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Well I have said goodbye to singapore and good morning Vietnam! This will be my fifth country....woo hoo. Arrived after a several hour flight and the first obstical was to get from the airport to the hotel without getting riped off or scammed as all the horror stories suggest. I on the other hand was fine and the journy took me straight to the hotel with no glitches to arrive in the eve. The place looked completely insane with traffic and people everywhere so I decided to chill out in the hotel have a relaxing bubble bath and early night ready to face the next day.
I head out to get my first experiance of Vietnam and I was looking for culture difference and thats what I got. The first task in this country is crossing the road. I think I spent half an hour walking around the same block too afraid to cross over. Its like a scooter derby here and there appears to me no rules to the road except beep to tell the person in front to shift as you fight for space on the road. Anyway I eventualy got a backbone and with shakey legs headed to cross over. The method was to walk slowly and hope to god the scooters ride around, which works quite well in practice. The whole experiance is mental and I found it both terrifying and hillariouse at the same time. At one point I was concentrating so hard to avoid scooters that I nearly got run over by a bus. Its all good though as I obviously have survived the roads so far and have seen no accidents so they must be doing something right. In fact the whole place is crazy and there appears to be no order to anything however life just flows along realy well. Maybe we should take a leaf out of their book and just go with the flow! Anyway I spent my first day getting used to this culture shock and wondering around the city and the market. The stuff here is even cheeper than singapore. Its soooo bloody cold here aswell that I just had to purchase so winter warmers. I grabed a North Face jacket for about 20quid and a scarf and hat for about 5quid....awsome! It is sooooo cold though. All the time there is this fog over the place, well smog realy with all the rubbish that is kicked up into the air from sheer traffic. Rubbish carbon footprint to say the least. It gives me such a headache with all the pollution and continuouse beeping of scooter horns. Its a great place though and the people seem realy nice. I meet my group in the evening thatI will be touring with and its a group of 7 girls, 5 oz, a swiss and me. All very nice and the guide a vietnamease gye very nice too. We all head out to a local family run restaraunt for some grub then check out the night market and wonder at all the great bargins on offer.
We head out on our next day to our first destination Ha Long Bay. This actually means decsending dragon and the limestone islands acording to legend is what was created by this dragon to protect the shores. In fact there are over 3000 islands that stretch from vietnam to China, so there you go, call me lonely planet! The place is amazing and we sail out on our private boat and check out a cave that was created in one of the islnads by water erosion. Another amazing sight. A few of us rent some kayaks and head out to check out another cave. We paddle through the cave to come out into an open area with the islands all around. On one of the islands is a population of little monkeys, and they are sooo cute, just jumping around scurrying from rock to rock. Another tour group were throwing bannana skins to them but with only mints in my pocket I chucked a few of them over, and boy did they love them. They were fighting over them and when they got them sat quitly with a pondering look on their faces while chewing the mints around in their mouths. It was realy funny, but I suppose you had to be there! That night we stay on theboat in Ha Long bay and wake up the next morning to head back to Hanoi. On the way back we stop off at a Pineapple shop and yes I have been converted, I love the stuff. Before leaving home if there was any food I didnt like it would be Pineapple but such a statement is no more! (Jena and Nic you will be suprised by this I am sure!) We get back to the hotel in Hanoi in the afternoon for some free time. A visit to the Water Puppet theatre was made and after an hours performance I was both baffeled and amazed. Lets just say its worth seeing. Tommorow we have a full day in Hanoi to do some more exploring and then catch the night train out of the city to head south overnight. This is going to be an interesting experiance.
Will keep you posted, love lots xxxx
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