Hanoi, Halong Bay & Hoi An

After saying goodbye to our guests, Craig, Teresa and I took a flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. Talk about car horns a honking and a gazillion motorbikes!!! If we thought traffic was bad in Bangkok it wasn't anything compared to the number of motorbikes in Hanoi. Also there are very few traffic lights so we were literally playing real life frogger!! Slightly fun but also slightly scary! Luckily none of us were hit!! Also upon arriving in Vietnam we were instant millionaires!! It was lots of fun taking out 4,000,000 dong (which is about the equivalent of $240)! Until you spent it all, then it was a little sad :(

While in Hanoi we did a walking tour of the city and also a 2 day, 1 night trip to Halong Bay. The picture below is of the bay.


It was amazing! We cruised around on a boat all day, visited a cave, kayaked, went swimming in the evening and then headed to bed on the boat. We took quite a few good pictures and I'll get them online when I get back to Bangkok in a couple of weeks!

Once we got back to Hanoi we did some shopping! Now we thought Thailand was cheap but that is nothing compared to Vietnam! The prices are crazy! The prices are so cheap that you hardly even have to haggle. They start out so low. While in Hanoi we picked up a few "North Face" backpacks for $11 a piece. They even look like really good quality. We also picked up some shorts and pants that you can zipper off to make shorts for our Everest Trek. And we found a few other souvenirs for our every growing "international room" in our imaginary house!

From Hanoi we took an overnight bus to Hoi An. Hoi An is a very cute little ancient town which was fun to stroll around (although ridiculously HOT!! I thought Thailand was hot, but no, Vietnam is blazing!!) After strolling the streets we realized that apart from it being a nice ancient town it is really known for its cheap clothing and tailoring. For example, after buying a pair of shorts in Hanoi I realized that they were a little too big. So what's a girl to do? After walking down the street for a bit, I found a tailor and they were able to alter my shorts for $2! I also got 2 business suits made ($55 a piece), a tailor made dress for my MBA graduation ($17) and Craig bought two tailor made dress shirts for $22. It was nice! Now we're running out of room in our backpacks! Oops!!

Right now I'm sitting in our hotel lobby waiting for our night bus to Nha Trang. We plan on spending 2 nights in Nha Trang in order to check out the diving in Vietnam before heading to Ho Chi Minh where our flight takes off on the morning of June 15th.