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We were driving for about 3 hours out of Hanoi before we reached what could be called countryside. WE just saw a sprawling mess of buildings outside of the city and eventually came a landscape limestone karsts rising out of the flat lushes rice paddies. Then we finally reached the ocean! Boarded our junk with about 20 other tourists had our lunch on a table of 3 English lads my age all on their gap years. Was pretty amusing to be with people my own age as it hasn't happen for a while. We were then dumped off at some caves with about 300 other Vietnamese tourists all with flashing cameras and in their crazy numbers. It looks like a circus in the caves with all the flashing lights from the cameras. It was tipping it down with rain by this point as we were sailing through what would be paradise if it was sunny! Oh the joys of traveling in the wet season and Vietnamese tourist season! We spent the rest of the day kayaking and mooching on board the junk talking with the other travelers on board. The next day we were shipped off to join a group of 15 French business school students on a tour of Vietnam and joined them on a 2 hour hike over two peeks! A lot of walking before noon! And all I could hear was the screams of French girls coming from the front which was quite irritating to say the least. I got to the front after the group split to climb another peak and soon realized what they were screaming about. The path was covered in dinner plate sized black spiders and whoever was at the front was clearing the way of their gigantic webs by walking through them (more like running and screaming) and since I was the front it was my turn! So I did join in with the running and screaming for a short while until I couldn't handle it anymore. We were able to take a refreshing swim in a cold river at the end of it which made the hike so much more worth while! We had a day of swimming and relaxing on the beach in Cat Ba before having dinner with our French students who turned totally rowdy after dinner. They were so chilled all day then as soon as sun went down they turned totally French: got out their cigarettes and downing the drinks! We both had drinking competitions downing pints of beer but the French beet both south Africa and England. Oh dear. They were downing glasses of straight vodka though! The trip was ended with sunshine on the last day and we got to see halong in its full glory. It was just amazing. The tour turned out to be extremely worth doing for only $50 for 3 days.
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