour of North Vietnam - lucky guys!