Vietnam

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Back in Hanoi and it was sunny and looked so much better. Booked into the same hotel as Igs and Paul and me and laura shared a room with Nic. Just went for a wander around hanoi and it felt so much nicer than our previous experience of Hanoi. Amazing what the sun can do! Found some lovely places to eat fro cheap and big portions and us lucky girls seem to find the "free ladies night" Mojito promotions so had a tipsy one that night!

Then off to halong bay for a trip around the coastal islands! Seemed a good corwd on the minibus ride there, and as soon as the bus broke down and we were al turfed out, everyone got chatting, and when we manged to carry on the ride in a local bus and crammed 38 of us on a 22 seater (with the local men hanging on out the open door) we all soon got to know each other better cos we were practically sitting on each other for 90min!

The Junk boat was cool, me Laura and Nic shared a cabin and shortly we were off wandering round caves with wierd vegetble like formations and some rather phalic ones too) and then Kayaking into a little lagoon. All sounds very pleasant til we were rather late getting back and me and laura realised we had zero combined arm strength and little team work going on! Then bak to the boat and pushed straight back in the water off the top of the boat...yep we were all friends by then! Dinner was nice and then everyone sat up top playing drinking Uno or just generally chatting and arguing over which star is which...a hard life.

Day two and i overslept the mornign swim cos of the red wine that appeared the night before! Then off to Cat Ba island for a trek up to the top of the hillside (far too high in the sun for my liking) for a view. Nice to do some exercise, but actually crawling up rocks on your hands and knees wasnt what i had in mind! How i didnt lose my flip flops or encounter some huge spider from the planet X i do not know! Some wierd jumping beetle flew at me at one point but we troopered on to the top!

Next was an 80S karaoke bus trip to the hotel, pure cheese and plenty of smiles, and then everyone was off to the beach to a lovely little cove...before the flip flop thief came out. Luckily i managed to keep hold of mine but some others lost theirs. Then dinner, sprucing ourselves up and a night of carnage, more drinking, Karaoke and group hugs! Needless to say the trip was a very 18-30's affair with beautiful scenery along the way!
Everyone was sad to say goodbye and promised to do it all again another time...but will never happen!

Back to Hanoi for a pizza and clothes washing, lazy days, some sun, turtle spotting in the lake and just a general chill out before over to Laos!

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Photos

The gang
Anyone and everyone from the halong bay gansta's paradise crew. Carnage