We arrived in Hanoi on yet another sleeper bus, found a cheap place to stay, and explored the city on foot but got so hot that we decided to go to the water park for the afternoon! This was lots of fun, we must have been the only westerners there and possibly the oldest! There was lots of flumes, zip wires and diving boards.

That night we ate street food which was delicious and drank at the Bia hoi's which are street stalls selling draught beer for 5000 dong which works out to be about 15p! It was so cheap we stayed out in the rain and bought multicoloured macs to drink in.

Our next fun adventure was a 3 day cruise around Halong Bay. The boat was lovely and we only shared it with 6 others. The food was even better, our first meal was 12 dishes all with funny presentation my favourite been chips in a cucumber heart with carrot carved letters saying "I love you".
The boat made many stops for activities like kayaking, jumping off the deck, caves, biking, climbing to view points and trekking. The trek was through a thick jungle. There were spiders the size of saucers and they would make there webs across the paths. This made for quite the bottom clencher walk!

We arrived back in Hanoi on Amy's birthday and went out to a posh restaurant to wine and dine.
After a couple more days in Hanoi we said our final good byes to Tom and Mel as we travel in opposite directions.

Xx