Hanoi - Halong Bay - China Beach Hoi An - Nha Trang - Saigon

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25th September - 10th october

Leaving China!

Well China has been very interesting but we were all very excited about hitting the beaches in Nam. Our plan is to spend a bit more time in each of the places that we visit because we are all getting very tiered of the constant moving! Some chillax time will be nice!

We leave on an earlish bus to Nanning where we hope to be able to buy an overnight train ticket straight to Vietnam (Hanoi), Which we do - yipeee! So we have a few hours to spare before the train leaves to get a bit of food and do some shopping! Myself and Liv go to some underground shops by the station were we meet the craziest man selling clothes! He greats us playing the recorder and singing/chanting random happy songs, stoping every few minutes to show us pictures of the clothes he has hanging on the wall. After 15 minutes of this madness i try something on! Beautiful beautiful he sings while placing random hats on me. Each time i take one off he puts another one on, plays the recored and sings beautiful! Haha brilliant. Think of a chinese Timmy Mallet dressed as a mexican and hopefully you are getting a good image of him teehee!

This overnight train is fairly painless and the boarder crossing even less so. All the guards are happy happy and keep laughing at everyones picture. Even at this ridiclous hour it is amuzing!

Arrive Hanoi at stupid o'clock, we have been travelling for 2 days and cant get in our rooms till 12pm arrrhhhh the pain. We have a wonder, get some food and head back for a kip. Later that night we go out to the town by the lake and eat in the tall place overlooking the lake! Hanoi is a much smaller city than any that we have previously visited and is very pretty with a sea of motorbikes! LOVE IT!!!

The next day we get picked up for our boat trip to Halong Bay where we spend 1 night on the boat and 2 nights on Cat Ba Island. The boat trip is amazing and the views are incredible! Firstly we get taken to an island to look at some caves that were discovered by a monkey! After the cave visit we head to the floating fishing villages which are amazing! We stop amongst the village and get taken into one of the caves by a local. in a small boat. It is a mother steering and her son who is about 4 driving the boat! There are also ladies that come up to us on boats selling amazing fresh fruit, and they do not give up till something is bought. The villages are much the same as any other, with a police station, a bank, school and shops. Only differnece they are floating!

We then head back onto out boat/ship where dinner has been prepared. It is here that we make friends with 2 Australians, Benji and Paul. It is Pauls birthday tomorrow so after dinner we buy a bottle of vodka and play drinking games to celebrate. Then Karaoke is introduced to us. Laura kicks it off with a Dorie that speaks Whale version of Day Dream Beliver! Then there is no stopping us, myself and liv do one of my train classics "Zombie Zombie e e e e". Finishing with a lovely duet by Benji and Nat of: "Dont go breaking my heart". Ha ha brilliant we were the only ones doing karaoke but everyone loved it tehee! After everyone retreated on deck to carry on drinking under the stars. It was here that we discovered that Paul was actually a crazy freak. Although we did have our suspicions earlier on. When disscussing our jobs he decided that becasue he had watched Rain Man he would like to work with Autistic people, strange concept but that was just the first of many crazy ways and ideas this guy had. Another reaction was when Benji told a story about authorative train guard in Barcelona, Paul shouted out with a scrunched up face "thats bullshit man bullshit". Poor Liv got the brunt of this guy in the evening and would not stop boring a hole in her head. Time for bed at this point, anyhow, we had to be up at 5.30 for some morning kayaking.

The kayaking was ace exploring the Islets and the villages but the serenity soon faded when we got back to the boat and there had to be a change around. Some people like Benji and Paul had to change boats because they were heading back. It was the people on the other boat due to come on ours that we could hear screaming and kicking of with the staff - they were bloody English wernt they grrr. We had done so well to avoid english student travellers haha they are the worst kind i tell you lol. These English students thought they we the nuts. But the funny thing is that the guide had their passports and was hanging them over the edge if they did not pay their bill. Aparently they had snook some of their own alcohol on board , but they clearly states you have to pay a surchardge to do this. There had been arguments in the night bottles smashed and threats of glassing each other. They ended up paying and then we had them on our boat winging, with very little sympathy from us. The only thing we could muster was man up and enjoy yourself eak haha! We were also very relived because we nearly lost our amazing tour guide Ken who just wanted to have funs and happies (which we did) yipeee!

