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Hey guys, Second blog today, but this one on Halong Bay, an amazing trip we just returned from this afternoon.
After we got off the Sapa night train, we went and found a hostel. We got one next to our previous one, for the same price, but the room is much bigger, double bed, fan, and a lot nicer.
We spent the day going to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum. Ho Chi Minh is the founder of Communism in Vietnam, and revered by virtually everyone. He wanted a peasants burial upon his death, but instead a massive areas with a museum, and marble buildings where you can view his embamled dead body! It was pretty interesting :-)
In the afternoon we did some shopping and relaxed for a while. We had dinner at Quan An Gnon, where you can buy street food in a massive poutside dining area, which was very fun. We also went for Ice Cream at a place called Fanny. It was the best ice cream we have ever ever had :-)
In the evening we went to watch the Water Puppet Theatre, which is a traditional performing artfrom here, where they illustrate aspects of traditional life, as well as local folk stories and myths. It was fun to watch, but we turned up a minute late, and had to ask a row of people to move. :-) We got more than a few glares.
The next day we left for our Ha Long bay trip. We met the othgers at the hostel organising the trip and got on a 4 hour bus journey, mainly in silence to the port. There we boarded a boat to take us out to the deep harbour where the Jolly Roger moored. It was a large dark brown boat for aboutn 40 people.
We had a nice lunch and met the 2 other couple, one from Austria and and one from London. For the afternoon we cruides through teh bya which is really stunning. We stopped off at about 3 for some jumping off the boat and swimming around. When you leave the water you are covered in brown slimy stuf, but apparently it is algae :-)
Then we went kayaking for an hour to a cave where you walked through to a hidden lagoon! It looked amazing, but the sea floor flet pretty discgusting on your feet :-)
Then there was more relaxing until dinner which was again very nice aand filling, before drinking games started :-) There were large games of ring of fire and Roxeanne, where you drink every time Sting says 'Roxeanne' in the song 'Roxeanne' :) We both managed to escape anything too embarassing, but there were some funny stories and antics from others :-) We went to bed and eventually managed to fall asleep once the music had died down a bit.
The next was cloudy all day which was a shame, as the day before was sunny. It rained till the early afternoon before stopping.We were taken to a private beach for the day, which was fun and just relaxed chatting and palying ping pong for most of the day. Lunch was ok, and in teh afternoon was wakeboarding and extreme banana boating!
We did banana boating which is very fun, and a little dangerous :-) The best was the last run, where 6 others fell off leaving me and kate to hang on for a few more minutes as they tried to flip us off :-)
In the evening was an amazing bbq with lots of meats and chips, and in the evening was just chatting and relaxing for w while. There were some mroe relaxed drinking games in the evening, but a lot more tame, and we eventually went to bed in our open huts :-)
In the morning we poacked, had an early breakfast, adn cruised on the baot back to the harbour. We had a final lunch on the boat, and then a 4 hour bus journey back to Hanoi. We said goodbye, then booked into a hostel, relaxed, then went for dinner and more ice cream :-)
Tomorrow we fly to Bangkok, before flying home on Wednesday, so there will be just one more blog!
Bye for now
Tom and Kate
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