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im back in hanoi for the day, have had an amazing week in vietnam so this might be a long entry! sorry!
so on saturday morning we headed for halong bay which was about a 3 hour drive to the east of hanoi. we had been really lucky with the weather with every day in vietnam being hot and sunny but on the way to halong bay it started pouring of rain and got stormy. i had never seen a lightning bolt so close as when one struck a field right next to the road we were on! looked pretty amazing but was really scary! i started panicking that a lightning bolt would hit our boat when we were out at sea!
when we arrived in halong bay we went straight on to the traditional junk boat for lunch where we would also spend the day and night. the boat was brilliant, it was huge and wooden with lovely seafood and nice rooms and a roof deck to sunbathe on. i was so proud of myself for trying prawns, octopus and squid! haha. it was a bit odd that they had titanic music playing in the background ... by the time we finished lunch on the boat, the rain and scary lightning had went away and so we headed up to the deck to admire the scenery.
i can only describe halong bay as paradise. even the photos i took dont do it jusitce, its somewhere you need to see in person to really appreciate. its such a vast area of blue sea and limestone rocks with little floating villages and fish farms inbetween. we went to see a massive cave inside one of the limestone rocks, when you are inside you really how big the rocks are! but the highlight of the day was swimming in the sea :) we all jumped off the boat into the water and the water was like a warm bath, i loved it! i didnt ask anyone if there was sharks there as id rather not know as really wanted to jump in. i also attempted fishing for the first time in my life, was glad i didnt catch anything though as i would want to free it again! we met two really nice ladies on the boat. one was vietnamese and runs a voluntary project just outside nha trang that educates street children and the other one was an australian girl that volunteers there. it sounds like such a good project and we think we might go there for a couple of days when we go to nha trang later in the month. at night we had a mellow time. me, rachel and zan (the travelling trio) went up to the deck, lay on sunloungers and looked at the stars and i saw a shooting star!!! had never seen one before so was very excited by it. the others sang karaoke downstairs which was slightly torturous. we could also hear singing of 'dancing queen' and 'don't want to miss a thing' coming from another boat in the bay! ha.
the next morning, we woke early at 5.15am in the hope of seeing the sunrise, only to find it was really cloudy and so we went straight back to bed! we then had to transfer to a different boat as we had booked a 2 night trip and the others were only on a 1 night trip. we ended up with a group of spanish people on the second boat that were really nice and the tour guide was an absolute blast! turns out this was the boat the dancing queen was blaring from the night before! the guide was just hilarious and every time he laughed we had to as well as his laugh was funny too! we sailed to cat ba island and went cycling around it through little villages and rice fields. it was beautiful and peacful with no other tourists around. we also went a little trek through the forest to a cave that was used by the vietnamese in the war to check for american planes. it was good fun apart from the 20 new mosquito bites i had by the end of it!
in the afternoon we went kayaking (something else id never done before!) and somehow me and rachel managed to steer it in the right direction ... most of the time! the weather was scorching, clear sky and clear water. i could have sat in the kayak all day just bobbing around (if our skin hadnt been burning in the sun!). in the evening we headed to our hotel which was on cat ba island and went out for dinner and drinks with our tour group and guide. our guide told us all about spirit stories that the vietnamese people believe in and how cat ba island got its name because it was all women here during the war when all the men were away fighting. the food was immense and the local bar he took us to was even more immense. cocktails were about a pound and our guide made us have a shot of rice wine (yuck!) we danced the night away :)
the next morning we headed back to halong city in our junk boat, taking in the beautiful scenery one last time. i was really sad to leave halong bay, id go back in a second and think i definitely will be back again at some point in my life. in fact i could live there!!! we arrived back at our hostel monday afternoon and then headed on a night train monday night to head for sapa. no rest here at all!
