(Sept 27) - This morning we actually woke up in time for tai chi! It was pretty cool to be on the sun deck of the boat for sunrise and practicing some tai chi, all while surrounded by limestone mountains and water.

View from one of the lookout points in the cave.

We grabbed another buffet breakfast and then headed out for our last bay adventure, The Surprise Cave (Sung Sot). This cave is one of the seven natural wonders of the world. It is huge and took us about 45 minutes to walk through and take photos. There were a lot of people there since it is the main tourist site in ha long bay but the site is not to be missed even if it is busy.

After the cave we boated back to the big boat for checkout and lunch. Once we wrapped all of that up we headed back to shore to catch our 3.5 hour van ride home. Continuing our streak of good timing with rain, it rained on the drive home but stopped as soon as we reached Hanoi when we had to get out.

We had the driver drop us off at the Temple of Literature in the middle of Hanoi. We spent a couple of hours here just exploring the grounds and killing some time before we had dinner with Sam, Jon (now back from his trip), and Sari. We ate at Koto which is a not for profit restaurant who trains street kids to cook and serve in a restaurant. The meal was great!

After dinner they walked us to the train station so that we could catch the night train to Sapa. We leave at 950pm and it is an 8 hour train ride from there. Thank goodness we have a soft sleeper car, now we just need to see how long the beds are!

Night Train

Dan Golembeski