Just one week down...

What day is today?  Monday?… this week has kind of flown!

I’m still Hanoi and it’s incredibly wet.

I’ve just returned from a two day, one night Ha Long Bay trip… a tourist trap but despite the horror stories I’ve heard I had no such experience.  The weather wasn’t too hot  or humid and the nice breeze was refreshing.  My room smelt like diesel and although the A/C worked at the beginning I originally thought I could make it ‘better’ by turning up the fan and lowering the temperature.  Turns out I can’t decipher the Chinese characters on the A/C remote control and turned it off.  I could only get it to turn on again for 30 minute intervals so I was waking up every 40 minutes or so in the heat to push buttons at random to turn it back on!

Overall I have to say the bay was much nicer than I had expected.  The water was beautiful and the limestone karsts are as beautiful as the pictures.  My only disappointment was the lack of sunset thanks to the hazy clouds/smog which really killed some of my photo idea’s and I would have appreciated the lack of 5kg camera gear packed into my small backpack.  Still, I fired off a few shots with the new SLR so I look forward to having a good play around with them once I get home.  Hopefully I have something worthwhile.

I’ve seen everything I wanted to see in Hanoi.  I’ve enjoyed walking around the town, eating in street stalls and the night market that I stumbled on last night.  I’ve seen Ho Chi Minh, his house and his cars.  I’ve walked around the lake numerous times, bought a non-touristy T-shirt at a store where not a word of English was known or spoken.  I’ve screamed all over the city on the back of a motorbike and I’ve also been to the university built eons ago as a temple to honour the teachings of Confucius. .. as well as a few museums.  They seem to have a museum for everything.

I was planning on heading up north to Sapa tomorrow but with the rain killing all motivation today I’ll most likely now depart the day after tomorrow.  From there I expect to use Sapa as a base and take a week to explore the surrounding area before heading into Laos.  Not sure how long I’ll be in Laos and I’ve had an idea to head into Northern Thailand via the golden triangle however I haven’t yet decided as to whether this is a viable idea given I’ll be then having to apply for a second Laos visa to come back into Vietnam and of course, a Thailand visa.  I’ll make that decision on the way I suppose.