We had a lot of fun in northern Vietnam!

From Hue, we headed up by overnight train to Ninh Binh, a small city about 120 kilometers from Hanoi. We decided to take a night train instead of the cheaper tourist bus because we wanted an experience and we were tired of travelling on the tourist bus, which is designed to just take travellers from one guest house to another, with little local flavor...The night train was an experience, we could only get a soft seat, which is a sit up, cushion seat for the overnight. So, literally, we sat up all night! Which, actually wasn't so bad, because as Matt said, at least you can walk around on the train. It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't super comfortable. There was air conditioning and only a few people smoked. When we got to Ninh Binh at 8:30 in the morning, we were greeted by a few dozen touts asking us to choose their hotel. We picked one and headed off by motorbike through the town.

We asked the guest house that we stayed in to hire a local driver to take us to the Cuc Phong National Park, home of a primate center and some good hiking trails. On the way to the Park, the driver stopped at a local market for us, we were quite the attraction! Here's a photo taken from the backseat of the car, illustrating the width of the road and the number of people on either side of the road. The primate center was cool, gibbons and lemurs in large cages swinging around and chatting with each other. We walked around the Park and saw a Prehistoric Man Cave.

On the way back to Ninh Binh, the driver took us through a
pineapple plantation, where we ate pineapple
fresh off the plant. It was warm from the sun and so good and juicy!

Back in Ninh Binh, we picked up a small tourist bus to Hanoi. In Hanoi, we set up two tours, one to Sapa and one to Halong Bay. We used Handspan Tours, expensive, but worth it! We left Hanoi on another night train, this time in a sleeper car with two other travellers, to Lao Cai near the China/Vietnam border, where we boarded a mini bus to Sapa. Sapa is a hill town which is often used as a base for trekking to the nearby minority villages. We trekked for the first day through one small village, home to Black Hmong people, who were the best marketers this side of the Mekong! They were big on selling crafts to us as we walked through their village and terraced
rice paddies. Our small group was usually outnumbered by children in traditional (somewhat) dress, asking us our name, where we were from, what we wanted to buy..... the girls sold purses, bracelets and blankets. One of their trades is to make hemp cloth and dye it naturally with indigo. The women we saw on the trail all had hands dyed blue. A woman who was not any larger than I took my hand and volunteered to make sure I didn't fall down the narrow trail. In some sort of pantomime, I understood she had several children and grandchildren. She looked about 60 to me, but she was only around 40 according to her. The trail was surrounded by small villages, thatched roof huts, water buffalo, and small children running around. We also walked through a small bamboo forest. The scenery was beautiful. Toward the end of the day, we arrived at our homestay, a simple house with an outhouse outside over the stream. The home we stayed in was in the village of another minority group, the Xai people, who did not wear traditional clothing, and did not sell crafts. Here is the wife of the house preparing rice. They spent the night watching television from a satellite feed while the six of us travellers sat around and talked. We slept on small cots in the attic of the house. We were awakened by geese walking to the stream.

The next day we toured another two villages, and back to the main road to pick up a jeep which would take us back to Sapa for a shower and another night train back to Hanoi.

We arrived in Hanoi early in the morning and had a few hours to hang around before picking up a minibus for our next tour to Halong Bay. Halong Bay is a World Heritage Natural Site, a series of huge limestone cliffs and islands set in the Bay. It was beautiful.

We
got on a boat in Halong City, which we would sleep on and have our meals on. It was all wood
and very nice and comfortable. We went swimming off of the boat and I got a crab in my bathing suit top, which caused some flashing to the rest of the guests...!

We saw the sunset
and had a great dinner on the boat. The next day, we woke up disembarked at a small beach where we picked up our kayaks and spent the day kayaking around the islands. It was tough to paddle the boat, but it was beautiful and a fun way to get around in the sea! Toward the end of the day, each couple paddled to their own small beach and hung out for awhile before heading back to basecamp
for dinner and a night in the little huts on the beach.

It was a wonderful trip, both the scenery and the company were awesome! The next morning, we picked up the big boat again for a ride back to Halong City and sadly, back to Hanoi. We all agreed we could have spent another day on the beach and the kayaks.

We've got one more full day in Hanoi to sightsee before we catch a plane back to Bangkok.