Day 106 Halong Bay - Hanoi

We had a difficult nights sleep because we heard rats during the night. We were also woken up early by the ships engines and the crew watching tv again outside our room – hate Vietnamese karoke channels! Breakfast was really disappointing so we had another really good moan with Ian. After breaki we arrived up the bay for some kayaking. Emma decided against it, due to the fact the kayak looked like it was a swimming pool inside, so I went in with a Canadian dude called Oliver. It was great to see the limestone cliffs of the bay up close and we spent 40 minutes paddling around before heading back. On the way back to the Harbour, we went pass some rocks that looked like two fighting c*** and one looked like a big fish – Ooooooo! Whatever next. The coach on the way back to Hanoi stopped off 4 times, once for lunch which was great, the other for a classic tourist/gift shop stop and then twice more for what seemed like the bus was on fire. Having been dropped off at Hoan Kiem Lake, we walked back to the guest house to complain. Our complaining unsurprisingly didn’t get us anywhere and never does in South East Asia. We told them to stuff their $6 refund. We checked into a hotel across the hotel, which unfortunately made it difficult to meet up with Jacques. Chilling out in our hotel and watching Chelse be unfortunately beat by the Toffees was a well deserved break. We headed out into town for dinner and bumped into Jacques. Emma and I, not up for a late one, went home early.

Day 107

We met with Jacques and another couple at ten for breakfast. We managed to find a really nice place that did big breakfasts. Said goodbye to Jacques as he was flying to Vientiane and went on the hunt for the Laos embassy and to book our train to Sapa. The morning was pretty unsuccessful, resulting in us deciding to skip Sapa and head to Laos much earlier. In the evening we met up with Becky and Ellie, and Becky’s boyfriend Lee for dinner and a few drinks. We ended up getting pretty drunk and had a really good night.

Day 108

We woke up pretty late having planned on getting up early. We booked our coach to Vientiane (hope it’s a sleeper and nice) and our water puppet show for this evening. Met up with everyone from last night for lunch and said our goodbyes again. We headed for the National History Museum + the Revolutionary Museum, these were both really interesting and informative. When walking back we took a different route around the lake, which was really beautiful in the cold mist. In the evening we went to the Water Puppet Show, this was certainly different but well worth the experience, Emma really enjoyed it. We had Pho Bo for dinner from a nice little restaurant and then called it an early night as everything is still closed.

Day 109

We were up slightly earlier than normal, after dragging Rumbold out of bed as usual. We took a taxi to the Ho Chi Minh memorial complex. Security was tight, and definitely no photography of the dead big man himself. Emma thought the body looked fake and more like a wax work. Next was Ho Chi Minh’s museum, which was more of an art gallery than a museum. Having still had not eaten we walked back to town in hunt for food, this proved to be a lot harder than we thought thanks to TET. I got a photo with one of the many security guards with an oversized uniform. To fill our day before getting on our coach, we checked out the old quarter for about the 100th time and bought some chopsticks. We headed back to our guesthouse to wait for our pick up. At 4:15 our ride turned up on a motor bike, the driver thought we could get both me and Em and our rucksacks onto his motorcycle. He must have been having a bubble, so we convinced him to take us separately. After another 45 minutes waiting somewhere else, we finally picked up by our minibus, which was extremely cramped with rucksacks everywhere. Once at the bus station we saw our sleeper bus – THANK GOD our bus with our longest journey yet was to be our best sleeper bus. However, we did have to put up with Vietnamese karaoke videos for a lot of the night!!!