Halong Bay

Location: Hanoi
Country: Vietnam

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From Nha Trang I got an 11 hour night bus to Hoi An.
On the bus met a nice German guy, originally from Korea, he actually wasn’t gay for a change, but the Korean look doesn’t exactly do it for me.
We shared a room in Hoi An and hung out together there.
Hoi An is a lovely little town, with a beautifully preserved old town that is a world heritage site.

Spent the day we arrived just wondering round the town, enjoying the atmosphere and the beautiful buildings.
The next day we went to Marble Mountain, which is, well, a mountain made out of marble, and there are these small caves around. It was ok.

Hoi An is known for it’s many cloth and tailor shops, so I did some shopping for warm things that would be needed in the north of Vietnam.
I also couldn’t resist buying this really nice coat for home, as it was so nice and cheap, but I think I may regret it at some point, it is a rather heavy addition to my already heavy bag.

From Hoi An, I had the pleasure of spending 19 hours on a bus to Hanoi, I think I now have a fair idea of what hell will be like when I arrive there, it was a pretty rough trip. They don’t even have sleeper buses here, which made it all the more fun.
It sure was lucky though that I bought some warm stuff in Hoi An, otherwise I may just have frozen to death.

I arrived in Hanoi pretty shattered, managed to find a really nice guesthouse, and just hung round there that day. But from what I managed to see, Hanoi is a pretty crazy, hectic city.

The next day I took a 2-day trip to Halong Bay – Finally a place in Vietnam really worth seeing!!
It is something like 3000 small green islands in the sea. It is also a world heritage site.

There were 11 of us on the trip, and I got friendly with a group of four 20-year-old Australians (again I was the old woman) who were really sweet, and we sat playing card when we weren’t being disturbed to go see sights.
We visited this amazing stalactite cave called Surprise Cave. As explained by our guide, it is called this because the people were so surprised by it’s beauty when they discovered it (he loved this explanation so much that we got to hear it about 10 times).

We slept on the boat, and had a really nice time.

I am now back in Hanoi, will tour round the city tomorrow a bit and in the evening I am going on a 4 day trip to Sapa, which is also supposed to be very good, but freezing.
Though Hanoi and Halong Bay were also rumored to be very cold, and so far I have been lucky.

I was made to sew for the first time in my life the other day and I think that if any one had been watching me, they would have been highly amused.
The zip in my small bag was coming apart and I didn’t have time to take it to someone to get it fixed, so I decide to attempt to sew it myself.
Thanks to Dad, I have a small sewing kit with me.
Having never done this before, I had no clue how to go about it, but eventually, after several failed attempts, I think that I kind of succeeded.
I am now interested to see how long it will last, so far it has been 2 days, so I think that is already an impressive achievement.