Halong Bay: On the way up to Hanoi, I took the local bus up to Halong Bay where I became an english teacher to a few on the busy & they tried to teach me a few phrases in Vietnamese that would help for bargaining in the market. The boat trip in Halong Bay was great. The view itself was amazing & the group on the boat was lots of fun. The trip was relaxing as there wasn't much to do other than hanging out on the boat, eating, the occasional kayak trip & some swimming. I slept out on the roof of the boat since the rooms were too hot which gave me the opportunity of seeing sunrise over Halong Bay....yes, I was up for sunrise for the 2nd time of the trip!

Sapa: I made my way over to Hanoi for a few hours & found time to schedule a last-minute trip to Sapa, as I heard it was a must see in Vietnam. Scheduling this was quite tough in order to try & avoid scams, but in the end I found a trip that Eric was already scheduled for & we thought it would be fun to do it together...or at least have safety in numbers as there seem to be many scams for the trips sold in Hanoi...which we did come across on this trip but not as bad as expected. The actual trip to Sapa was fantastic although it was not what we had expected. We thought we were going on a jeep tour to some villages & then a city tour of Sapa. It turned out that we had to walk for about 6 hours to the villages...going up and down the mountains of northern Vietnam. It rained for ~ 1 hour at lunch-time which made the conditions very slippery. We pretty much slid our way down some of the hills, trying to slow ourselves down with rocks, tree branches or anything else we could use. There were may of the minority tribes people there offering help, but for a fee so we did it on our own. You weren't even supposed to talk to the people from the minority villages unless you planned on buying something from them. The scenery in Sapa was great though and it was another amazing trip, with great people!!

Hanoi: The city was by far less relaxing than Halong Bay. I did my last bit of shopping here & it took a lot of effort to bargain as you knew you were constantly being ripped off as a foreigner. I didn't enjoy the northern Vietnam as much as the Southern parts of the country as it was much more obvious that they were looking to scam tourists, especially for shopping & for trips. The city itself was nice though & I knew I wouldn't be there long (just transitioning between cities), but it made for a tiring end to Vietnam.