BFFs in Hanoi - day 2, Halong Bay

Staying in a beautiful 5-star hotel, the facilities are top notch. I set my alarm an hour ahead of the girls' wake-up hour and I was excited to use the gym facilities on this morning.

Short but swift 2.4km run

It was lovely and familiar breaking into sweat. Loving the facilities that support my lifestyle. Sadly (despite my intentions), that was the only time I  hit the gym this trip.
After the 45min workout (run + weights/conditioning work), I returned to the room and the girls were lazily awake. We were scheduled for a day tour to Halong Bay today.

Hotel breakfast

The ride to get to the Bay was loooooong. It took us 4 hours, including 1 pitstore to go one-way. ONE! WAY! It was rough. The girls and I chit-chatted the whole way... how awesome was that. Haha #talkativemuch It was nice to just chat about random things and nothing/something/anything at all... going through our past lives... we have known each other since day 1 of high school and this year marks the 24th year of our friendship. Woot. By the 3rd hour, I was getting antsy. I was seriously going to cramp up into a fit. I didn't, and we arrived. Yay! 

Tickets

One on the pier

Heading to our boat

Can you see the boat name? Ha-Tanh 18

Lunch served on-board

There's some regulation that no one was allowed to be on the external deck when near the pier (safety reasons, probably) so once we had the opportunity post lunch, the girls and I headed to the upper deck. It was cool, sunny and breezy - perfect!

We celebrate the same birthday, on the 18th so it
warranted a pic with the number. Ha!

Bay view

Walking up flights of stairs to venture a cave

Bay

Canoeing. (Not us)

Hanging at the local 'cafe' (it was a shack)

Besides the bat cave trek, we opted out from any form of activity. The canoeing or the bamboo boat ride into the bay caves. Instead, we had beer and mango at the tiny shack that monopolised the business for all stopovers.


A highlight was probably me, not embarrassing myself to death by falling over when I attempted a headstand.

TADAH!

The whole day tour was quite simple, and it was mostly relaxing. A lot of sitting around and enjoying time pass.

I went to Halong Bay.

The whole tour ended with us heading back the way we came, and the ride back to Hanoi City was painful. I managed a 1hour nap (post beer snooze) and became increasingly cranky as dinner time came and passed. It was 8.30pm when we got back to the city and at the first chance we got, we asked to alight at the Old Quarters.


We walked along the streets and chanced into their night markets (ala pasar malam) and the walking did wonders to my cramped legs. We also dove right into street snacks the moment we saw them! We were starving.

Street eats

Busy Friday evening

We did a spot of shopping, stopped at a random restaurant and had another round of beers and street snacks, squat-style seated. Considering that we started dinner past 9pm, it was midnight by the time we were done. We strolled the lovely streets back to the hotel... and you'd have thought the streets to be dead quiet. Nope! There were people strolling around the riversides esp since there was road closure (Fri-Sun), and shockingly, a group of youths playing sports. How random.

Playing some form of sepak tekraw

Strolling the roads of Hanoi past midnight

By this time, I had developed a mild sore throat and was all ready to hit the sack. And that's exactly what I did. Snooze.


Read about day 1 here.