Hello Everyone.
Sorry for not writing very much lately, but the combination of few internet cafes, an action packed schedule, and the common occurance of Vietnamese power outages made writing a BLOG very challenging.
We are back in Hong Kong already and will be flying home tomorrow. The funny thing is that we'll be home only two hours after we leave!
Anyways, the last time I wrote was from Hoi An and was rudely cut off by an over aggressive bus company tourist wrangler. He got their a half hour early and rused us onto the bus.
We took the bus north almost all the way to Hanoi to the rural town of Ninh Binh. We arrived to a terrential down pour and were about to call it a complete loss when the rain lightened up around 2pm. We hired a taxi and went to see the main attractions, including beautiful karst landscape looking over miles and miles of rice fields. We first floated for 2 hours through the landscape on a row boat and then climbed 500 steep steps up one of the towering rocks to see an awesome view of the area. The day turned out to be very action packed so the next day we decided to catch a bus to Cat Ba island. This island is located just under the infamous Halong Bay and is a base camp for boat trips, kayaking, and hiking in the area. Halong Bay is a Bay (obviously) filled with tiney islands that are also Karst and steeply rise out of the water. While on the island, we booked an overnight trip through the bay on an old Chinese Junk Boat. During the trip, we were given kayaks to explore the local floating fishing villages and some of the many caves in the area. We were in a group of eight people all of similar age so we finished the evening off with some stronger beverages.
The next day we were brought back to the island early and met up with some Irish friends we met earlier to go motor biking around the island. This was a great time. The island does not have a very large population so when you leave the main town, its you and the local farmers on the road. The scenery on the island was amazing. I heard someone compare it to Hawaii?? Anyways, we did a nice hike to some frog pond and called it a day.
After our Halong Bay experience, we took a boat and a bus to the Vietnam capitol city of Hanoi. This city was nice, but unfortunatly, we are a bit "citied out" at this point and dodging speeding scooters while crossing the street has long lost its appeal. We spent two days in Hanoi just walking around, shopping, and drinking with our Irish friends who also came to Hanoi with us.
The trip back to Hong Kong was actually not as bad as we had expected. A full 24 hours was spent on a bus, but the night bus had huge beds to snooze luxuriously in. The border crossings were painless and now we're back where we started. Traveling full circle back to the city that we started in brings back memories of the excitment and anticipation we felt at the start of the trip. This is a bit sad. We are very excited to return home and see everyone again and eat a good burger or steak.
Anyways, this will be the last BLOG of the "Runnin on Rice" mini saga. Thanks for reading and we'll talk to everyone soon.
Sara and Michal
