Ha-Long bay and the endangered Panda-Eyed Kelly

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Hello all! Sorry we haven't been able to write a blog for a while-lack of time and internet access I'm afraid.

We completed our Vietnam trip yesterday and are about to commence the last leg of our Journey-Laos. However the people we were using to borrow a camera wire have departed from the trip so we're going to have to seek alternate arrangements for uploading photos. We will see! We have been adding photos to our last two blogs as we had not previously put them up.

SO we are now going to write up what we have been doing.

Kelly:

We arrived in Hanoi and had a free day to explore the city in which we chose to visit the "Temple of Literature" which was the first university established in Vietnam in the 1000's and was dedicated to Confucius, it had a beautiful little garden and the low temple-style buildings were also nice, however to try and save money we walked back to the hotel which wasn't a good idea as walking in this heat and humidity was not easy!! I had some heatstroke and didn't feel very well that day.
Also if anyone reading this goes into a UK Post Office soon can you please punch them in the face for us as they really screwed us over with the money card thing, as we were told in the Post Office when we bought them that we could top up our money online or on the phone, we found out yesterday that we can't do it online AT ALL and after 2 overseas calls to them we were told we couldn't even top them up over the phone because they needed 'additional identification', and invited us to go into a Post Office and provide it. Alex's conversation went something like 'well that's going to be a bit difficult seeing as I'm in VIETNAM'. It is annoying as the sales staff back in the UK clearly didn't know what on earth they were talking about and were just trying to get us to buy the darn things.

Anyway the problem was averted as we are using my debit card to withdraw funds..although probably with an extortionate commission fee.. =(
Any donations are welcome and can be made payable to Kelly and Alex

From Hanoi we got a bus in the morning to Halong Bay and then got a boat to Cat Ba island in the bay which was amazing!
If you have seen the photos of Halong Bay which was been described as 'straight out of Jurassic Park" then you will know how beautiful it is, but no photograph can do it justice! The limestone karsts (which have taken more than 200 million years to become the way they look today) loom out of the green ocean like the humps of the dragons that were said (in Vietnamese legend) to make the bay their home.

Interesting details include the way that if you pass one of the karsts (that look like mossy boulders in the distance but in reality are covered in jungle-like growth) you hear the high-pitched whining of cicada like insects incredibly loudly coming over the water. Also, the bay is home to large numbers of sea eagles which we saw spiralling up and down around the islands.
We went to a huge cathedral-like cave located inside one of the islands which was quite spectacular, our guide described it as a giant airconditioner as the temperature inside the cave was massively lower than that outside in the blazing sunshine.

We also went kayaking around the karsts for about an hour and a half which was an incredible experience, when you're as low as a kayak you can really appreciate the grand scale of these geological marvels!
We went into a huge lagoon which was like a karst island but hollowed out inside, the only access outside was a tiny little chink about 3 meters wide and a 1 and 1/2 meters tall which we maneuvered our kayaks through. Inside the lagoon the towering walls created a strange echo effect! It was a shame as trying to get into my kayak again I cut my belly where the bar is and am now worried about infection..... So any tips about avoiding it in a tropical climate are more than welcome?!

We have some amazing pictures of the bay which we wish we could put up! They will have to wait though.

Tonight we are planning on seeing Harry Potter which should be fun (we hope it's not in Vietnamese!).

Alex: After our 1.5 hours of kayaking I came across this rather bizarre looking creature which looked like Kelly...but had...Panda eyes. MWAHAHAH. For once in his life Alex did not get burnt which I was quite proud of. I'm still thinking of a name for it so I will let you know. On the subject of being burnt someone in our group got horrifically burnt and is still (a day later) in her room recovering. Looked painful. What else is painful is my bottom after all the kayaking. 😞

I did have a lot of fun going around doing theme music from films (Jurrassic Park etc.) When we were kayaking I couldn't stop doing the Lord of the Rings music (like when they were canoeing down the river Anduin in the first one). Good times. We said goodbye to a few of the people on our trip which was quite sad but we are being joined by 2 others so hopefully they're just as nice.

That is all for now. Hopefully we'll try and update the blog more often now. It's nice to see everyone's comments and messages and also Uncle Chris (Alex's uncle) has started following us on our travels!!
Kelly is also glad Grandma & Pa are enjoying hearing of her exploits and can't wait to show them all the rest of the pictures!

Lots of Love

K&A

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Comments

[George Tuppen]

Cut belly
Dear Kelly and Alex, Whose belly has been cut? not quite sure who!!! Have you had anti tetanus jabs? If you can buy some antibiotic cream from the equivalent of their chemists. If the cut occurred in salt water it might not be too bad. As usual your blog was wonderful we could almost imagine being on the kayaks with you!!!! Take care of yourselve and enjoy yourselves. Lots of love Grandma and Grandpaxxxxxxx