Hello everyone and greetings from Vietnam HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone - hope you had a good NYE back in the UK.. At the moment we're in Halong Bay which is about 300km east of Hanoi on the coast. Yesterday on teh way here we had a horse and cart ride around a local village followed by our own personal theatre/song performance - you can see by the pictures that we were a bit shocked when 4 ladies and their 'band' started carrying on - neither of us knew where to look and ended up with face ache from forced smiling. Our New Years Eve was rockin!! - we ended up snuggled up in bed by 10 pm because it was so cold!! but we did go out for a really nice Vietnamese meal and we're both geting to be dab hands at the old chopsticks. New Years Day was great and we were glad we hadnt been up boozing the night before - we had a 3 hour boat ride around Halong Bay and it was amazing !! The tour company has chartered the boat for us and it was massive with only us on it - there was more crew than tourists !! Anyway it was a great way to start the New Year chillin and sunbathing on the top deck of the boat !! There are 1000's of small islands in Halong Bay and we stopped off at one of the bigger ones and went on a tour of the caves (hence the photograph) - they were great - massive and a lot more impressive than the ones in New Zealand - they actually date back from the 15th Century and were used as a hide out during the wars. After the caves we had the seafood buffet (Shell had chips and rice !!) - the shrimps were absolutely amazing - especially as Rob had never eaten anything like that before. The rest of the time was spent cruising around the bay watching the fisherman and trying to avoid the kids begging that were jumping up to the boat. All in all it was a brilliant way to start the New Year and we loved every minute of it. We drove back to Hanoi for an early start tomorrow - the driver is picking us up at 4.30 am !! so that we can catch our flight to Hue. We're not sure whether anything is going to beat Halong Bay but we'll keep you updated.. all our love Rob and Shelley xxxxxxxxxxxxxx