It may seem like an age since we lasted updated the site and, your right, it probably nearly is!

Sorry, we have all been enjoying the sun, having a great, great time and have gone into travelling lazy mode. However, since I am the resident journalist (no peace for the wicked, as they say!) I feel I have a duty to keep all you TripRoast addicts as up-to-date as I can possibly manage at this moment in time so here goes…

- We were due to leave Xi`an China on Thursday, July 6 but after a Pizza at the Hostel we were staying at took longer than expected to arrive, we missed our train. Nevertheless, no fear. We got new tickets, had a great night out at a Karaoke bar with 15 other cool people and, despite having to sit on the most uncomfortable chairs for the first 15 or so hours of our 36 hour train journey to Nanning (we eventually got beds!), it all turned out ok. We then got a bus from Nanning to Vietnam where we arrived three days after leaving China in the capital, Hanoi.

- Hanoi is great! The City is really vibrant, the people very friendly, the food, drinks and shops are cheap and the weather is hot, very hot. We arrived in Hanoi on Sunday, July 9 and stayed that evening and chilled on the Monday before leaving at 8 a.m. to get a bus and boat combination to Halong Bay. The boat took us to some great caves before a further boat took as to Paradise Island. Paradise is the word.

- On the Island we were four of 12 people. Yes, you read right, four of 12 people. We had en suite wooden beach huts which were great, if not very hot. The weather was near 45 degrees, the beach was great, the sea was nice and warm 24/7, the bar was very welcome, the food delightful, the people we met were awesome and, despite only initially booking for two nights, we stayed an extra night where Jamie, Jason and Jay stayed up the whole night along with a couple of others to watch the sun rise, swim in the sea at 3 a.m. (yes, the water was still like a bath at that hour!), before Jason and Jay did some trekking across the rocks at 6 a.m. Words cannot describe what fun we had and hopefully the photographic department of TripRoast will put some snaps up soon!

- We arrived back in Hanoi last Friday (two days ago) where we have been mostly chilling, with some light walking around the city and yet more drinking and chatting with some more really great people.

That brings you up-to-date, I think. I am sure I have left something out but then at least we will have some stories to tell when we come back to England.

What’s next. Who knows, we don’t yet. We may head north, yet it could also be south. We are far too relaxed to worry about all that at the moment.

Hope everyone is well.

Take care

Jay aka SugarDaddy

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 12:01 pm and is filed under On the move, SE Asia, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.