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Carlos & Emma The Great Escape
What an amazing place Hanoi is, we absolutley love it here, the place has got such a wicked atmosphere, it's so much better that Bangkok. It can be a nightmare trying to find your way around as none of the streets are at 90 degree angles to one another, but with Carlos the map reading expert close at hand we've managed. The traffic here is really intense with over 2 million motorbikes on the road, so as you can imagine crossing the road is fun, the trick is to show no fear the bikes will stop before they hit you.
So what have we been doing, mostly doing the city thing, we've been to the Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, Ho Chi Minh's museum, Temple of Literature the One Pillar Pagoda and the Hanoi Hilton, this is the prision where some of the American Pilots were held during the war. We also went on an overnight trip to Halong Bay, this has to be the most magical place we've ever visited. We took a coach to Halong City where we were to catch our boat, for some reason the boats over here are all called junks! Very strange. We were on top deck with our group and Carlos remarked how it reminded him of an Agatha Christie film with all the different nationalities. You had the annoying Canadians who thought everything was AWESOME, the Italians who thought it was cool to walk round with traditional street vendor hats on their heads, the American guy with his Thai Bride, the non-descript Irish who looked like they should of come from Norwich and then us the miserable brits (come on we were recovering from a hangover). 1st stop was some caves to have a look at the amazing rock formations, (we'll leave it up to you to decide who got knocked off first), then we continued on to Halong Bay. Halong Bay is described as the Natural Wonder of Vietnam. It's made up of over 3000 Islands rising up from the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tomkin. Halong translates to 'where the dragon descends into the sea' legend has it that the islands of Halong Bay were created by a great dragon that lived in the mountains. As it ran towards the coast, it's flailing tail gouged out valleys therefore creating the 3000 islands. We stopped during the day for some swimming and Kayaking through the caves, then it was back on board for dinner. Late some people participated in some moonlight swimming but I was too frightened of the dragon!! Back to Hanoi the next day where we chilled out and went to a couple of bars, they have places on street corners with little plastic chairs where you can buy beer for 2000 dong, around 20p. We are travelling south now, we have an open bus ticket stopping in Ho Chi Minh (Siagon for the older folks out there). We are in a place called Nimh Binh, we arrived yesterday and are getting the overnight coach out of this ghost town to a place called Hue.
Catch you all later,
Lots of Love,
Emma & Carlos xxxxx
Nearly forgot, Carlos has already had a go on the decks!
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