Ninh Binh to Hanoi was a short bus ride, but a dangerous bus ride. My life seemed to flash in front of my eyes a few times. Sometimes, even now, when I close my eyes I see us overtaking another bus and 2 busses coming towards us on what was barely a 2 lane road! Anyway, we reached Hanoi unscathed (well physically anyway). We had already booked into a hostel so headed to the backpacker district of Hanoi. Our first point of business in Hanoi was to organise a tour to Halong Bay (one of the new 7 wonders of the natural world). The following day was Ben's birthday and the other four were all going to do a booze cruise of Halong Bay run by the backpackers' hostel! I didn't really want to do this because it was more expensive and I'm old! However because it was Ben's birthday and because of extreme levels of peer pressure I caved and booked onto the backpackers' tour.

We just wandered about Hanoi for the afternoon, it is a very busy city, quite imposing, maybe a little claustrophobic but I still quite liked it. Crossing the road is a definite experience but something you adjust to (just walk slowly and predictably and people go around you). As that night was Ben's birthday the 5 of us went for a nice dinner and then went and had a couple of quiet drinks, and then a couple more, then some not so quiet ones and then probably a few more! Walt had made a (quite clever) decision to have an early night - the other 4 of us did not follow his example and were drunk…. too drunk! Ah well after a few hours sleep we were up again for our trip.

The drive to Halong was pretty uninteresting but then you arrive into Halong and see the imposing limestone karsts and it's pretty impressive. We boarded our boat and headed into the bay. We travelled out between the beautiful limestone karsts. We were pretty lucky with the weather as it had been misty most of the time for the previous month or so but we were treated to a pretty good day. After lunch we went on a kayak trip around a small bit of the bay. We kayaked to monkey island where we got to see lots of monkeys jumping around on the shore. We then went to a small cave which was also pretty cool and then returned to our boat to enjoy the sunset and chill for a while! After dinner it was party time, complete with drinking games, forfeits and lots of people shouting! It was moderately fun (I'm not a massive fan of aggressive drinking games).

The following morning we enjoyed a short cruise in the bay where we were once again treated to the amazing scenery which has awarded Halong Bay the title of one of the 7 wonders of the natural world! Although the partying was maybe a bit aggressive it didn't detract from the beauty of Halong Bay. I also got to spend the trip with my new besties and we all got to help Ben celebrate his birthday!

We returned to Hanoi to the backpackers where we had a quiet night where we entered the pub quiz and won! The following day we were all going our separate ways so we did some last minute sight-seeing and went to see uncle Ho's final resting place and the one pillar pagoda! We returned to the hostel and said goodbye to Alana and Anastasia who had to catch their flight to Laos. After that I went and got my broken tooth fixed so I could smile freely again without looking like a hill billy!

Walt, Ben and I had one last supper together before I headed to Sapa and for the first time in weeks I was travelling alone again!