Up early to catch the mini bus to Tam Coc, which is basically Ha Long Bay inland. We experienced our first breakdown but luckily it was all fixed within 30mins so we could vacate the side of the motorway safely. 2hours later and we arrived at a temple.......

On to Tam Coc and with a vegetarian lunch of tofu in tomato sauce we were ready to face the rower that would take us along the river. We heard many stories about how the rowers try to rip you off and make you buy stuff etc but as it turned out Lan and her companion Mr Quan were very friendly and very trigger happy with OUR camera. We bought them both a drink that they will inevitably sell back to the vendor at the end of the trip but we were OK with that. We politely declined her table cloths, table runners, table mats, large prints, medium prints and small prints and then just had a laugh in the boat with them. Facinated by the fact Lan could row the boat with her feet and that Mr Quan only had one english saying 'lady so pretty, mister so handsome'. A thousand pictures later and a tip of 50baht (she wanted 100) we vacated the boat and said goodbye to the beautiful scenery that was Tam Coc in favour of searching out the dog they had for sale at the market. When i say dog, i mean, actual dog meat. Our friends Dan and Miyoko had visited Tam Coc the day before and got an amazing if not disturbing picture of a dog set out on the table all cut into pieces. You could clearly see the paws, tail, ribs cage cut open and the actual head with tongue hanging out - yuk, but a great pic. We were not so lucky as we only saw a small dog cut up minus the head!

So it was back on the bus and back to Hanoi for our last meal of do it yourself (Korean) BBQ beef at the side of the road and a farewell to the friends we had made before heading back to Bangkok the next day to start our island hopping.

S&M