Hi all,

I'm down to my last few days in Vietnam now and have spent almost 2 weeks here in Hanoi. It's been a fabulous fortnight but mainly because of all the fantastic people I've met, Hanoi itself hasn't been my favourite place in Vietnam!

There's loads of museums and temples but I'm bored of them now so only went to Hoa Lo Prison Museum which was pretty interesting. It was nicknamed the "Hanoi Hilton" by the American POWs held there during the war and some of the pictures were pretty gruesome (As was expected!). An interesting fact for you (If you're interested, Bruv, you might be) is that John McCain was held here during the war and due to the torture he suffered at the hands of the guards he can no longer lift his arms over his head. He also attempted suicide twice whilst he was held there. Pretty nasty, and the Americans were actually treated much better than the Vietnamese prisoners (Apparantly....) Anyway, that was one of the cultural, educational things I did here, the other was Water Puppets....

Imagine Punch and Judy set to Vietnamese music with dragons and a big swimming pool and you might have an idea of what it was like! This "art" was originally performed in the rice fields years ago and I can imagine that to see it done in this fashion would've been awesome, but it was in a theatre in a swimming pool on stage which was wierd. Some of the crowd loved it but myself and Kim thought that after the first scene (Dragons spitting fire out of their mouths...Wicked!) it all went a bit downhill!! Great if you were 8 but not really for us! So that was the second cultural thing I did here and after that I have been drinking and making friends which has been ace!

Kim left me on a VERY early flight (BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO) and I'm missing her a lot but hope you are having fun. As I was on my own again the only option to avoid being a hermit was to hit happy hour in our hostel bar and start talking! So I did! And thankfully met the best bunch I've met since the Magic Bus nutters which was great.

We all took a trip to Halong Bay, a bay filled with limestone karst structures which were totally amazing. It is a world heritage sight and was very beautiful. It was really relaxing, just lying out on deck gossiping and swapping travel stories. We visited an unpopulated island which was home to a cave nicknamed "Monkey Cave". It was discovered a few years ago when locals followed a monkey and it disappeared into a hole...and inside was an awesome cave filled with limestone sculptures, stalactites and mites and bats! There was even a phallic shaped rock which was erm...... interesting, and the sight of more cameras than anywhere else!! Highly amusing! The cave had been totally made into a tourist attraction with coloured lights, steps and even a fountain installed which although not traditional was very pretty!

After that we headed back to the boat (In the rain) to have dinner and chill out. Spent the evening getting to know everyone and to my relief the extra people on the boat were all fantastic...well...almost all. There was a very strange but FASCINATING family of Christian Fundementalists. A mother and her two sons who had been home schooled for 10 years!! They had sold up their whole life in the States (Literally EVERYTHING they owned) to do "High School on the road" for FOUR years!! They didn't believe in taking pictures, didn't like us smoking and had some very contraversial beliefs regarding gun laws and religion but I was amazed by them. The kids were REALLY bright but very weird!! It made for an interesting few days!

The following day we went to Cat Ba Island, the only populated island in Halong Bay and participated in my FAVOURITE passtime...trekking. Yuk. It was wet, cold, slippery and treacherous! Our guide thought he was a monkey, the trail was...difficult to say the least but the views from the top of the watchtower (A perfect example of Vietnamese Health and Safety...holes, wobbling and missing steps on a 100m high structure!!) made it worthwhile. We stayed the night on Cat Ba Island, smuggled vodka into the bar and proceeded to talk rubbish until the early hours of the morning!! It was a great trip but made so good by the lads on the boat. We all clicked and are hoping to meet up when we all return from our travels!

Apart from that Hanoi has been just OK. I think it was made worse by the fact I had so much hassle trying to obtain my Chinese Visa (Thankfully it arrived last night!!) I queued for hours at the embassy (On my THIRD visit due to dubious opening hours...)only to be told because I didn't live/work in Vietnam they couldn't issue a China Visa. "New Rules" apparantly. I had to therefore go through an agency and pay double!! I love being a foriegner! Hanoi is also home to biggest rip off artists in Asia!! The only place where we have been CONSTANTLY hassled. I heard some scary stories about moto drivers becoming menacing and demanding more money from girls on their own (Thankfully not to me) and a lad in the hostel ended up in hospital with internal bleeding in his skull when he refused to pay the extra money the cabbie wanted! All very scary so if it wasn't for the people I would've been gutted about being stuck here for so long! I also had a depressing shopping incident, it's really cold here in Hanoi (Well, compared to Southern Vietnam) so my wonderful mum told me to treat myself to a couple of jumpers (Thank you xxx) off I went to the shopping mall, only to find that Vietnamese women are VERY VERY small....and I apparantly am not!! I searched for ages and eventually found a little shop that had cheap stuff, I tried on a jumper that just fit, expecting it to be maybe a medium...but when I checked the size it was EXTRA LARGE!!! Luckily I'm not over sensitive as shopping in Asia when you're "Normal" sized is depressing!! It was very funny, though I decided against looking for trousers to buy haha!

So that's it from Vietnam, I leave on Tuesday for Guilin, China (On a stinky sleeper train for Paddy's day boooooooooo) and will hopefully start my teaching the following week (It's a bit uncertain at the moment so please keep your fingers crossed!). I've had a blast in Vietnam but 2 weeks in one spot with little to do has wound me up a bit! It's the longest I've stopped in 8 months and I'm totally ready for the next place!

Anyway, hope you've stayed awake through all that, will update from China soon!

Sel

xx