Hanoi Opera Hotel

... by swimming on the Bay or relax or come to dining bar for International breakfast buffet at around 07:00. The Cruise will continue on taking us around the Bay this morning. The last route on the Bay will be Bai Tu Long Bay and our cruise will stop at the Hong Gai Wharf at around 10:30AM. We will transfer to our awaiting vehicle and drive back to Hanoi. Trip concludes in ...

... realisation that the 20 other boats there all looked remarkably like ours, and we weren’t quite sure where we’d left it…) we decided ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ and jumped from the deck into the (slightly murky and oily) waters of Halong Bay. Just because we could! A fine seafood dinner followed, even treating ourselves to a bottle of wine as seemed befitting the occasion, before returning to the deck to ...

... funeral ceremonies and rituals that take place. After that I wanted to do a bit of shopping for a couple of shirts, not easy for a westerner. The sizes out here are larger than at home, so for a large (me) I need an XL out here - something most shops don't offer. After about 4 hours I found somewhere so Iwas happy. After that I was exhausted so went back to the hotel for food and an early night, ready for Wednesday and my trip to Halong Bay...

... looked like they h*d been be*ten up, including myself. Over*ll, this trip w*s by f*r the highlight of my trip. The scenery *ccomp*nied by the people m*de it * trip I won't forget.<br> L*st night when we *ll returned *nd h*d proper showers, we he*ded to h*ppy hour for one l*st group function. Even the owner of the hostel, *fter he*ring of the r*ucus c*used by the w*kebo*rding guy bought us *ll * beer *nd * shot to help m*ke up for wh*t h ...

... And not just one or two, 3 deep all along the pavement. It&#8217;s no wonder there are bag snatches here!! Then there&#8217;s the noise. It&#8217;s a constant symphony of hooters going beep beep beep. The driver on one of our tours later told us, that if you no beep beep, you no go, and it seems that is the one part of moped school everyone listened to. Having said all of that, everyone seems to gel into one and the trust between all of them is immense. We only saw 6 or 7 minor ...

... t boneless, and there wasn't a ton of meat. If you could have put the chili sauce (which was incredibly spicy) on my chicken strips from KFC the night before, you would have a much better fast food concoction. Cory's chicken burger still had the skin on it, and it kind of sketched him out, so he ate about 2/3 of it.<br><br>After lunch we walked around a bit, bought a stamp at the post office, and then went to check on our second set of suits (which weren't ready ...

... string which when pulled in different ways only made one note, but was eerie as hell, because it wined up and down in pitch. Best way I can describe it - I'm tired. The puppet show was historically used to entertain people in the rice paddies, and had stories of the men fishing, tortoises rescuing swords (the legend of the lake in the Old Quarter), rowing races, leopards stealing cattle and all sorts of other things. It was pretty strange at first, but very funny. Afterwards, we headed ...

... book to use to learn English, but when he read some of it to us he did very well indeed. Meeting him was definitely the highlight of the day. On the way into town I saw a huge sign, on it was a picture of a cat and a cobra. Either they were advertising breeding, fighting or eating, and I think it was the latter. We both commented yesterday on the lack of wildlife in Vietnam, maybe it's because it ends up on people's plates. Laters

... the by then only road to Dien Bien Phu (where the final battle took place in 1954). This road, 15 C, cuts right through the nature reserve and there it is where the steep rice terraces and traditional villages of Thai and Muong minorities meet with the wild limestone range of Pu Luong - the most important lowland karst system in the north of Vietnam. This system stretches from Mai Chau ...