Vietnam Craziness

It has been an interesting past few days in the capital city of Hanoi. It started out with our trip to Halong Bay. Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and it is not to be missed during your lifetime. In fact, I can't wait to go back. It is a bay that is filled with over 3000 Karst (limestone) formations that rise straight up out of the water. As a result, it is like going through a maze of islands, and tunnels! We visited one tunnel that was over 10000 square meters, and just kept getting bigger and bigger. We were able to kayak on the bay, and I went for a swim at 5:30am in the middle of the bay while it was completely calm and the sun was rising. Simply incredible! We slept on the boat for that one night.

We returned to Hanoi later in the day on Sunday and went to the famous Water Puppet Show. It was interesting, but nothing to write home about. Then the craziness started.

We were eating dinner at 9:30pm or so when all of a sudden we heard a tremendous number of people honking and shouting, and waving the Vietnam flag. Well, that didn't stop for the following 4 hours! Vietnam beat the UAE team in the AFC Asian Cup which just happened to be played in Hanoi that night. Their victory meant that they were now able to enter international competetion freely for the first time in their history. The players lead the group of 1000s of motor bikes, and they just kept going around the central lake in the city for four hours, and there was a massive party.

Unfortunately, the next day, we hit our first snafoo of the trip. We arrived at the airport to find that our flight to Laos had been cancelled due to technical difficulties. So, they put us up at a 4 star resort hotel, right on a lake, with a beautiful pool. The covered all of out meals, and handed us a $50 bill! RIDICULOUS. They treated us 10 times better than any US airline would. But, we did have to waste a day in Hanoi, and our trip to Laos has been cut down to only 48 hours. Bummer. So, we leave in one more hour to head to the airport.