Cat Ba Island Resort & Spa Hai Phong Haiphong

... on the floor right on the beach, they were lovely! The day was spent either playing beach vollyball, taking a dip or just basically lounging about. The place was so perfect that we decided to spend a second night there as soon as we landed.

That evening we were cooked a delicious BBQ and it also happened to be Pien's (our Dutch friend who had also decided to spend a second night with us on the island) birthday and the tour guides (all from the UK) went all ...

... to be polite. So I ate "wormfish" which is the fat wormlike fish that lives among mangroves. I ate jellyfish (cooked), and squid too. The jellyfish was served with thin rice wrappers and leaves and sauces. The fresh leaves tasted like delicate herbs. But they were flavors I had never tasted before. A Vietnamese meal is different from Thai meals. At the Vietnamese table, everyone eats from a small bowl and uses chopsticks. The food is served ...

... for one night sleeping on a junk boat.

It took about 3 and a half hours of hairy driving to get to Halong City. So many near death experiences I won’t list them. From here we got a small taxi boat out to our junk to set sail amongst the thousand plus limestone karsts that come out of the water (for those familiar with Top Gear – this is where they had to get their mopeds working on water to get to a floating village). The junk itself was ...

... shoved off the put and onto a bus to the national park. We didnt have our guide with us as he remained on the boat. We didnt know what was happening so we just following another tour around the park.

We hiked up a 225m mountain to get a clear view of the park. This has been the only time
the hike has been worth the view, you could see for miles. Within the park there is meant to be red 32 mammals, including he golden / headed langur (officially the worlds most ...

... us off they pick up another load of
people. Apparently this is the process – nonstop. I figured the
staff might change out or at least have a routine: 3 days on 2 days
off. But nope they work everyday and get about 2 days off a month.
Talking with Daniel, this is the norm in Vietnam – now if something
comes up people will take 4 days off without a lot of notice and
that's expected. For certain occupations this ...

... waren uns sicher, dass es nicht ueber 100'000 sein kann, also haben wir die Anzeige auf dem Kassenbildschirm durchgesehen. Als erstes war ein Paeckchen Zigaretten gescannt...und als wir die Kassenfrau gefragt haben, was das sei, meinte sie ganz selbstverstaendlich "Cigarettes", obwohl sie genau wusste, dass wir keine gekauft haben. Wahrscheinlich wollte sie ihrem Mann eine Freude machen...trotzdem, nicht mal eine Entschuldigung kam ueber ihre Lippen...kann ja passieren...hallo?

... still insists on taking your receipt and stamping it with the usual red "security checked" stamp. Believe me, you can tease them as much as you like, they will still stamp the receipt. In smaller stores it is also not unusual to be followed around the aisles. While this can be incredibly irritating, it can also be highly entertaining to see how far they will follow you; moving from aisle to aisle pretending to browse everything in stock. Going to the toilet ...

... The second visit was much more illuminating and gave me substantial insight into Do Son's perceived importance to Haiphong and indeed to northern Vietnam. Going there at 8am on a Sunday, the streets were peaceful and I was able to ride about the tree lined hills and see the sights at a leisurely pace. What became readily apparent was the extent of foreign investment flowing into Do Son. On the outskirts of Do Son there are a number of industrial ...

... own children. I have stopped counting the number of helmeted adults I have seen riding with an unhelmeted child sitting (or standing!) in front of them. This is despite the fancy ladybird helmets available in the supermarkets for child-sized heads. There are also many young men riding around without a helmet, weaving in and out of traffic or racing each other down busy thoroughfares, much like the organized races that used to take place around Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi ...

Hi Everybody!! Well, it's Friday the 18th of April and on April 22nd we will be having our wedding reception here at the Hoang Hai hotel in Hai Phong. I've attached our wedding studio photo shots and will be adding the reception pictures next week. The last couple of days have been very hot and sunny here in Hai Phong with tempatures of ...