5 days gone....

The sound of motorcycles constantly in the background, women trying to sell us fruit, foreigners drinking too much beer, colourful architecture spectacular scenery and interesting people. This was our first week in Vietnam. Actually we've only been here 5 days but it has been fantastic.

We've just returned from Halong Bay. This is a bay in the north of vietnam and has great Karst topography. It was similar to the place we visited in China (Yangshuo/Guilin) but this time it was on the coast. There are 1969 (or something) islands in the bay. The islands are huge rocks that soar up into the sky.

We took a three day cruise. The first night we slept on the boat (I've always wanted to do that) and then second night on the main island in the bay.

• Highlights were jumping off the boat in the middle of the bay for a swim.
• visiting a picture perfect beach. The great thing was that instead of the usual horizon over the water we could see more and more beautiful island-mountains.
• Hiking on Cat Ba island
• Singing karaoke (always a highlight for me!)
• meeting great people

We were with a great mix of people. Dutch, Scottish, Welsh, French, Vietnamese-French, Singapore/Malaysian, Israeli. In particular we made friends with Simon and Stephanie who are a french couple. Stephanie is Vietnamese but has lived in France for 28ish years. She was bringing her new husband back to Vietnam to meet his parents-in-law. She hadn't been home for 13 years!

We have contact details for a few of them so hopefully we can meet up with them.

Before going to Halong, we explored Hanoi. Day one we just wandered in the old part of the city, Day two visited a confucian temple (reminded us of Tainan in Taiwan!) then tried to visit Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum but it was closed (apparently he is in Russia getting repaired...) So instead we went to the Hoa Lo Prison Museum aka. the "Hanoi Hilton". Originally built by the French for political prisoners it was later used to detain American POWs.

We will spend the weekend in Hanoi seeing a few more things and then go up into the Mountains and hopefully do some hiking and visiting some hilltribe villages.

Having a great time!