Hanoi and Ha Long Bay.

Welcome to Hanoi, Vietnam! 

The city of bikes and scooters. Women still wear those straw hats and sell their goods from baskets that they carry around. We loved the hustle of the city, but did not love the constant "in your face" attitude. I cant count the number of times a shoe cleaner came up to Andrew, and, using his nails, starts pulling his shoe apart! Andrew would shake him off, but he just kept at it! 

But, even with that, Vietnam is great! 

Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) is a staple here!

Selling sugar cane! 

Its beginning to look a lot like christmas! 

At the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum. I accidentally walked where I wasn't allowed. And got yelled at in vietnamese. Oops!

The local hair dressers! 

Around town...

Bikes everywhere! Apparently there are 8 million people in Hanoi and 4 million motorcycles! 

I found a store full of journals! It was amazing, I could have stayed in there all day! 

This man has a sugarcane juice stand. We sat with him and had a "conversation" which included no english! Thats one of my favorite things about travelling! We "talked" about his family, our family and Andrews hairy arms! He even lifted up my pants to see if I had hair on my legs! (For the record, yes I did!) He was about 4'9" tall! 

He asked both of us for a picture. Before he took one with me, he gently pushed my bangs out of my face and asked Andrew if he could put his arm around me! Precious! 

We had BBQ beef for dinner. You get a plate of raw beef and veggies, then cook them on the littl stovetop on your table. It was delicious! 

We took a 4 hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. The bay is filled with thousands (1961 to be exact) of limestone isles. The bay is about 1,553 km square! In other words, its huge! We spent 2 days exploring and hardly touched the surface. 

This was our home for 2 days. We were pleasantly surprised by the quality of food and our room! 

Always happy to be together. 

Our awesome room! Life is good! 

What a view! 

It was fairly cloudy, but that just made the place look more majestic! 

Adorable floating homes!

We got to explore some caves, which was pretty neat! The lighting was pretty bad in there tough, so this is the best photo we got of us in there! 

However, after a walk up, the view was amazing! 

We went kayaking around the bay! 

After dinner, we did some fishing! Well, squiding. (Pretty sure thats not a word) 

We (with the help of a crew member) finally got a squid! He was 3 inches long, so not exactly impressive! My favourite part was that he inked when we caught him! So cute! 

The view from our room. Early morning mist. 

We had a wonderful time in Ha Long Bay! Its such a stunning place, pictures really don't do it justice!