hi!!

hope evryone is well at home, things are fine here just got back form 5 day holiday - was national holiday so everyone had the weekend off and we added a few more days to it! went to a tiny island called quan lan which is just beyond halong bay in the picture, so you take a boat from the main land for 4 hours through this beatuiful scenery altho it was raining all the way there!
we had already booked a home stay as the 2 or 3 guest houses on the iland where full with vietnamese on holiday saw 3 other westerners the whole 5 days! the island is 11 sq km so some people got push bike and us lazy people got a motobike to explore, all the beaches where desserted in the day as the vietnamese hate the sun they are there early in the morning or later on. was great to swim in the sea aagin and sunbath on the beach when the weather got better. their was 8 of us in total then me and my flat mate stayed an extra 2 days just us. the home stay was good, some really great vietnamese food lots of soups and seafood, crabs and scollops and fish cakes all with rice and greens...very tastey and so cheap!!!!the food was really good value. as their was no csh point on the ialsn me and my frined who styed where abit skint so we asked them if they could make us a cheaper meal (we where paying about 4 dollars before, 70,000 dong) and we suggested 30 or 40,000 each would be great as we could never finish it all anyway! when we came to pay it turns out they only charged us 30,000 for both of us which was just crazy as the daughter who was doing all the cooking was just brill and still couldnt finish all the food!!was great to get out the city for abit. got some really nasty sand fly bites again which are a real pain, they blister up into giant balls on my legs waiting to burst and take for ever to heal, have got cream and tablets so hoping they should disappear soon and i can stop looking like iv got some horrible disease.
weather has gon rubbish again is raining today got day off so sorting out some things at the bank then picking up some trouser that iv been having made for the last 2 weeks - she tells me to come back only to find their still not ready....this will be the 4th visit now so very much hoping she has actually done them!!

lots of love to everyone

rachxxxxx