Maja Nordlund

Final destination in Vietnam. The capital Hanoi. Honestly it's not much to do here, and that I've heard form almost everyone who has been here. It's a city, a busy one, it has a nice lake which you can walk around and maybe sit at the superexpensive restaurant that has a terrace over the lake. But we didn't do that. We walked around, looking for a good (but not that expensive) place to take a hot coffee in the cold and grey wheater. We found a five-floor building with the popular Vietnamies coffee chain Highland Coffee on the third floor. Vietnamies coffee is famous for being really strong, and they usually serve it with sweet condensed milk (which makes it a lot less strong, and a lot more like caramel coffee!)

 

So the next day we went on a 2-day tour to Halong Bay, which lies a 3 (or sometimes 4...) hours drive from the city. Once there, we were 16 people who got on a boat in which me and Evelina were assigned a nice cabin with belonging bathroom. The first day we spent cruising around the bay and the big cliffs popping up from the water here and there. It was really something; not many places in the world can brag about nature like that. Actually that's why the Halong Bay is chosen as one of the New 7 Wonders of the World. 

The view is hard to describe, it's like you see all these cliffs forming a long chain of mountains in the horison, but when you get closer you'll see the cliffs seperateing as you cruise among them. After a Vietnamies lunch served on the boat, we got off at an island called Ti Top were we could climb to the top to get an even better view of the cliffs and all the white cruising boats that lay among them. After that we went in to a cave on another island, which were divied into  three parts; the small cave, the bigger one, and the biggest. The biggest were reeeaally big, and all of it were made of stalactites and stalagmites (don't ask me the difference).

The last "activity" was kayaking, which is something I'm really bad at... Evelina helped me out, but I think I got kinda frustrated sitting in a soaked seat, and that the paddle brought cold water into the kayak for each oar stroke... And if that wasn't the shower ran out of hot water after Evelina had showered, so it was no way for me to get warm. It was even colder here then in the city and my cardigan didn't help much since it got soaked in the kayak...

 

Well the next morning we just kept cruising and then headed back home. Since we arrived later then we were supposed to we had missed the bus to Laos. Or at least the receptionist guy told us so. He and another guy took us on their motorbikes (with our acakpacks and two other bags each!) and drove us to the busstation..! Long story!