Hanoi

Well up a bit earlier for a smaller breakfast at 7:30. We then got taken in the small motor boat to the beach near where the boat was anchored and we climbed up the stairs on the side of the hill and had a great view over the bay and the limestone karsts. Our boat looked tiny! We then went into a massive cave that used to be the home of a couple of fisherman families. The boat company had bought them out and built them a floating home to “protect the cave” as apparently they didn’t know how to look after it and were destroying the stalactites and stalagmites. It’s a little sad to think they were kicked out as it was a pretty amazing home and it would have kept them nice and warm in winter and cool in summer. Anyway the cave was beautiful and they had all lights fitted through it so it was lit up a little. We were followed around the cave by the island dog! We headed back down to the beach and jumped in our kayaks again. We just rowed around for about 40 minutes and had a bit of a race with our guide which he kinda won! We headed back to the beach then jumped back into the motor boat back to our Junk. We had about half an hour to pack up our stuff and check out of our cabin so they could get it ready for the next group. We quickly had showers as we wouldn’t get a chance tonight as we were going on the train and packed our stuff and checked out. We sat on the sun beds on the top of the boat in our thick jumpers and beanies and enjoyed the clouds!!! It really was beautiful though but we would love to go back in warmer weather. We had an early lunch at around 10:45am and pretty much straight after lunch we were motor boated off to the mainland. We got into our minivan and hit the road for 3 hours back to Hanoi. We went back to the hotel we stayed in previously and left our bags there as it was only 4pm and our train wasn’t until 11pm. We wandered around and then stopped to have a hot choc and coffee which we ended up waiting an hour for! We then went back to the pizza and pasta place we went to before the boat trip and had the all you can eat buffet for under $5 each. Rudi did better than me! We had an hour or so to kill still so we wandered around a bit more and found a massive nite market which was quite busy and the people were very pushy…not selling you stuff but literally pushing you around and out of their way. We headed back and sat at the hotel for a bit and then they called us a taxi which took us to the train station. We got jumped on straight away by a youngish Vietnamese boy who told us to sit and he took our tickets and got them stamped and then came and grabbed our bags and told us to follow him. He took us onto the train and into our cabin where waiting for us were two middle aged Vietnamese men….we were reliving our train trip form hell in India and I decided we must have killed a china man. The young man asked us for money and fakes exhaustion from carrying our bags to get more money from us! Very funny! We piled onto the top bunks with our bags…no argument this time and settled in for the night. He ride was a lot bumpier than in India but it wasn’t too bad…we both managed to get some sleep.