Ben and Angie Wanderings

Halong Bay

I can’t believe how far behind we are with our blog so I shall try and keep this fairly brief. After Sapa we made our way back to Hanoi to get on a trip to Halong Bay. We had debated if this was going to be extremely touristy but took the plunge and we didn’t regret it. Our night on a junk sailing around the bay was incredibly relaxing and you rarely saw other tourists as they were all detained on their junks well out of sight (although we did see one junk which looked a bit like a Christmas tree with an excessive light disorder).  In between all the relaxing we managed to squeeze in a visit to a cave, paddle about in kayaks and float on our backs in the warm salty waters.  If you glance at the photos, you will probably see a picture of our guide. He had trained to be a school teacher but due to issues with corruption, which we won’t bore you with, he had to become a guide. He was an interesting feller can you could tell that he loved teaching people.


Hoi An
Every girls dream, it was a land of people offering to make you whatever clothes you want at a cheap cheap price = Angie’s heaven. It would have been rude not to get at least one item made, so we did indulge a wee bit. If only we’d had bigger bags.

Hoi an was also a pretty little town as well with quite a laid back vibe so we decided that we would also undertake our open water dive course there, sailing out to the very beautiful cham island. Despite Angie’s pea sized head and mask issues we were soon swimming away with the fish (and soon to eat them later).  I think there are a few pictures of us looking ridiculous in our gear as well as Marko our Puerto Rican  dive instructor who had given up his well paid database management job to chill out for a couple of years. Hoi An was a hard place to leave.