Karaoke and Beach Parties!

Hello again everyone! It's been ages since we last posted - sorry about that, but we're out in the stix a lot of the time on this part of the tour and so we haven't had much opportunity or time to be honest! We'll fill you in now though and we're sorry if it takes a while!

SUNDAY 6th May

We started off this morning by meeting a few of our group and Nok to go to the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum together. We set off at about 07.00 and by 07.30 we'd arrived. The rules were pretty strict there, we had to leave our rucksacks at a luggage hold, although we could take in a handbag with money etc in it. But we weren't allowed cameras or phones and after leaving our bags we had to go through metal detectors and put our handbags through an x-ray machine. We then had to queue for a little while and as we got closer to the Mausoleum, we had to stand in pairs in the queue, with our arms by our sides, not speaking, no sunglasses on, no chewing gum and I got pulled aside and had my handbag checked again to make sure I didn't have a camera or anything in it. We then filed into the Mausoleum and walked around Ho Chi Minh's body and left again. You weren't allowed to stop at all and one woman who was bowing to Ho Chi Minh was forcibly moved on! Once outside we had a look around the grounds of where Ho Chi Minh worked and lived. It was quite nice and the wooden house he lived in was beautiful. After walking the grounds we headed off for some breakfast and decided we wanted to go to Hanoi Prison (built by the French to subdue any Vietnamese uprisings - Ho Chi Minh was actually imprisoned here). It was quite a subdued visit, as like most prisons, the conditions people were forced to live in were pretty dank and awful.
Steve and I decided to do our own thing after this and went in search for a book-swap-shop for Steve so that he could get something new to read, but unfortunately we couldn't find one that actually sold English books and he is being picky and wants to read Lord of the Rings! So we went and had a nice cold drink and a sit down instead. Poor Steve had been a bit ill during the night and still wasn't feeling quite right, so we made our way back to the hotel and he had a bit of a sleep, which seemed to make him feel better.
At 18.00 we had our first group meeting with our new tour leader. We had to fill out our passport and insurance details etc and also introduced ourselves to one another, as we had 5 new people on the tour (including our new guide). Once we were introduced we went out to dinner and had a 'buffet' style meal - loads of dishes got ordered and we just helped ourselves to what we wanted!

MONDAY 7th May

Today we mainly travelled. We first of all had breakfast at Koto though and also ordered ourselves takeaway lunches. Our travelling started with a bus ride to the harbour, we then caught a public boat which took us to Cat Ba Island. We then got to the hotel and Steve and I found ourselves on the 5th floor at the top of the hotel - it was hard work getting up all of the stairs with hugely heavy backpacks on! We had the afternoon to ourselves, so we took a little wander around and got a couple of milkshakes to cool off. For dinner Sharon took us to the beach and it was pretty cool, as it was just us and a few locals there. We had another 'buffet' style meal and so got to try lots of new and very yummy new dishes! After eating we were invited to join the locals bonfire beach party - it got pretty raucous with lots of dancing and shouting! After getting completely puffed out by dancing around on the beach we headed back towards the hotel and stopped for a drink on the way.

TUESDAY 8th May

Today was really great! We started off by having a motorbike tour of the Island, it was a great way to see the less touristy areas. It was slightly odd for me not being behind Steve on his bike, and Steve felt odd being a passenger, but it was still so much fun! We stopped halfway round to have a tour of 'Hospital Cave'. A Vietnamese War Veteran showed us around the cave, as he had actually lived there during the war. It was amazing to think that soldiers had used it as their home, it felt so claustrophobic and was so dank and dark, it must have been pretty miserable at times. Although he showed us how they used to entertain themselves - he sang us a couple of songs and showed us the swimming pool and cinema they were allowed to use! After the tour of the cave, we were back on the bikes and whizzing back to the hotel again. We had a short while to get our swimming things together, as our next stop was a boat ride in Halong Bay. When we'd reached the Bay we were allowed to go for a swim whilst lunch was being prepared for us. The boys were all throwing themselves in the water from the top of the boat and we got some pretty cool photos of them! After lunching on the boat we went for a kayak ride around the Bay, stopping on a deserted beach for a bit of R and R on the way around! We were then being taken back to the harbour through some very rough waters! We then had the evening to ourselves and so Steve and I decided to have our first dinner on our own since starting the tour! So all in all it was a fantastic day and hopefully we'll have lots more like it!

WEDNESDAY 8th May

Today we headed for the border town of Lang Son in preparation for crossing the border on Thursday. We had some stops on the way though. We caught a private boat from the Island back to the mainland and on the way we stopped off t Sung Sot Cave. It was pretty cool, it's so different from the limestone caves you get in the UK. The stalactites and stalagmites are much larger and the majority of them have joined up to form giant columns of pitted white calcium. The scale of everything was really vast and it was also quite fun, as they'd put loads of coloured neon lights everywhere, so it felt like a nightclub! Once we'd wandered through the cave, we finished our journey to the mainland and then got a private bus to Lang Son. We had one more stop, this time at Hong Ngoc Humanity Centre. This centre teaches the victims of chemical warfare (mainly children from the Vietnam War) and teaches them a traditional trade e.g. lacquer ware, embroidery etc etc. I ended up buying an outfit from there, a traditional Vietnamese dress - it's a dark blue jacket/dress with white embroidery and a pair of white trousers, all of it is in silk and I bought it for less than 25 pounds! I think I look OK in it, Steve certainly liked it, so hopefully his taste has been impeccable! We then finished our journey to the border town. We had a little free time, during which Steve and I had a wander around the market, which was ridiculously busy and we then went to a hotel a couple of buildings down to have a group dinner.

THURSDAY 10th May

Today we were up early. We started off with a short bus ride to the border. It didn't take too long to get everyone through and we were soon back in China - it almost felt like going home! So with a couple of new stamps in our passports we were bundling into another bus and heading to Huashan. We arrived early in the afternoon and so after popping our belongings into our individual stilt houses we had lunch at the hotel. We were then taken by rather rickety tuk tuks to the river so that we could have a trip down river to see the Huashan Mural Paintings. These paintings are 2400 years old, but no-one knows anything about them, not even how they painted them on the shear cliff face or how they managed to scale up/down it to paint them, when some of them are over 100 meters high! Baffling stuff, but also impressive - something very important must have happened to have justified them going to so much effort! The afternoon was left for us to do our own thing. We did some washing and then Steve went out to take some photos and before we knew it it was time for dinner, which we had at the hotel. Afterwards we had a very noisy karaoke party - it was great fun, even if I am now deaf in one ear!

FRIDAY 11th May

Today we've mostly been travelling, we left Huashan at 08.00 and 3 buses later were arriving in Liuzhou at around 14.00. I had lots of fun trying to explain to reception that I wanted some laundry doing and asking whether it would be possible to get it back before 12.00 tomorrow and asking how much it would cost, but we finally got there and it's all been sorted out! Steve and I haven't done much, we unsuccessfully tried to buy Steve some more deodorant and have since been blogging away! We're off to dinner soon so we'd better get going!

We hope you're all well, still missing you all, but I think my bout of homesickness has subsided a little now!