Vietnam

Hello everyone!!! I am sitting at a small hotel in Hanoi writing and waiting for a bus to Ninh Bing, where I will be heading to a national park to do some trekking.

I am not feeling particularly creative, so this blog may be less than entertaining!
First, I must back track to China.....I have been so organized with all my things and HAD not lost anything in 11 months, however as I was packing up my things up in Dali I packed an extra bag (something I NEVER do) In it I put my shawl, my new shoes that were so so ugly that they were cool, other things AND my lonely planet southeast asia....I arrived in Kunming and began looking for my shawl and realized that I left that whole bag in Dali!!! Oops....so I lost my lonely even before arriving in SE Asia....oh well...I can just buy a fake copy here :)

Back to Vietnam.....It rained most of the days in Sapa, but still it was amazing...ended up renting a DVD player and buying some VCDs....they were hilarious...bought 'memiors of a geisha' which was in English but had vietnamese voice over....so you could here the english and right after the vietnamese...even better was a 'Paradise now' in Hebrew with vietnamese voice over!!! Ha ha.
After 3 or four days of rain I took a 3 hour bus to Bac Ha, a lovely village with a beautiful market amidst rice terraces and lovely mountains....the people were so colourful and lovely. Next stop Lao Cai where I caught an overnight train to Hanoi...it was a great train except that it arrived at 5 am.....SO i went on my first motorbike taxi....It was scary, new and exhilarating.....found another hotel in Hanoi for $4 (including fan, tonnes of stairs, ants and even house lizards!!!)
Headed to Halong bay for a 1 night boat trip through the amazing limestone peaks...went swimming!!!!!!!!!!! (the highlight of my trip :) ) ate good food, watched amazing stars....the room was so lovely, had I known it would be as good as it was I would have stayed longer!!!

Im exhausted and am going to chill out in a chair for awhile :)