Power cut

So am busy minding my own business and then whamo all the power goes off. No big deal BUT then we couldn't cook lunch so had to wander around for somewhere and as it was 2pm no one had any food left sooo it was a bit of an issue. I took some photos of the engineers repairing the lines though so look for those in a couple days ;-).

Halong Bay was pretty sweet, very beautiful and all that jazz (see photos on the link above left) and had lotsa fun there. Some standard annoyances of going on an organised tour though which include not being able to see more stuff you want-- for example from the main pier you get a ticket that lets you into 8 or so caves and grottoes but we went to only one (admittedly the largest, most famous, and allegedly the most beautiful but I'd like to decide myself which is the most beautiful instead of being told this is the best one and take my word for it).

Also on the third day we could have gone round to more caves or at least swam around and done stuff but instead we basically went straight back to the pier to get back to Hanoi, which, while getting us into Hanoi by 16.30 it denied us more time in Halong Bay. Sooo will try to look for alternatives to other things for future excursions! Its tough though because even if you do get someone to drive you to Halong Bay you're kind of at the mercy of the boats when you arrive in terms of finding one to take you to the cool spots, etc. and you're not going to turn around after the 3 hour drive if everyone colludes at a certain price (likely higher than what a normal tour would cost from Hanoi where collusion isn't possible since the tour operators are so spread out and competition is nurtured). Sooo!! Its kind of annoying.

We met some cool people including a couple of Californians, Angie and Paul, who had come from HK and were on their way to Singapore going overland from Chiang Mai in Thailand.

Monday morning we're getting up bright and early to catch a flight to Danang, Vietnam's fourth biggest city, which is just next to Hoi An, a former trading town-come super tourist attraction which is meant to be beautiful and is another one of Vietnam's UNESCO World Heritage sites, so that should be fun.

Today we had our third Vietnamese lesson, this time with a different teacher, and she was quite good, we learned about the family, personal pronouns, etc. She apparently taught Russian for 30 years, pretty cool. In a couple weeks apparently our good friends Bush, Putin, and Hu Jintao, et al are coming to town for an APEC summit meeting, it'd be good to see how the old boys are doing we have some catching up to do.

Caro's busy preparing for her L'Oreal phone interview tonight so she's being a bit boring. But anyway we gotta get over to school to teach! Will try to post more often