I left you last time in Vang Vieng. To be honest i'm suprised i even managed to write any form of update there. I really struggle to remember much and i'm afraid most of the things i can recall have to stay in Vang Vieng, group pact. What i can tell you is that we had a really good group of about 15 people at it's highest. We got drunk A LOT. We watched friends A LOT. We went to the tubing river A LOT. We didn't do much else A LOT. I think in total we were there around 7 days and in the end i was quite glad to get out, my body definitely thanked me and i manged to lose my camera, which was annoying, what a week though well done to everyone involved, you know who you are.
To get out of VV i went back to Luang Prabang with Liam and Clare for one night only, they wanted to see the waterfalls before we headed off to Hanoi. What i failed to remember was the minging bus ride i would have to enjure to get there. It's only 8 hours but the roads are soooooooo bad and on a bus you're just constantly bumping about and seeing the drops over the side don't make you feel any better about the roads you're driving on. However, we made it there and managed to eventually find a hostel after a couple of hours wandering around town. To tired to do anything that night, so went to Lao Lao, had a bit of food/ medicine and went to bed.
We were pretty busy the next day, i got up and sorted the bus to Hanoi which left at 18:30 that night, so we had to be quick getting to the waterfalls and back. The bus itself was one of the worst experiences since i've been away. It was sold as a 24 hour journey on a 'VIP' bus with a toilet, whilst it was a sleeper a bus, it certainly was not VIP and there was no toilet. I had a 'bed' That was about 5ft long so sleep did not happen that night on the 'sleeper' bus, especially when a large Amercian woman decides it's acceptable to have a wee in a plastic bag in the aisle of the bus, scarred for life. We arrived at the Vietnamese border at about 4 in the morning to find out that the crossing wasn't actually open till 8 so we had to try and sleep again. The border crossing itslef took about 3 hours and was long and annoying, but i guess the only way to get through it is to do as your told and be patient which i have found i'm becoming very good at! The rest of the day is a complete blur of drifting in and out of consciousness through lack of sleep and some strong tablets! We were supposed to arrive in Hanoi around 6, we ended up there around 10. I was properly de-hydrated, reason being, you never know when they're going to stop so the last thing you want to do is end up needing to go to the toliet on a bus with no toilet. Difficult balancing act that i'm clearly not very good at! But, we made it and i'm still alive to tell the tale, but i would not fancy doing that journey again in a hurry.
Hanoi turned out to be pretty cool, can't say i was looking forward to being back in a big city, but it proved me wrong. We'd booked a decent hostel and bumped back into Dan, we reluctantly let him re-join our group to bring the numbers up to 4. The hostel served free beer between 7-8 which we happily took advantage of. The 1st couple of days here we wandered the streets, managed to find a little make shift bar on the corner of some crossroads, where they served 20p beer, not really sure what the beer was but who cares, it was 20p. We spent a good afternoon there, just people watching and seeing what the strangest thing we could see on the back of a moped was. Winner at the moment is a whole cow. I'm hoping to top this. We'd been recommended to do a tour round Halong Bay from one of the other hostels that was a bit more expensive than the others but was worth it. It was billed as the booze cruise, my of my how were we not ready for this. It cost 160$, this included 3 days and 2 nights of various activities and excursions, all our meals and transport, only thing not included, alcohol. Or sleep. Day one we got to the harbour, which took around 4 hours by bus. We were greeted with a wall of thick fog. Apparently it was going to clear and we would get out to the bay eventually. A few hours passed and we still hadn't gone anywhere, lots of beer had already been drunk and we were then told the Vietnamese boat police would not let anyone move anywhere because the fog was so bad, apparently this was the 1st time this had happened in 5 years. The outcome was we'd have to stay the night on the boat and start the tour again the next day. So basically we got a free night on the boat. The rest of the night involved lots of drinking games and nakedness. I think we finished up around 4, maybe.
