Hello all, been another jam packed however many days it has been since I last posted. The scuba diving ended well, I almost had my advanced open water scuba certification when I foolishly decided to not listen to the little voice in the back of my head (not the schizophrenic one, he just tells me to burn things) and eat the luke warm shrimp that came with my pad thai. After a long night of mastering how to both sit on a toilet and empty the contents of my stomach into the adjacent bathtub I did not feel up to diving 30m and tripping on nitrogen. I was able to do the solo navigation dive with Hack and Jeff and the night dive. I'm pretty proud of ourselves because we were able to do our dive and pop up within 20m of the boat! The night dive was incredible though, so many creatures you don't see in the day. Also there was phosphoresence in the water so if we turned of our flash lights and moved around a shimmering neon green glow would appear around us. For some reason it is far less frightening to be under water when it is completely dark rather than floating on the surface. When the flashlights were turned off and you were staring off into the abyss one wasn't afraid, more in awe of the apparent void that you were part of. I think it would be similar to what an astronaut must feel, yet less significant seeing how I wasn't staring at the Earth! Anyways it was cool to flash your light at a bait fish, and watching barracuda try and eat it. Saw a bunch of those cleaning shrimp from Finding Nemo and all I could think of was Wes's imitation of it.
We left Koh Toh after that and went back to Samui. Had a great day on a quieter beach. Just relaxed and played cards for most the day. The Koh Samui airport was incredible though and I wish I could have just stayed there. Free food, drink and WiFi, what more could a traveler want? That night we flew to Bangkok Airport, arriving at midnight with our connection to Hanoi being at 6am. We opted to sleep on the floor of the departures section. Not much sleep was had and as we got up to check in a rat went running by close to where we had been laying. Wish he could have come earlier because I really needed a pillow.
And just like that we are in Hanoi! Very different than the places we had been in Thailand. Fast paced and very crowded and muggy! A lot of smog was in the air too but you got used that after a while. Huge differences in the populace as well. Half being very well off and half being poor, our cabby compared it to the States, the irony was not lost on me. Very modern here though, seems like if you had money and wanted to do some clothes shopping this is the place for you. We went on the HaLong Bay trip with Hanoi Packpackers Hostel which was incredible! Went kayaking through the towering islands, threw caves that led you to secluded bays that were bordered by 500ft sheer walls of stone. As well we kayaked through some floating towns that even had banks! Unfortunately a monsoon had rolled in so it wasn't the nicest whether and we weren't able to go to the castaway island but the touring company recovered and booked us into a beautiful resort on Cat Baih Island where to start of the day we went for a "hike" to a viewing point at the top of a mountain. There must have been a translation error because this hike was more of a climb through wet clay and steep rockfaces. Many times I was pretty worried that I would not be coming down the mountain but we made it to the ancient rusted viewing tower at the top of the mountain and had a view that is pretty incomparable to anything I've ever seen. Very happy I did the hike. The trip ended with a party back at the resort and a return boat trip back to HaLong City and then bus to Hanoi. Also we met a group of girls that were Handsworth Alum 2005 and Argyle Alum 2007! Talk about small world, you travel half way around the world just to hang out with people you probably would have never even met back home. Anyways I hadn't gotten any sleep for the past 4 days due to snoring hostel mates, airport floors, and late nights in Halong followed by early mornings so when we got back to Hanoi we found a nice Hotel and slept for 12 hours. Cost 30 bucks for the room but we didn't care, I just wanted somewhere with a shower, nice bed, and cable and damn I was happy. We have a couple more days in Hanoi and then Cambodia so I shall have more stories on my next update.
Graeme
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