We are back in Edinburgh! I have just finished the first coat of dark wood stain on our bookshelves in a vague attempt to make the flat look more like our awesome hotel room in Hanoi. As Heather previously said the Internet was a bit non-existant on the last bit of our holiday hence I'm writing up the last few days in the office.

After my understandable slip up with flights and our accomodation in a muddy field, the traveling from Hue to Ha Long bay went very smoothly. We flew back to Hanoi and then hopped in a taxi for a 3 hour drive to Ha Long Bay. Heather has said I should be putting more facts in my posts, so here are some facts about Ha Long Bay:

1. It is the flagship tourist destination of Vietnam

2. Its name means "desending dragon bay" as it was formed by a dragon landing in the sea and thrashing around. Fact.

3. It covers an area of around 1,552 km squared including 1960 islets, most of which are limestone

4. If you do not believe the dragon story another theory is that it has been formed through a period of 500 million years of different weather conditions and environments.

5. It is home to 14 endemic floral species

6. And 60 endemic fanual species.

7. I saw a monkey on one of the rocks.

Enough facts, here is a photo:

This is basically the parking lot for the Surpise Cave. Once you get out into the bay you see very few other boats.

This photo is very similar to photos you will get if you google Ha Long bay, and although when I first saw photos like this i thought "we must go there it looks awesome" I also assumed that if the photgrapher were to turn 180 degrees on the spot that they would be presented with rows of highrise holiday hotels and postcard shops. I was wrong. Although there is a beachside town infested with nothing but hotels, restaurants and massage palours, the bay itself is a good 10 minute boat journey away. We stayed one night in a plush Novotel in the touristy bit ( the one thing I remember about this hotel is that in the mini bar they gave your full bottles of whisky, gin and vodka instead of the little one portion bottles) and then boarded an old-skool paddle steamer called the Emeraude for a 2 day cruise on the lake. I felt that I should have had a tux or at least a gun of some kind. Our cabin on the boat, although small, was just like a hotel, and we soon found ourselves sipping cocktails on the upper deck watching the incredible views float by. We seemed to be the only ones booked on the two day cruise and all the iternerary was set for the one day cruise. First stop after an hour or so of cruising was a cave called Surprise Cave. We were told to keep close to our tour guide as not to miss interesting facts about the cave. These interesting facts turned out to be the guide expressing his artistic interpretation of various rocks within the cave: "look that one, I think looks like a monkey, see that one over there? It looks like happy Buddha, and that one sleeping Buddha, and that one like Buddha riding a monkey". One rock was an anatomically accurate dpecition of a giant penis; of course when the group was asked what it looked like all the answers consisted of "a finger", "a baguette" and such like. The cave was huge and lit up with pretty lights but I cannot tell you anymore because I was too busy experiencing my brain melt at the idiocy of the guide.

After we had been ferried back to the main ship it was lunch, and it was a bufffet, my favourite kind of food. Next stop a floating village. I am always impressed with where humans decide to try and live. We were rowed around an entire village errected on floating barrells and polystyrene. There were dogs happily hopping across the bamboo rafts and happy kids swinging in hammocks on the verandas of floating huts. The villigars made their living from fishing and tourism. Any boat containing white people always had at least one parasite boat attached to the side flogging sea shells and Oreo cookies.

We first thought this was a local women having a sleep, but it transpired she was texting.

Our vessel.

Back to the boat for cocktails and more eating. In the evening on the deck we were introduced to Polich/German Alina, who was about our age and was to be our private guide for the next day. We drank cocktails together and went squid fishing off the back of the boat. We didn't catch anything but we did have a suicidal eal jump on to the boat and flap about a bit before falling back in.

It was an early start the next day, and after breakfast we jumped onto an older boat complete with junk type sails. We sailed (motored) away to a more remote bay. Twas awesome and we anchored 20m away from a glorious beach; Alina and I lumped in and swam to the beach. Although Ha Long Bay is a national park, this beach island was privately owned and Alina said we shouldn't stay too long so we swam back to the boat. When we got back a second boad had come along side ours and I welcomed an American family onboard in my sodden boxers (I forgot to pack swimming shorts).  With the American family we went to another small island to do a bit of rock climbing. Three climbs were set up of varying difficulty. The Tullys did themselves proud and not only did Heather and me make it to the top of the hardest climb but  Heather was the only person out of 7 to attempt and complete all three climbs, aren't we great? Yes. 

