Halong Bay - A tale of two cockroaches

BOY do we have stories for you!!! Got into Hanoi on the plane from Laos around 8pm at night...trying to find a guesthouse in the dark and then a place to eat on a sunday is more difficult than we thought! Next day was pouring rain...and we spent most of it wandering from tourist office to tourist office trying to find some good tours to Halong Bay and Sapa for trekking. We managed to book at 3-day boat tour to Halong Bay, a 2-day Sapa trekking tour and an overnight bus to Hue (and then Hoi An) all in one day!! This meant not staying in a hotel for 5 nights out of 7...two nights in a hotel were included on our tours.

Halong Bay was absolutely STUNNING (see pic). Our tour consisted of 3 days, one night on a boat, one night in a hotel on Cat Ba island and then back to Hanoi. The boat was super cute...the food was a little too greasy and pretty much all sea food, but we managed!

ANYWAY, day 1 we spent sailing to these superb caves with stalactites and stalagmites (see 1st pic), then to a beach..sort of...for swimming, and then found our anchor spot for the night. You might be wondering what this cockroach business is about..LT does NOT like cockroaches. At all. We're in our teeny room (see pic)...sleeping away, and LT feels something on her shoulder, in her BED..and rolls over to squish it...a little freaked. Gets up to turn on the bathroom light to see what it was (meanwhile LH still sound alseep, totally unconscious to the world)....and sees the smear of some cockroach on her pillow, but no cockroach. EW. There it is! Crawling up the wall! Hides in the curtains for alittle, then falls onto LH's legs and starts crawling on her bed. LT will NOT have it crawl on her shoulder too, so she grabs a flip flop and SMACKS LH in the leg. LT -"sorry sorry sorry..."LH - "it's ok...um..yeah...no prob..." (still half asleep). LH gets up to stand up...LT - "um yeah you might wanna keep your feet on the bed...cause there's a cockroach..", LH - "ok, sure...yeah.."...we look down and it starts CRAWLING towards the bathroom!! It flips on it's back...bound to be almost dead..and another smaller one crawls out from under LH's bag. So...LT squealing on her knees on her bed...LH - "ok, it's ok, we'll just cover them with a cup"...LT - "UM NO WE WON'T....they have to be dead"..LH - "well I can't kill them..." LT - "k, give me the flip flop..." and that is how LT killed her first 2 cockroaches :) In a tiny teeny room, on a boat in the middle of the ocean off the coast of vietnam! Took her awhile to fall back asleep and a few night's recovery, but the hotel in Cat Ba island was beautiful..and clean..and cockroach free (see pic)!! The rest really isn't that exciting...next day we got to bike, trek and kayak, which was awesome. Weather turned out for us, although we woke up to pouring rain again. Luckily the day we left rained all day, and all we did was see a floating village (see pic), head back to Halong and eat, and then drive back to Hanoi! We're going to post as many pics as we can with this because it's sensational and we loved it :) Well worth the cockroach scare!

On to Sapa!!

Love L and L