Plaza Halong Bay

Hey guys!

Well we got on another of those familiar 4 hour bus journeys punctuated by a western only service station after 2 hours. Now the reason its tourist only isn't any form of discrimination or racism, just that the locals aren't stupid enough to go there and be asked for triple priced food. They did manage to cheer me up no end though when I found a pretty piece of carved quartz necklace, asked how much expecting $3 or 4 dollars to haggle down to ...

... some fish element! everything was gorgeous. after a while we all went to bed to be ready for the day ahead!
8:30 am on wednesday after breakfast we took the boat to cat ba island. we walked 6km to the village of vet hai and began our 1km climb up navy peak. it was extremely hard for me , my thighs gave me terrible grief and i suddenly realised half way up that i was ridiculously unfit!! mark had to really encourage me to go on as i had reached the wall!!! i slowly but surely ...

... We booked our Ha Long Bay tour with Kangaroo Cafe, as we've read that they are the only ones who charter their own boats rather than acting merely as a middle person. We were not disappointed with our junk - it was a huge 20 person traditional junk with deluxe fittings, as there were only 12 of us it was extremely spacious.


Ha Long Bay is a stunning ...

... and face masks. It was disconcerting and just looked hot. In fact, mask wearing is very prevalent and seemed more so the farther out in the hinterlands we went, from Hanoi to Halong Bay. Is this due to religious reasons? smog/swine flu avoidance? a fashion statement? I saw stacks of mix and match masks at the aforementioned handicraft center and could have easily coordinated one with my outfit purchase. But I digress.

Dinner was ...

... which would only be about 10 minutes. Small note here, whoever taught the Vietnamese the phrase '10 minutes' should be shot, as they use it as a description for every time period in existence. This time, 10 minutes actually meant an hour. By this time, our boat (the original lot) were fuming and wanted to get back to Hanoi as soon as possible, and certainly did not want to stop somewhere for lunch as scheduled, as our experience of the food had been dodgy to say the least. As ...

... pics!

After breakfast and checking out of our rooms, we said our goodbyes to Ngoc (our awesome tour guide who found it hilarious when the English speakers on the boat attempted a Vietnamese song for karaoke) and were passed to a new tour guide for Cat Ba Island.

We were taken to Cat Ba national park and did a two hour trek up the mountain to the summit which had amazing views! It was hard going (especially for the ...

... and you just don't get any grip from plastic flip flops in the mud on a steep incline. The other strange thing though was that just when we thought we were on our way down... we would keep having to go back up again. We must have climbed a couple mountains at least. No wildlife really.... only some monster spiders that Luc ran past and a plague of mosquitoes. After this little jaunt in the park we were all wet, muddy, tired, itchy from bug bites and just all around not in the ...