Awww.

Heather in action.

Quite proud of this one.

After a glorious lunch we waved good bye to our American family and went for a bit of kayaking in a different location, it didn't last long as kayaking is quite a bit of effort it would transpire. On our third stop we pulled up alongside a column of rock called the Polish pillar, the aim to climb up it and jump off. Previously it was thought that we would not be able to do this because we did not have the right shoes, but as luck would have it a guy had turned up with the same sized feet as me. Heather wisely opted out and I went up in a little boat to the base of the pillar and latched on to the side. The climb seemed straightforward but hopefully it looked impressive. The ledge that I was aiming for sloped up and I told myself to go to the highest point and jump off; when I got to the lowest point I realised it seemed pretty damn high but managed to edge up to the highest point. A countdown from the boat below forced my in to my jump, which started well but ended  up in an ass-plant and now my backside and thighs are a fetching shade of purple. Heather was having a swim when I hobbled back onto the boat and we motored off to await the Emeraude, and got back on board, feeling smuggly superior to the new batch of guests who had just come back from the informative tour of the surprise caves. In my opinion it was the best day of the honeymoon, and I would thoughly recommend Ha Long Bay.

Beginning the scramble

before ass-plant

after ass-plant

On our last evening on the boat we went to a cooking lesson which showed us how to make roses and swans out of tomoatoes, and  we then partook in more buffet food and cocktails. I spilt liquid parafin from one of the "keepy hot plates" across the buffet counter and flambéed (Heather made me put the accent in)  the napkins, but an excited chef came out of nowhere and flapped it all out with a teatowel. Crisis averted.

Oh yea.

Next morning we departed our vessel back on to the mainland and hopped in a taxi to Haiphong, a harbour city about two hours from Halong. When planning the honeymoon I had aimed to have Ha long bay be the last thing we did. Some of you, however, may know that I screwed the main flight dates up and booked them three weeks apart instead of 2, meaning we decided to have three weeks instead of two weeks of honeymoon. This was all good but it meant that I could not move our Ha Long Bay cruise right to the end of the holiday so I decided to go and see what Haiphong had to offer for two nights. Unfortunately the answer was "not much" and after just one night in our tired hotel we went back to our Hotel of Awesome in Hanoi for the last two nights.

We got the exact same room in the fancy hotel (our room used to be the Italian embassy) so it was really nice to start and end in the same place. Heather booked a cooking course where we were taken around a local market and then back to a kitchen to prepare some traditional Vietmanese dishes. The market had every part of a pig, cow or chicken you could wish to buy, including eggs from within a chicken before they had been laid (small, soft, yellow balls). We were shown some eggs with fully grown chicks inside them, I opted to try one of these and so one was bought and taken back to the kitchen. We were tought how to make pork belly in caramel sauce, a banana flower salad, and some deep fried spring roll thingy. I also got to eat my duck egg thing, which was very tasty, Heather had a bite too. The other couples who were also on the course with us were too jealous to try some. Some silkworms were also on the menu. We ate our creations in a restaurant above the kitchen and the meandered back to the hotel via getting lost and treated ourselves to a massage treatment in the spa.

My tasty duck snack.

Our creation, really tasty, but I've forgotten what it was.

We now come to our last day in Vienam. Our flight was in the evening, and we had one important thing to fit in on this day; the chocolate buffet. We worked up an appetite first and went for a stroll to a penthouse restaurant, the weather was the worst of the holiday and was a freezing 20 degrees and it kept on raining. I made Heather come around the Jail (Hanoi Hilton) with me as I thought it would make for a romantic end to the honeymoon.  After looking at Senator McCain's flight suit we went back to the hotel to partake in chocolate heaven, my stomach took this opportunity to start acting up but I forced on through and got in a good meal of flambéed chocolate pancake, chocolate fondue, truffles and cake. Heather had at least three times what I had.

And there we have it, the end of the Honeymoon, bar the night in the Seoul Airport hotel because of my awesome flight booking abilities. Things I will remember most are the pillow menu, the chocolate buffet and jumping off stuff, oh and Vietnamesey stuff too, I guess.