Elentok's Blog

Today we climbed five freakin' jungle-mountains (a huge jungle that has grawn over a mountain), it took us six hours (14km of rocky terrain), it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. It was a really boring trek, for six hours I just looked at the rocks under me trying not fall. I am happy to say that I explored the jungles of Nam (long live Rambo!!) and survived, and it's nice to know that I can do it, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why some people find in treks? what's so much fun in swimming in your own sweat for hours on hours?

Oh, and the jungle was full of weird, creepy insects, and you have to be careful everywhere you touch not to get bitten by some creature (oh, there were also some snakes). There were tons of flying cockroach-like creatures called "Sikada" (don't know if I'm spelling it right) that made noises that made the jungle sound like a very busy sawmill).

After breakfast we were picked up by the group tour bus and drove for about 3 hours to Halong Bay (during which talked to a nice Englishman who told us about his trip to China).

When we got to Halong Bay we went on a four hour cruise to Cat-Ba island (I was asleep for about three of them due to the motion sickness pill), the view is absolutely amazing, thousands of giant mountains.

After the cruise we reached the hotel, where we tried to do our laundry by ourself (the hotel wanted around 30$ for it). Since it was so darn moist, everything stayed wet and we had to use a hair drier to dry them.

Some photos:

Huan Kiem lake:

We're back in Hanoi (after taking the night train), we went to see the flower market and Hoan Kiem lake where we saw hundreds of people (mostly old people) doing morning workouts (walking, running, taichi, etc...)

Now we're back at the hotel and in about an hour we leave for Halong Bay.

This morning we ate breakfast (cooked by our guide)

Now we're back at the hotel, in a few minutes we'll head back out to visit some of the other villages in the area, and in the evening we will take the night train back to Hanoi.

Last night we went to sleep while the entire city (Sapa) was inside a giant cloud, it was quite extraordinary.

This morning we woke up to the sounds of rain, and since the plan was to walk through some of the villages, we postponed it and slept for a few more hours until the weather got better.

After lunch we trekked to see the Lao-Chai and Ta-Van village, very beautiful places. We met some of the local people (Black H'Mong, Dzay, etc..).

The night train was an interesting experience, we met a nice vietnamese couple which showed us videos of a cambodian wedding (the husband's sister).

We managed to get some sleep and woke up to see an amazing view, green trees and mountains as far as the eyes can see.

We were picked up at the train station, and after eating breakfast we went to the Bac-Ha market, the drive there was extremely curved and annoying.

Today, we went on a guided tour to Tam-Coc (which means "three caves"). At first there were supposed to be 16 people in the tour, but in the end we were only four.

Our guide for the day, ngoc, picked us up at the hotel and we began driving to Tam-Coc. It was about 2 hours of very bumpy roads (I've noticed they really like to honk around here). We made a short stop to see the temple of the first king of Vietnam.

It's now morning, we're in the Hong Ngoc hotel in Hanoi, waiting to be picked up for a tour of Tam Cuc.

Last night, after about 12 hours of flight we reached Hanoi. We met with Dong from the , the travel agent who arranged this trip for us. So far, everyone here were very nice.

While waiting to board the plane we looked around the Duty Free, and I have to say that the prices aren't as low as I thought (and why do we need 50 Hstern and Michal Nagarin stores for??).

However, I did get a chance to play with the laptop I want to buy (Dell D630) and it's an awsom laptop.

ok, we gotta board now, bye.

(By the way, i'm posting this from my iPaq)

In a few minutes I'm gonna head out to the airport for my 3 week Vietnam trip, I downloaded some articles I never had time to read (ADO.NET Entity Framework, ActiveRecord, Run-as-not-admin, and other stuff), and hopefully they will help me pass the ~14 hours of flight.