My Girls and the Hmong Girls!

They made some real friends, and now, almost a month later, they're in touch by emails, and want to visit them and stay in their village of Cat Cat. What a rush, I'm so envious.

The Hotel Metropole Sofitel

Our last day in Vietnam. Hanoi. We decided to splurge and went to the Metropole, the grand dame leftover from the French colonial era. It's a great place, old world charm, and reminiscent of The Raffles in Singapore, Foreign Correspondents Club in Phnom Penh - Cambodia and an old Indian hill station like Ootacamund. We ate at The Spices, the food was exotic and terrific. Tia was tired and wanted to sleep, uh oh, but no problem, the maitré de joined two chairs, got a cushion and a brocade silk cover, and voilá - dinner uninterrupted.

Tia asleep at The Spices.

Ha Long Bay & Cat Ba Islands

The incredible Ha Long Bay is about 1800 sq. km area and has about 2000 towering limestone rock islands. According to legends, a gigantic dragon plunged into the Gulf Of Tonkin and created all the inlets and islands by lashing it's tail. Whatever, it's a real maze of bizarre shaped outcrops, small isolated sandy coves and caves. We stayed on the boat for a few days, visited the caves of Hang Dau Go ('Cave of Marvels' with strange shaped stalactites and stalagmites) and Hang Sung Sot ('Cave of Awe' with a famous phallus shaped rock!), went kayaking, exploring - (on one of the islands we took a long bicycle trip over a hill and past rice-fields and then a hike through a forest - classic logs crossing over streams, but we had enough when we got to a cave swarming with spiders and bats wooshing out! But the biggest fright were the mountain bikes we were riding - completely Heath Robinson-ish and held together by rust and forcing us to struggle over impossibly steep hills with gears that refused to shift and with tyres all soggy in the extreme heat, whew!) We'd have our boat also stop at the tiny beach coves where we'd have a great Viet meal and go swimming in the middle of this quite fantastic scenery of skyscraper-like islands surrounding us. Some of t was a lot of work (I thought it would be a leisurely boat ride, and I had visions of reading and writing some notes and lolling about on the deck - Ha!), but of course, we totally enjoyed all of it.






















































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