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Published: March 3rd 2009
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Sunday, March 1st
We left Cat Ba island and a smaller boat took us an hour to our big boat. The bay was quite rough at times and we had to keep looking at the horizon to stop us getting sea-sick.
On board the big boat we headed back to Halong Bay harbour. We played a game of chess and Talita won, just when we thought it would be a draw.
After lunch at a beautiful spot overlooking the bay we headed back to the craziness of Hanoi. Long told us that 25 years ago there were 10 million people in Vietnam. Now it's about 85 million! No wonder the streets of Hanoi is so crazy!
In the last month we've noticed that the west's obsession with non-smoking laws are slow to catch in the east. It seems that everybody smokes everywhere all the time. I'm sure it's not really the case, it just feels that way because we've gotten so used to no one smoking anywhere indoors. Also, a lot of people spit all over the place. They fetch "it" down deep. No need for blowing your nose either. We feel like we're back in high
school.
At dinner we played catch-up on our blog. It was a bit of a marathon to get back up to date!
When we had first thought about traveling down to the south of Vietnam, we had thought that we could use bicycles or something, but after our 1st day here we realized that that idea borders on suicide! We decided to take a bus to Hué. It's 10 or 12 hours away, so we booked a sleeper bus departing the following night.
Today's highlights:
1. Playing chess on the gorgeous boat.
2. Booking our tickets to Hué.
Monday, March 2nd
This morning we tried to find a place that would do our laundry but we had no luck. In Laos you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a laundry service! So we'll just do our washing in Hué.
After breakfast we packed and checked out of our hotel. We then walked to the Ho Chi Minh complex but it was closed so we found an Italian restaurant and had some pizza.
The weather turned cold and rainy so we went to our "local" wi-fi restaurant to read and surf the net a bit.
We had to kill some time because our transfer to the bus station was only at 6pm. We checked our bank statements and saw that at one failed ATM attempt the amount was deducted from our account but we never got the cash. The machine just said "Transaction timed out" and ejected the card. We'll have to see if we can get it back somehow when we're in Hué.
Our bus left for Hué at 18:35. We had seats that recline to kind of form a bed (like in a hospital) so it was better than the slow-boat in Laos. But it looked nothing like the pictured they showed us when we booked the trip. Also, it's rather difficult to sleep when the bus driver goes berserk on the hooter every time he passes someone (and other cars do the same every time they pass the bus)!
There was a couple of TVs at the front of the bus but that didn't do us any good. All they played was bad Vietnamese music videos and bad Chinese movies with bad acting and even worse dubbing to Vietnamese. Good for about 5mins of entertainment.
Today's highlights:
1. Big pizza
in little Italian restaurant.
2. Chilling in our local wi-fi spot.
3. Getting out of Hanoi.
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