Ocean Beach Resort Halong Bay

... dinner.... :(<br><br>Looks like the ride to Laos is going to be straight from H-E- double hockey sticks (hahahaha)! It's 20-something hours on a bus, plus boarder crossing and such.. supposed to be real bad. So we are desperately looking for a way to make it any better. We are thinking about overnight in Vihn near the boarder then crossing the following day, but there may be no way around it all...<br><br>

... whereas the one nighters were up at 7 to head back to Halong Bay and Hanoi.<br><br>Our extra day was spent 200m out to sea chilling on a floating platform, well worth the 20 dollars for an extra night! It was also spent checking on Pien every now and again as the poor girl spent the whole day in bed with a birthday hangover! The next days group turned up at about midday and were all pretty sound but nothing compared to the previous days people! We had a ...

... over the "Speak" Activity. Then he explained the icons, as the children do not read English. The power icon means open the activity, the stop icon means stop it, etc. And so on, step by step. I was so impressed with Tuyen's natural instinct for teaching. He was brilliant!<br><br>When we opened "Speak" and had the kids type in Hello, oh you should have been there to see them laughing when they heard the "robot voice" talk back to them. We chose "Speak" to ...

... too. Now we have both seen a solar power electric system that really does work. Peter was so generous to volunteer to help our Project. Our Vietnam Power team is in place now. And the power issue is what I was worried most about. Peter will join us tomorrow to see the sunny village school. Sometimes things happen that just can't be explained. Meeting Peter and Ty, well, The Vung Vieng Fishing Village Laptop Project is just meant to be! <br><br><br>

... 6am when it starts up again. The people here are largely friendly to foreigners and we found it super easy to get around and do things - you get picked up and dropped off at doors and even the post office will come to you! The life of an average Vietnamese person involves lots of hard work - with the women working much harder than the men. Vietnam is a beautiful place - with a bit of luck we will be back someday to visit the places we missed but for now it is onwards to Thailand.

... brad in the front not controlling his paddles and splashing me with every movement. <br><br>The one main rule on the boat, is NO DRINKS unless bought on the boat. The beers on the boat<br>were over price, 25,000 for a small can. You were shown a letter, stating you would be fined for any big bottle of spirit and wine $5 and 5,000 for a single beer. As you can guess everyone tried to get around buying their beers. There were many opportunities to sneak alcohol on. At the cave, by ...

... cave full of stalagmites &amp; dripping water. They had it lit up &amp; it looked amazing. Next the boat stopped at a floating village where the house were painted bright green &amp; blue colours &amp; looked so beautiful against the backdrop of the karsts.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br><br>It started raining &amp; even in the rain was so beautiful. We stopped off at another ...

... hotspot with hotels and bars all the way down the main 'strip'. While the view out the bay was very nice, the whole 'strip' felt a bit soulless. We stayed one night on the island, which was enough - however, our hotel was very nice.<br><br>On the last day we rounded up our Ha Long bay experience by heading back to Ha Long city, stopping for a bout of swimming on the way. It's another 4 hours, including a quick stop off where our driver takes his groceries home, to get back to the capital.

... fighting, or their great-aunt Vera. Enjoyed another slap up lunch (all the food on our tour was fantastic, and plentiful) and then spent the afternoon lounging on the beach at 'Monkey Island' before a cruise back through an enormous floating village to re-board our junk for dinner. After dinner as it was the last evening we got a load more beers in from the women ...