Hello everyone,

Well if you didnt already know, we made it back to Vancouver safely yesterday night...the last bit of our trip was a bit of a whirlwind so we didnt have a chance to update the blog.

To start off where the other entry ended:

The day after visiting the perfume pagoda, we jumped on an early morning van with about 10 other people and headed East towards Halong City. We arrived on out "junk" boat and had lunch with everyone before heading out to the Halong Bay. That day we cruised around and saw lots of limestone islands and visited the "Surprising" Cave. After spending the night on the boat we spent the next day mountain biking and lounging around before heading over to Cat Ba Town where we spent the next night in a hotel.

The weather during the tour was not the best (grey and foggy) but the islands and overall beauty of the bay was worth every penny spent on the tour.

During the tour we met a guy and a girl from England and spent a lot of time with them. When we got back to Hanoi, they switched their tour to Sapa to match ours and the four of us headed to the train station together.

The overnight train to Sapa was an adventure in itself... During the trip I (Ryan) indulged in a bit too much Hanoi Vodka and ended up puking on our English friends in the middle of the night while Sarah slept peacefully. Our English friends had to bunk in a different cabin and the next morning I was in no shape to catch a ride 38km to the mountain village Sapa. Unfortunately Sarah forgot a bag on the train and went running back to grab it. The train staff there were not too pleasant and took Sarah's camera, yelled at her in Vietnamese, and wouldnt let her off the train.... luckily, in my shining suit of armor, I came to the rescue and and saved Sarah. Actually I was crouched over regretting every drop of Hanoi and Sarah yelled at the train people until the let her off. Luckily things could have been much worse and we headed up to Sapa.

Our tour in Sapa was one of our most favorite experiences... as Sarah said, it is one of the places where it looks much better than the pictures you see. The hills are green and full of terraces for rice, indigo, and tea. There were streams and water flowing everywhere.

We got off the van and met our tour guide. After breakfast and a much needed shower we headed down to smaller mountain village in the valley. Along the way a lot of friendly ethnic mountain villagers followed us and we chatted in english about our culture and asked them about theirs. Our guide had learned English entirely from tourists without any schooling. That night we stayed in a swank hotel with a huge bed and a nice bath tub for Sarah. The following morning our group headed pretty far out of Sapa into the hills and to our home for the night with a family in a village of about 200 people. After great food and card games with an ultra competitive Swedish couple we went to bed surrounded in mosquito nets. The next morning we walked through a bamboo forest and to a waterfall before making our way back to Sapa. Fortunately, the overnight train ride was less adventurous on the way back to Hanoi.

We spent our last night in Hanoi shopping and checking out a few of the sites, including the prison where John McCain was kept as a POW during the Vietnam War.

After the 12 hour flight from Hong Kong we arrived in Vancouver around 930pm yesterday and fighting through the jet lag (15 hour difference!)

That is all we have for you.... we put up the final bit of pictures... and if you want to see anymore of the couple thousand we took email us and we will try our best to send more.

Thanks again for all the messages and the well-wishes!

Ryan and Sarah