Hej again. We are all safe back from our excursion to Ha Long Bay at the north east coast Vietnam. After an over 3 and a half hour breath taking bus drive through the Vietnamese countryside, we finally arrived in the city of Ha Long Bay where our guide; Wang, managed to take us to our boat. Ha Long is Vietnamese mass tourism pur, and group after group of visitors are stuffed onto the more than 400 cruiseships, like cattle to the slaughterhouse.
Well, it was not so bad as it sounds; yet. The boats are all relatively small and not huge floating hotels for hundreds of passengers, on our boat we were about 24, and it was seen as one of the biggest. The boats are all made of wood and are still kind of cute and cosy. Our cabins were quite spacious and clean. Our room -03- was right underneath the dining and karaoke area so we were serenaded to sleep by Malaysian drunkards tunelessly singing heartfelt love songs and we were awoken by the pleasant sound of the resident boat rats gnawing away at the wooden walls. Ok we took off from the habor and sat course to the more than 1900 limestone islands or rock formations which is the attraction of Ha Long Bay, and which we were going to explore on this 2 days one night trip, were we had meals, a visit to the biggest cave in north Vietnam, kayaking and the joy of being in nature. 
We went kayaking for about an hour in the sea around those limestone rocks. It took some of us a little while to get used to the paddle and I had water running down my arms and straight onto my lap at first, until Jorgen advised me to hold the paddle further out and then we were a sychronised rowing machine gliding away through the water!!!
The food on board was really nice seafood/vietnamese cuisine and kitchen staff really impressed everybody with their creativity serving prawns in a boquet of freshly cut veggies. Look at!!
Now we will go out and celebrate new year.
I've got myself a nice Vietnamese haircut at a little very friendly hairdresser here in Julias neigborhood. It was including head and shoulder massage, so now I feel very relaxed and right now I am watching Chelsea vs. Newcastle live with Vietnamese comments. This picture is taken before my haircut, I felt sorry for the guy because he seemed a bit stoned. There is new photos in the Hanoi album.
Here you see Julia and Catriona in front of the place where he is put to rest. As you can see, there is absolutely no mopeds and scooters allowed infront of this building, because it would have made to much noise, a cousin of him is to blame, he in fact invented a horn to put on the moped while nobody ever bothered to think about putting brakes on those things.
This ofcourse; you can read about later. I just want you to look at the background of our friendly salesman, then you know where the painter Neo Rauch got his inspiration
We have 3 million something money in 100.000 notes and what a funny feeling to run around with that amount of money in your pockets.
Two latte's cost us 75,000, a taxi into town was 44,000, beef noodles for 2 and a beer cost us 74,000 and Jorgen bought 2 Vietnam caps for 40,000 from a very persistent little woman who followed us all around Hanoi gradually dropping her asking price from 60,000!!
Not only the money has some big numbers, also the numbers of mopeds on the streets is enormous and for an european who is used to ordnung, rules and well organized traffic, this experience is overwhelming, and it reminds me about the traffic in Cairo. Everything goes, just don't stop, keep moving and always expect something infront of you going in any direction. And very important; always use your horn. It is absolutely facinating to see how the traffic just flows in one onwards going movement, in and out and in all directions at the time. 
Mopeds and bicycles are everywhere around you and the locals use these to transport some times up to 4 persons or big loads of duvets, baskets, huge water containers and animals. It is terrifying to cross the road or even just to be a passenger in a small car. At any moment you feel as if it could be your last! I have watched what Hanoi pedestrians do and some of them walk slowly holding one hand in the air, others run. We were given one useful tip today and that was just to keep walking because the traffic will surely swerve to avoid the pedestrians!!! It was good advice, nothing hit us and we crossed the road several times.Another very cool thing about Hanoi is the power lines. Like thick black licquorice in tangled knots. Those black strips that look as if they are on the road on the photo above are some of the more organised looking power lines we saw today.
There are lots of shops selling original and copied art work, chopsticks, lacquered bowls,teapots, shawls, silk clothes, t-shirts, little magnetic dolls.... Then there are the many street vendors with fresh bananas, durian, mangoes, avocados, oranges. Everyone wants to sell you something or rent you a moped!!
So we flew in to Hanoi late last night and after a hair raising 40 minute taxi drive and a short trek through a building site we were relieved to hear Julia say we had arrived at her house!
What a great place, beer, wine,champagne, chocolate biscuits, crisps, nuts AND a xmas tree with fairy lights.
Santa Claus even managed to find us here...how did he know?? We found two little gift filled stockings at the foot of our bed early this morning. 
Ok, so some of the champagne they brought with them, also the choccie biscuits, and my tree is plastic! The stocking filling was from my shopping trip to Bangkok last week.
We got to work on Christmas dinner.........Julia was the vegetable peeler, prawn cocktail and trifle maker. Prawn cocktail as a starter is a time honoured Christmas day tradition in the Hatch family. The starter is famous for its special cayenne pepper seasoning from the ancient Hatch heirloom pepper tin....unfortunately we did not have this special ingredient but the prawn cocktail still tasted magnificent. 
Jorgen was in charge of stuffing and gravy and I was the chicken seasoner, bread crumb maker, roast potato chef and champagne bottle opener. We really got into the Xmas spirit with our festive head gear and Julia's Christmas cd.
What a team we were, we even found time to go on a short tour of the local area while the chicken and potatoes roasted. A few people found Jorgens fluffy blue antlers funny but the great thing about the Danish is that they just don't give a toss! 
Todays TrakTOOR is a motorcycle, and we found it in the neigbor hood of Julias house in a backyard.
In the next day's we wil continue our reports from Hanoi and Vietnam where we will stay untill after new year, don't miss it everyday on your own computer.