sapa is up in the mountains to the west of hanoi. the night train arrived there about 5am and we were awakened by blaring vietnamese music which made us jump out our skin, not the best way to wake up! the vietnamese trains are much nicer than the chinese ones though, much cleaner. we then took a one hour bus uphill to sapa. we were scared as when our bus drove through the city, about 40 local women in their traditional clothes started chasing after the bus! iv never seen old women run so fast uphill, they would put me to shame! the mob waited for us to get off the bus then latched on asking us what our names were and where we were from. we couldnt figure out whether they were genuinly interested or if they wanted to sell us things and make money. but when we went into our hotel they just sat outside waiting for us to depart again! it was nice to see that all the women in sapa wear traditional clothes though and it apparantly isnt just for the tourists.
we met our tour guide, pang, who was the loveliest girl ever. she was only 18 and had been a tour guide for 3 years. she was so friendly and happy, linking arms with us and her english was flawless. she learned her english from tourists, she has never studied it or did it at school which amazed me and she told us all about her boyfriend troubles! haha. we then set off on our first trek, a little 3 hour one to ease us in. it was easy on the way down as it was downhill! we stopped at a waterfall and a traditional village where we were shown around peoples homes and thier way of life. little toddlers ran around unattended, singing with no clothes on with not a care in the world! women worked in the fields with babies strapped to their backs and pigs and chickens roamed free. it was a lovely peaceful place, like a different world. had the best pork and lemongrass on a stick from a streetstall for about 25p, it was the best - i want more! heading back to the hotel was more challenging as it was uphill all the way. i hated it. we were offered a motorbike ride up but we thought we would be safer walking ...
the next day was the lovely day of a 6 hour trek. we had been dreading it, thinking we would struggle but amazingly we managed no problem at all. either it was an easy trek or we are getting fitter as time goes on! a mob of local women and children followed us (you can never escape them) and the children try to sell you bracelets along the way which is really hard to say no to as they are the cutest and poorest looking children ever. pang told us that if they sell one bracelet, that is more money than they would make working a day in the fields so if they can sell two then they are doubling their income. the children who are selling start at about 4 years old. then that is thier life. they sell things to tourists and hope that one day they can be promoted to a tour guide. she also told us that only 3% of children in the area go to school as they either live too far away or they need to help their parents. you can tell how poor they are just by looking at them, but depite it all they look really happy and love tourists. in the sapa area, arranged marriages are normal, with girls being married off about age 15. pang was allowed to refuse to be married off if she works hard and gives her parents money. she really has her own mind and her dream is to run her own home stay. i wish i had the money to just give her and let her live her dream as the tour guide wages are apparantly ridiculously low. outwith sapa there are lots of little villages that we passed through with different ethnic minorites, they all have different clothes and head-dresses. there is always a distinct absense of men - pang said they are "working" as in they work a little then relax. the women are the real workers here!
the 6 hour trek gave us amazing views of the sapa region. the scenery is stunning with mountains, rice fields, rivers and little suspension bridges everywhere. we passed through farms and people collecting rice from the fields with the help of water buffalos. we arrived at our home stay in the afternoon. it was a huge wooden house with matresses and mosquito nets everywhere. the family, us and a few of the tour guides and their children stayed there that night. it was national day in vietnam and so the locals wanted to celebrate - they like their rice wine very much! all the women were drunk with red faces and kept chanting to down the rice wine. it was so funny! but they manage to control themselves too, they drank until about 9pm then they stopped completely so that they sober up and wake up feeling fine. british people could learn a lot from them i think!
yesterday we had homemade banana and honey pancakes that were so yummy and then started the trek back. was only about 4 hours but it was a challenging one through muddy forest and steep climbing up and down. i will have legs of steel by the time i get home! haha. almost fell a few times but there was always a local woman on hand to help we left sapa last night, first taking the bus in which me and zan alarmed everyone by sreaming and whacking hates about becasue there was a giant flying bug beside us! haha. and then we took the train, arriving back in hanoi at 5am this morning. the hostel let us pass out on the sofas in the movie room so now we are just chilling out and eating until our sleeper bus tonight to hue. im integued by a bus with proper beds on it. could be really good or really bad! will keep you posted ...
much love
xxx
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