good morning vietnam!!!

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its a good movie, in case anybody hasnt seen it (the title of my blog that is). so ya, i am in ninh binh with patrice, and we have spent the past 2 days seeing the beautiful countryside from the back of a motorcycle. we both had drivers who took us around (cause its crazy enough being on one of those things without actually driving it yourself) and showed us some pretty awesome stuff. we went to the tam coc caves, where we got in a boat and had a lovely tour of the rice paddies and got to go into the caves. today we spent the day in the national park, which was really beautiful as well. we did a big long hike to see this ancient tree, which just got us really hot and sweaty more than anything else. i just liked riding on the bike through the park. it was gorgeous.

but ya, before we got here, we visited hanoi and halong bay. we both loved hanoi a lot, and ended up spending a little more time there than we had planned, but thats ok! its a cool city. i've never seen as many motorbikes in one place as on the streets of hanoi. it was sooo intimidating having to cross the street for the first time, but you just go slowly and they weave around you. patrice was much better at it than me, so i would just stick with her. we went around the town and visited some pagodas and some temples. we tried to go see ho chi minh's mausoleum... but we slept through my alarm (it stops letting visitors in at 10:15 and we woke up at 10:03... missing breakfast too. haha oh well). so we went to see the museum there instead.

after a couple days in hanoi, we moved on to halong bay, where we booked a 3 day 2 night trip on a "junk boat" (which isnt junky at all, its just what they call them). we had an awesome time! we went kayaking, biking, trekking and did a lot of swimming/jumping into the water off the roof of the boat. haha we had a really good group of people with us (there were 11 of us all together) and we all got along really well which was nice.

so after our halong bay trip we came here, to ninh binh. we are now moving on to hue, and i think we are going to stay there a couple days. we will be getting on the night train in like 3 hours, and they didnt have any "soft sleep" left... it was only "hard sleep".... so i hope i sleep. we'll see.

well thats been me for the past couple days. i did see steve one last time in hanoi, right after he came back from his halong bay trip. we got to hang out for a couple hours before he had to catch a train with barry to hue. i currently dont know where he is, but he must be close to ho chi minh city, cause he is going on a tour through cambodia which starts in the next couple days i think. anyway thats enough for now i think! hope you all are enjoying the weather at home! talk to you soon!

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