Hanoi and Halong bay

So much has happened in the last few days I'm not going to be able to fit it all in, just not possible. We got to Vietnam after a fairly uneventful flight (I'm not complaining) and were introduced to Hanoi by taking the shuttle mini-bus into town with about 5 people too many squeezed in together. Maybe it was a mistake coming from lazy and chilled Laos into Vietnam - we were just a teeny bit overwhelmed by the sheer volume of traffic and its organized mess of a system. I'll be honest, Hanoi isn't for me. Don't let me taint your perception though, it's a beautiful, bustling city with a distinctive rhythm all of its own. I just can't dance to it.

We found a fellow Irishman working in a travel agency. It is the 5th best travel agency in all of Hanoi. I know this because I was reminded several times. Anyway, he did us a decent deal on a 3 day trip on the 'Party Cruise' around Halong Bay and sold us two tickets on a sleeping bus to Sapa, which I wrote about already. Our hostel manager, Tony, wasnt very happy with us for booking with someone else and decided he didn't want to be nice to us after that. Lucky we didn't book with him as we met two Canadians later in the week that did and they were screwed over, promised the party boat but stuck on a family cruise with hundreds on non-English speaking families. 

Our few days at Halong Bay were filled with kayaking, visiting floating villages, jumping from rocks (not me!), swimming and exploring caves. The second night of the tour we stayed on our own private beach, only 8 of us tourists together. Brian, our tour guide, let us know he had 'scheduled some fun' for us at 9 and since we were all seeing hundreds of our friends dressed up for Halloween at home we said we'd have our own little costume party. We literally scoured our backpacks for any costume we could potentially put together. And the result wasn't too bad! We had a geek, a gypsy, a cat, zorro, a Hawaiian lady, an Arabian lady, a Mexican man and a Buddhist monk. Brian's 'scheduled fun' ended up being a beauty/talent contest which suited us down to the ground. We all had to run the cat walk, show off a talent and answer a question. Brian just didn't expect us all to do it in character. The evening ended up with a few too many vodkas, myself screaming down the karaoke mic and a swim watching the plankton light up around us. 

The next day was a bit of a struggle but when you've got 2,000 beautiful limestone karst islands to look at it it makes things just a little bit easier.