Halong Happiness

Well, happy birthday to me! In Vietnam instead of cake I get five-star food and instead of a wrapped gift I get a boat cruise, eh voila, merci mon ange.

3 hours east..which way is east..um, slightly down and right of Hanoi is Halong Bay and literally hundreds of limestone karts scattered across the horizon. I can't think of anything better than being on great big junk chugging past ancient monolithic islands!

Days were spent sprawling on a deckchair on the top deck feeling like a movie star on a cruise somewhere exotic (ahem, like Vietnam), eating seafood, swimming in the shimmering green ocean, kayaking through schools of enormous white jellyfish and mooring for the night surrounded by dark island silhouettes and watching a storm roll into the bay...beautiful...

However, in the middle of the night, around the time the roof above my bed sprung a small geyser and I heard shouts and running on the deck the thought crossed my mind that maybe I should have paid more for this tour. Now I know I'd unwittingly booked one of those 'Surprise Tours' you get in Asia, the kind where your guide says Surprise! ...all the time.

It went something along the lines of 'Surprise! Now you must pay extra to see the caves', or 'Surprise! Now we're taking a two and a half hour trek up a slippery rock face and it'll be dangerous' or I really liked this one two poor New Zealander's got, Surprise! You're changing boats mid-stream because...

...well, just because.

Apart from having to guess what was coming next which is something we all began to laugh at, I had a great time and even enjoyed a few seconds of satisfaction at the top of the scary mountain.

Now back in Hanoi I am preparing for an adventure of another kind...getting settled in a school, literally, we are living in a working school. 'Surprise! There are small Vietnamese students coming for classes over the weekend' (that one was our landlord)...

More on the new place soon...