We then cruised our way to Cat Ba island and headed stright for the jungle. It was tipping down with rain and the trek steep and muddy. But well worth the hard and ardouse trek to the top. The views were stunning though tho this is where i had my first faux par of the trip. An elderly Australian lady had been talking to me and i kept staring at this large flicker of mud on her face thinking shall i tell her or not hmmm nar def it. Then someone wanted to take a picture of her and her husband. She turned to me and asked if she looked ok, i though right ill tell her now, but it turned out to be a birthmark on her face arrrrr - i was very tiered in my defence eak lol!

The next day we found the dream beach with amazing views , palm trees sunloungers, floats, a bar, cocktails and a football - this is it! That was pretty much how we spent the day mmmmm bliss!

The next day we sailed back to the mainland then the bus took us back to Hanoi where we would get our connecting overnight sleeper bus. But we broke down on the way and all waited on the side of the road while they changed the tyre. This made us late for our lift to the sleeper bus . Fortunately the bus waited for us and we got a taxi there just in time. This was probably the worst journey for me on the sleeper bus. Cramped among really smelly people , no room for my feet cramped in a nasty position i could not sleep grrr. Then in the morning we stopped for breakfast and met Hue. Hue was a lovely man that convinced us to get off the bus and see the war tunnels and he would get us back to the next bus in the next town in time. We decided to risk it and go for it - there were lots of brilliant comments in his book saying just do it! I am sooo glad we did - it made my wingy journey seem inferiour! Tinny tunnels housing 60,000 people for 6 years! Unimaginable! As he promised we got to our next bus bang on time and continued to China beach.

Arriving at Hoa's place - the coolest man in Vietnam - he was everything we expected and more , crazy and taking it easy! This place is soo cool and chillaxed and we had surf with boards to use - brilliant! The next few days were sport overload, bodyboarding, surfing, vollyball and football with guys from the hostel yipeee it was fun fun fun!

We spent 5 days here relaxing and playing on the beach it was heaven we also on a couple of ocassions headed into Hanoi which is an amazingly beautiful city at night. This is where they make clothes for you - and it is a sea of shops - heaven for Liv and Laura not so much Nat and myslef hehe!

Our next stop is Nha Trang also by the beach but more lively we hear - which will be a nice contrast! We arrive on a much better sleeper bus - one with room for our legs yipeee! Our hotel is also lovely and the man that owns it crazy too - brilliant.

Our first full day in Nha Trang and we sign up for a boat trip to the islands. Our first stop on the boat is to an aquarium! We are not really interested in going inside so we dangle our feet in the water by the crabs while we wait for everyone. Our next stop is to a small floating watersport house near to a reef. We spend about an hour snorkling, discovering lots of amazing fishies! Afterwards we then head out to sea where we ankor up for a spot of lunch followed by 45 minutes (exactly) of live music and singing. Firstly our crazy guide starts of the singing and then goes around all the nationalities and gets them to sing a traditional famous song from their country. Japanese, Dutch, Vieatnamese and then he gets to us English. He asks us to pick a song from the book. It just so happends that the book opens at Madonna with Like a Virgin - so thats what we sing lol. After our amazing singing Livia then gets dragged up on the stage to dance with the man and what a beautiful dance it was teehee! After 45 minutes exactly we all jump into the sea to drink "FUCKIN MINGIN WINE" expressed by the guide haha! A floating bar - genius!

The rest of our days in Nha trang are spent on the beach and wakboarding woohoooo which i love love love! The only problem is that on my second go i had 30 mins of mahusive jumps and could not function for at least 3 days after eak! When we had our first lesson Nat reafirmed that she suffers with sea-sickness. When it got to Lauras go (the last one) Nat had gone a nice shade of green and had to get out the boat and just bob around in the water for 15 minutes. This was unfortunate for Nat but highly amusing for us hehe.

The penultimate night in Vietnam was spent, well for me, like a drowned rat! There was yet a another monsoon storm and the road outside our hotel was like a river. I was busy showering when i hear a lot going on in our room - the floor is completely flooded. The water is filling up on the balcony and is seeping under the door. As i have very little on and am wet anyhow. myself and the owners daughted are on the balcony pushing the water away with flip flops while it pumles down on us. We then with the help of Laura continue to mop the inside. This all lasts about 45 minutes. The next morning chatting to some guys from the midlands discover that we got away with it lightly! Their roof caved in on them (they were int he room above us) haha. We are all laughing about it and the owner is happy that he has nice customers that dont complain about a leaky tap let alone monsoon floods haha!

Our last day in Vietnam was bliss i had another wakeboarding lesson and then we all chilled at the bar with the swimming pool, until our night bus arrived bound for Cambodia via Siagon (witout stopping there)!

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