HALONG BAY:

Halong Bay, an accumulation of 3000 islands, is only about 120 km (75 miles) north-east of Hanoi but if you are in driving in Vietnam it takes you more than 3 hours (or maybe that was just our mini-bus driver, who always went 10 under the speed limit. We definitely met some really speedy drivers, which made you fear for your life!). Once again we could chose among a ton of tour companies offering 2- or 3-day trips to Halong Bay. Ours seemed pretty decent until we were about 45 minutes outside of Hanoi and the driver got a call, whereupon he started cussing and then turning around towards Hanoi. When we asked him why we were going back he answered that we were taking a different route. However, there was a Vietnamese couple on the bus who told us that we had forgotten 2 people. Two questions: why would you forget two people that were booked on your tour? Why would you turn around in order to pick them up, make everybody sit 1,5 hours longer in the bus instead of just sending the two forgotten people on another bus or on an inexpensive taxi? Understandably, everybody in the group was slightly annoyed. Just one thing you have to get used to when traveling in Vietnam...
In the end the delay was a good thing as we skipped the planned (according to Nathan: commission) stops on the way and got on the boat only 30 minutes delayed.
The 2-day trip was absolutely gorgeous. Obviously we had the first sunny day after 2 weeks of cold and fog. Our boat was pretty cool, the group of 13 people very nice and the scenery truly amazing. We visited a large cave, hiked up on top of one of the mountains (Dao Titop) in order to see the sunset, had a very nice dinner and slept on board. The second day was not as clear and sunny as the first one but we still got to cruise and see some more of the bay. Unfortunately the trip was over way too fast and we were back in Hanoi- taking the night-train to Sapa the same evening.