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Published: December 7th 2006
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Monkey Island
The view from Monkey Island out to our boat and Halong Bay I'll start off by saying Halong Bay is just unreal. Halong city is around 3 hours bus from Hanoi, and we have spent the last 3 days cruising around Halong bay and stopping off at a couple of different islands along the way. Amazing scenery, swimming and a great tour group made for a fantastic couple of days. Day one highlights include cruising around halong bay and taking in the the amazing surroundings. Swimming in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no one else around. Classic catches off the side of our boat, until Ali ended the game with one awesome belly flop. Jumping off the top of the boat and probably bursting my eardrums in the process. Attempting to sleep on the deck of the boat. This was abandoned after all our hard work blowing up lilo's was undone in a matter of minutes as the lilos rapidly deflated leaving us to sleep on hard deckchairs.
Day 2 involved a trip to Monkey island. This is a small island with monkeys all over the place. We did a quick climb to the top of the island over seriously the sharpest rocks I've ever seen. A term of rock climbing
My 21st
Ang, Claire, me, Ali and Belle cruising around Halong Bay for year 9 school sports seems to have finally come to some use. The best part of monkey island by far was swimming from the beach back out to the boat. Despite the fact I managed to cut my foot on the rocks and was convinced I would attract sharks the whole way, i made it in one piece. The captain of the boat appeared with some kind of Polish cream for my foot, and all was good again. We were obviously the only ones on our tour to not have already been to Thailand as no one seemed quite as keen to swim as we were. While we were swimming, they were fortunate enough to get some footage of a monkey come down to the beach, pick up a coke can and drink from it. Thats cool. We spent the second night sleeping on Cat Ba island. Cat Ba is the largest island of Halong bay, 3000 people live there and it has a cool strip of restaurants. It was here that I realise having a birthday overseas is a good idea because you can get more birthday than usual. So, by 8pm, it was actually my birthday in
Australia so we splurged on a $4 bottle of Hanoi vodka and some fanta. This was followed by the best fish (and the most fish) I have ever eaten, followed by a huge plate of banana and chocolate pancakes washed down with aome Pina Coladas. i can honestly say I have never been so full and spent the next hour trying to find the best positioning to make ourselves feel better.
This brings me to my 21st birthday. One my best birthdays on record so far. We started the day where we left off with pancakes and fruit shakes for brekky. Halong bay had turned on the weather so we spent the morning lying on the boat deck and floating around on lilos. The afternoon was spent sleeping on the bus back to hanoi, where we had many more hours to kill before boarding the 11pm train to Danang. This was spent mostly at our favourite restaurant eating mango chicken and at Fanny's icecream. Dissapointed to find that all you can eat fanny's on the first tuesday of the month no longer existed, we were armed with our expanded stomachs from the previous night and proceeded to eat all
Sleeping
Ang, Ali and Belle attempting to sleep on the deck of the boat that we could anyway! Finally at 11pm we boarded the 14hour train to danang. Its not as bad as it sounds, as you can sleep most of the way, and the last 2 hours between Hue and Danang is rated as one of the top 10 train rides in the world. Travelling right on the coast, along cliffs and only metres from the water at times it didn't fail to dissapoint. Ill finish off with a few randomities from our last few days in Hanoi.
On our last day of clinic, a couple of physios, the doctor, orthotist and a speech therapist were kinf enough to take us to a local hangout for some lunch. Mode of transport to lunch involved picking a supervisor and jumping on the back of their motorbike. I think they were amused at how amusing this was for us. Lunch. We arrive at a tin shed on the lake. THe first things to appear on our table were snails and shrimpcakes. THinking this was lunch and not wanting to be rude I ate 2 snails. Its pretty much like having a really bad shot. I just closed my eyes, swallowed and tried not to let anything touch the sides. Shrimpcakes weren't much better. The food just kept coming. Chips (token for us i believe), massive bowls of beef and noodle and 2 full chickens. Considering how much they ate I have no idea how our supervisors are so tiny. Following lunch they insisted we have the afternoon off to have a foot massage. After our last experience we were a little wary but it turned out to be the greatest thing ever! A $5 hour foot massage also covers legs, arms, neck shoulders and head. Sweet deal. On a sadder note saying goodbye to the kids was at clinic was hard as we have become somewhat fond of them over the last 3 weeks. Hopefully they will miss us just as much.
Claire's boyfriend Matt has also joined us for the rest of our trip, and just as importantly he arrived in Vietnam with a jar of vegemite. Its hard to explain how awesome this is. On our last night in Hanoi, Ali, Ang, Claire and Matt decided to brave eating off the streets. As belle was only just eating and me not wanting food poisoning we decided to go to another of our favourite places instead. With only a few mouthfuls of dinner left a huge rat used my legs, arms and head as a springboard to get to where ever it was going. I guess we should have just eaten on the street after all.
We are now in Hoi An, famous for its tailoring and cooking courses, so I'm sure we can manage to keep ourselves busy for the next few days!
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Dave
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Monkey Island!
wow, looks like good times. monkey island was a favourite game of simon and i from a while back. happy b'day also, i better find a cool present for you!