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Published: January 5th 2008
We flew to Hanoi to meet Diane and Jess (Kate's mum and sister) on the 21st. After hearing Diane embarrassingly screaming KAAAATTTE at the top of her lungs in Hanoi airport, we met up with them and got a cab to the luxurious hotel they had booked for us. It was amazing compared to the places we had stayed in, it even had dressing gowns and slippers! Oooo. Hanoi straight away was a bit mental. Crossing the roads are a talent that I think we mastered...you have to walk into the road and don't stop, ignoring the hundreds of motorbikes coming straight at you. Diane was very impressed with herself when she didn't even look once!
The day after we got to Hanoi we explored a bit and dragged Rich around silk scarf and craft shops for a while; he loved it. We had a very expensive meal (to out standards anyway, Jess and Diane thought it was a bargain) and just chilled out. The day after we started our Ha Long Bay boat trip, which is meant to be magical when the weather is nice, shame it was miserable and blowing a gale when we went! It was very
enjoyable though and as the boat we originally booked sank, haha, we stayed on a beautiful Junk boat with only 7 of us. There was us and some very nice American ladies, who restored out faith in the American people by being absolutely lovely. We had lunch on the boat, but didn't realise you had to say 'stop' to get them to stop bringing out food. We had loads! It was great! The scenery around Ha Long Bay is beautiful. It is full of 'karsts' which are huge rocks poking out of the water and look like they are about to fall over. We saw floating villages, where the people hardly ever leave the water in their lives, they float the dead out to sea. There's even a school that's floating! Jess and the American girls went kayaking, while the rest of us got taken around the bay in a boat. We got taken to a beach with a temple on the top of a hill, it was an easy journey to get to the beach for us, but we thought the kayakers were going to get sunk by the massive Junks! We slept on the boat and the following
day we visited the most amazing cave in one of the karsts. The Vietnamese soldiers hid in them during a war with the Chinese. There is a very interesting phallus shaped rock in there which the Vietnamese have tastefully lighted in red.
Once we returned to Hanoi, there was more shopping and eating to be done. We spent Christmas Eve in a beautiful restaurant called Bobby Chinn. We met Bobby himself, who turned out to be a bit of p***k. Jess loved him though and got a picture with him and Diane just told him how horrible his starter was. I don't think he was impressed!
From Hanoi we flew to Nha Trang, which we will do the blog for very soon, as long as the Vietnamese computers let us.
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Paul
non-member comment
Are you sure it's not the 'A Ma Zing' Cave and they run it together for the tourists? ;)