Ha Lon Bay and Sapa Adventures!

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Well we've definitely had some of the greatest few days of our time in Asia. We had organised our trip with 'The Drift' Backpackers hostel in Hanoi. It's a new hostel run by some really friendly Aussies who pride themselves on organising good tours (not your average Asian run affair), but at a slightly higher price than you would normally pay, to ensure everything goes smoothly. We decided to go on this having been on other tours (Sihanoukville for example) which weren't so brilliant and wanted our Ha Long experience to be really good.
We were hurried out the door at 7.50am to catch our bus to Ha Long Bay. We had a nice tour guide and a few cool people on our bus and to be honest, i snoozed the whole journey. We arrived at Ha Long and went straight to our boat to get on the way. The captain had a bit of trouble getting permission to leave the harbour, but this gave us oportunity to get to know our fellow passengers and have lunch. Lunch was awesome. Fresh seafood galore with lots of dishes and certainly plenty of food. After we got under way we cruised to an island with a large cave network running through it. We 'imagined' we saw all sorts of animals in the rock formations, from lions to turtles, snakes and monkeys. After this we headed to the boat again to where we would go kayaking. The kayaks were actually more like canoes. open topped and less ballanced (at least i felt a bit unbalanced) but it was a beautiful trip to an amazing secluded lagoon type area. It was so quiet and we loved shouting across to each other how nice and quiet it was....kind of spoiling the effect i guess. We then returned for sunset (which i missed by showering,whooops. damn.) But I'm told it wasn't that good...i'm pretty sure this is a lie. After this we had dinner. Again. awesome. We had filled crabs (it was meant to be fresh crab aparently...more on that later) and other tasty treats. Then we spent the evening chatting on deck, it was nice.
The next day we had an early breakfast, and the boat was moved because of a storm heading our way. we went for a morning dive off the boat and avoided swimming in to big jelly fish :S It was fun times. Then we headed back to the harbour, to visit a little island just off the coast and back to Hanoi. I spent the whole journey chatting to a Dutch man who had been transferred to our boat from a luxury boat (he wasn't impressed). The journey was 3 hours but we both had interesting stories to share about our travels which was cool. We got back and decided that the Hostel deserved some feedback. The thing is, we had gone on their trip on the assumption that we were getting more for our money, but one of the girls on our boat had been with a trip previously which had been $35 cheaper and exactly the same. So we told them this, and that we had got the wrong boat, which had had cockroaches and broken aircon and we thought probably not the money we paid for it. For instance we were meant to have fresh crab :O But we ended up getting a full refund! Amazing seeing as we'd had a really good experience and met some lovely people. Result!
This is good as we'd paid more than i wanted to for the trip...and because we'd also paid more than i wanted to for our Sapa trip. So i was a pretty happy boy as you can imagine, it was so nice of them to refund us though and i am v. appreciative.
So then we left for Sapa on the evening we returned from Ha Long Bay. Got a lovely sleeper train up to Lao Cai (it was niceer than the ones i was on in India....the only trouble was that the route was incredibly bumpy so didnt actually get much sleep!) and on arrival we got a bus to our hotel in Sapa.
That day we had a hike organised, only when we got there we didn't have the guide (who the owner of the hostel had recommended and told us we would have), so we complained....basically because we were fed up of the hostel getting things wrong, and got the guide we'd been promised. This turned out to be a mistake (more on that later!) We were taken to the place where our hike would start, and basically the weather was aweful. Clouds filling the valley, so no views AND pissing down with rain! The walk was pretty tough, we had to cross a waist high river 5 times before lunch, my waterproof shoes obviously didn't survive this!! And after lunch we had a two hour hike down a steep slippy hill. so all good fun. Thoroughly enjoyable in fact, and i was really pleased we'd done it! The guide wasn't particularly talkative and went off down the mountainside like a mountain goat, so that was good. We walked to Sin Chai village (poss not spelt like that) and saw the Hmong people who live there. It was interesting to see another culture living in Vietnam. In fact in the area Vietnamese are in the minority , with 6 other peoples being the majority.
Today we went on a moto to a waterfall nearby, which was fun times. The weather cleared up a bit so we could see much more of the beautiful surrounding area. We had met up with the two aussies again so it was fun zooming around the countryside seeing some sites with them.
Then in the afternoon, Kev and I walked to Cat Cat village. A Homong tourist village 3k's from Sapa. It was a lovely walk with sunshine and lots of terraced paddi fields. The Aussie's had gone out with our guide from the first day and he tipped ovr in the water....breaking their SLR camera (so not impressed) and then the hanoi hostel informed them that despite giving them plenty of warning of when they wanted to head down south, they weren't able to get a train (they need to get their acts in to gear!) so they had to spend an extra $100 on getting a flight for the day they wanted to travel.
We however, were invited by their guide from the first day (aka our original guide who we got rid of) out for a Beer in the evening, despite how rude we were to him. We went and had SUCH a nice evening drinking cheap, fresh local beer with him and his friends and throughly regret having swapped guides for our hike. What a great thing Hindsight is!
Tomorrow we head to Laos on the local bus. The jorney is of an undetermined length as there may or may not be buses on the days we want, and we're told they often only leave when the bus is full. So it could take anywhere from 24 - 50 hours. Can't wait!

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