Next morning we got a nice 7am wake up call, the Vietnamese boat crew did not like you sleeping in or missing breakfast, so we were literally pulled out of bed. We then started our cruise into the bay, the weather had cleared really well and we had beautiful sunshine. It's a pretty breathtaking place, i swear it's never ending and the scenery is beautiful. We anchored up around 14:00 and were then allowed to jump in to the sea, which was cold but it woke you up with the jump from the top of the boat being about 15ft and the shock of the water temp when you get in, still, got to be done! We then went kayaking around the bay to see some caves and the floating village where they filmed Top Gear apparently, i'm not sure it was the actual one but whatever, it looked pretty similar. It was then back to the boat for another night of fun and games, this is the night Dan Vieng was created. Basically he got drunk a bottle Vodka, decided he wasn't drunk enough and that it was watered down. To fix this he decided he needed 6 Tequila shots in row, it worked, massively. He got carried to bed and his final words were: 'I'm Dan Vieng, you don't even know'.
Another 7am wake up call the next day, can you see a theme occurring here? We switched boats to the ferry to get to castaway island. Today was action day. Beach Volleyball, Frisby, Climbing and Wakeboarding. I was fucking ace at wakeboarding which is strange as i have no strengh in my arms or legs. The night was slightly tamer than the boat nights but only just. Needless to say by the end of the trip i was pretty tired, from no sleep and lots of booze. However, upon my return to the hostel i found out it was spurs arsenal which i obviously had to watch, i don't want to talk about that though.
We spent a couple more nights in Hanoi, recovering/ drinking. Then moved onto Hue. Not much to say about that place it was pretty boring and the weather was rubbish and by now i was craving sun so we stayed one night and moved onto Hoi An. The weather wasn't looking any better until we went through this massive tunnel, got to the other side and suddenly it was beautiful sunshine. YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES.
We stayed in Hoi An 2 nights, it was a strange old place, hard to describe, but good fun. We did a lot of Vodka drinking on the rooftop terrace, me and Dan Vieng started the trent of a robe party, it got a bit silly. We rented bikes out one day and drove the 50km ride out to My Son. Basically some ruins in a park, not that impressive, i enjoyed the bike ride more, i say enjoyed, i was knackered after it. The Vietnamese traffic laws are pretty loose to say the least, by loose i mean there are none, so you had to concentrate pretty hard. Other than that we finally got to a beach and had a couple of really nice meals. Most people got something made as it's supposed to be the cheapest and best place in Vietnam. I did not, but i'm sure everyone elses will look lovely!
We then got a relatively easy 11 hour night bus to Nha Trang. Me and Dan sounded like we got lucky compared to the others in our group, drunk Vietnamese men throwing up on people and things like that. Oh well.
Nha Trang has been loads of fun so far. It's ridiculously hot so my tan is coming on nicely. There's a beautiful beach about 5 minutes walk from the hostel. Had the best day ever at the Vinpearl waterpark, there was some ceeeeerazy slides and some not so ceeeeerazy rides, but the whole day was so much fun. Not done great deal more than that, still seem to be drinking quite a lot though. We took on the Vietnamese at football and won 13-8 obviously, i scored 4 goals obviosuly. Tonight, about 8 of us have managed to organise a night at Red Apple club and we're getting free food, free beer and free accomodation for the night all i have to do is DJ some indie dancefloor classics for a few hours which will be a god send, i'm seriously craving some decent music. Should be a lovely warm up for the 8am bus tomorrow morning.
Hopefully 2 weeks with Mother will be a much needed detox, however she does like her Gin, so maybe i'll just be drinking more expensively. Plan is to head to Saigon, meet up, then head back up north to Mui Ne for some more beach time. Then probs back to Saigon and through Cambodia. I fly out of Cambodia on the 28th March to Kuala Lumpar for one night, then to Koh Samui for about a month in the Thai islands. Bit of a long way round to get there, but i have to fly into Thailand to get my 30 day visa and it's cheaper take 2 flights to KL then Ko Samui than it is to take a flight to Bangkok then a train down to the islands. Wierd.
That's it for now, that was a long one. Reckon my next one will be when i get to the islands. I know for a fact that there's huges spelling and grammar errors in this, for those that know me, you will know how much this annoys me but i'm not really bov'ed anymore.
Peace and Love to all. X
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