With our cabin next to the diesel powered engine room we had no need for an alarm clock – we were already awake in any event. The weather was mostly unchanged from yesterday – the wind had calmed a little. After breakfast we set out to retrace some of the route from yesterday to be back at Ha Long by 11 followed by a quick lunch and another bus ride back to our hostel. Amazing how tired we get doing nothing at all – we both fell asleep on the bus, but only I woke to a pool of drool on my shirt 🙂 

The experience as a whole was good and at fair price ($45 exclusive of drinks). The food was average. Real pity about the weather as our photos will attest (compared to what you can see online).

Back in Hanoi we ended up in dorm bunks, our first since Russia, but they were perfect and the 8 bed room wasn’t full. Just a sweet 70+ little old lady and a quiet Irish couple. On a recommendation from the Australian hostel owner we popped out for a bite on the street just around the corner and enjoyed our best meal in Vietnam so far. Tasty, different and most importantly without consequences. Tomorrow we have a day to kill before catching the night bus to Hue and I suspect the vacuum of high speed Internet will suck us in for most of it.

On a sad note. We just watched the last ep of ‘The West Wing’. Finishing it always makes me sad, very sad 🙁 155 eps in 155 days on the road. Cool thing is we can always start it again but now that the new House is out we’ll be busy with that. Never a dull moment for my little iPhone !

[Pictures: heading home] 

– Posted from my iPhone via WiFi