We reached Hanoi on Wed, Oct 30 after another painful bus ride. Although the bus was hot the driver refused to turn on the air conditioning. Dan approached the driver and tried to convince him to turn it on, but he suspicously pretended to not understand English or Dan's continual pointing to the air conditoning vents. Frustrated and hot, we sat down and tried to get a few hours of sleep. In Hanoi we managed to get a great room at a hotel in the old quarter of the city. Once we settled in, we took a cyclo taxi (in the rain) to the Malaysian Airlines office in order to finalize the changes to our plane ticket (cancelling Bali and adding New Zealand). The Airline made all the changes we asked for but told us that we would have to fly to KL from Hanoi on Nov 2, which was 2 days earlier than we had wanted. That meant that we only had 1 day for Hanoi and 2 days for Halong Bay. We put our names on standby for a flight on the 4th, and then quickly went to see what we could do in our one day in the city. After lunch in a nice cafe we went to the women's museum which was really well done. Afterwards we walked by the lake near the old quarter and went to see a show at the water pupperty theatre, which consists of wooden puppets that stick out from a pool of water. Traditional music is coreographed to the moving pieces. We then booked our 2 day trip to Halong Bay trip which would begin the next day.

The next day we were picked up early by a minibus and driven for 2 hours to the pier. After a mediocre lunch we boarded a boat with 15 other travellers. Our boat was fairly nice, with tables and chairs on the main level, a large deck up above and small cabins down below.

We took a seat on the top level and started to take in the spectacular scenary. It was breathtaking!!! Halong Bay is a great collection of over 3000 islands and our boat weaved it's way through a number of these islands. The peacefulness and beauty of the trip made it one of the highlights of our SouthEast Asia trip.

A few hours later we stopped to explore a cave called Sung Sut. The cave had 3 large rooms with amazing stalagtites and stalagmites. Apparently many Vietnamese had used the cave as a hidding spot during the war. After the cave the boat took us to a small cove where we got a chance to swim. As the sun was going down the boat stopped at the pier in Cat Ba Island where a number of the travellers got off to spend the night in a hotel. Jen and I were two of a few that decided to sleep on the boat. We had a typical Vietnamese dinner on the boat (which wasn't that great) and spent the evening playing cards and drinking with a number of other travellers.

Jen and I decided to spend the night sleeping outside so that we could watch the stars and take in the sunrise in the morning. We put a mattress down on the top deck and slept with only a thin blanket. We woke up once or twice during the night to the sound of rats but it didn't deter us from having a great time (although we did pull the blankets up a little higher over our heads). The next morning it was cloudy so unfortunately we did not get to see the sun rise. Nevertheless, it was a great experience.

At 9am the boat picked up the people who had stayed on Cat Ba Island and then headed back to the main pier. We stopped once along the way to swim at a secluded beach, which looked nice from a distance but not upclose (alot of debris and garbage had washed up along the beach shore). Sadly our trip came to an end just after lunch. We hopped onto a minibus and were taken back to town. Along the way, Dan called Malaysian Airlines and found out that our standby tickets had come through and our plane to KL was moved to the 4th. This meant that we now had 2 more days to enjoy Hanoi and we were determined to make the most of it.