Working every evening last week wasn't actually too bad in the end. I've got a couple of new classes this term as well as the evening class from last term. My afternoon class consists of 15 boys and only one girl but thankfully there are a few older guys in the class who keep the rest in line and they're not too boisterous for me.

I went out on Friday night after work again and yet again I succumbed to peer pressure and stayed out a lot later than I intended. This was a bad idea as I had to get up early yesterday morning to go to Halong Bay. It was quite a hideous journey out there on a cramped mini bus with an incredibly enthusiastic tour guide. We also had to stop at a random tourist rip off store on the way where they were charging ridiculous prices for things. I tried to sleep on the bus but it was uncomfortable, plus Vietnamese driving doesn't exactly ease you to sleep. I saw so much retarded driving yesterday, some of it courtesy of our driver. The stupidest thing of all is the way drivers overtake on a blind bend or when there is something coming the other way. They go at such speed that the only option is to pray that there is space for all 3 vehicles on the road otherwise someone is going off the road or crashing into someone else.

It was worth enduring the journey though as Halong Bay was really nice.



We headed out on the boat into the bay and stopped at one of the floating village places. People spend their whole lives living out on the water and never set foot on land. Weird. They are all set up with satellite dishes though!




We then got back on the boat and had lunch - lots of sea food, some rice and noodles and some chips (?)- and then had a choice between going in a boat around the village and caves with a guide or hiring a kayak and exploring by ourselves. We opted for the kayak and paddled though a cave into a lagoon place. It was good fun.



After that the boat sailed around for a bit more...




...then we visited a bizarre cave system. It looks man-made but is all down to nature. It has been fitted out with lots of coloured lights and looks pretty cool in a weird sort of way.



We walked through the cave system with a billion tour groups full of Asians who kept holding evyone up to get a photo. If you visit a popular tourist place back home you fully expect to have random people in your photos. Apprently that isn't acceptable to Asian tourists though so instead everyone else has to clear out of the way and wait for them to get their photo without any randoms in it. This gets annoying after a while!

The cave was the last stop of the day so we got back on the boat and sailed back to the mainland for another ling bus ride to get back to Hanoi. It's even more ridiculous at night. All the lorries and buses seem to have souped up their full beam headlights to even fuller beam lights and leave them on their brightest setting the entire time they are on the road, blinding everyone else. There were also a good few motorbikes going along with no lights whatsoever so you can't see then until you're practically driving into the back of them. They also drive the wrong way along the highway with no lights on and swerve out of the way at the last minute. This is just stupidly pointless - its not a one way street, theres no central reservation to get across, just one lane either way so why not drive on the correct side of the road?!? They also keep up their deadly overtaking craziness after dark. We did pass a pretty bad motorbike accident on the way. There were two incredibly mangled bikes in the middle of the road along with a big pool of blood and some police officers with tape measures recording distances between various parts of motorbike. I sincerely hope that any Vietnamese people who head to places like England aren't allowed to get behind the wheel of any vehicle at all as based on what I saw yesterday they would dramatically increase the accident rates. They just do so many ridiculous things that aren't necessary. I see it in Hanoi too - people will go through a red light and cut across the flow of the traffic just to save 30 seconds on their journey, and if they are approaching a set of lights just as they are about to turn green they won't sit patiently at the back of all the waiting traffic. Instead they cross the middle of the road and drive down to the lights on the wrong side of the road to be the first through when the lights change, even if this means driving into the path of an oncoming bus. Why would anyone think driving like this is a good idea?!?!?!?!?!?!?! Why risj your life to get to you destination a few minutes quicker? This stupid driving along with blaring horns and a bumpy ride meant that I didn't sleep on the way back to Hanoi either. After only 3 hours sleep the night before this wasn't good! And yet despite being exhausted I went along to a party down the road on a random person's roof terrace for a bit last night before finally giving in and going to bed. There were some cool people there but I just couldn't stay awake any longer.

I also had to get up at 6am this morning to escort Zoe to the bus stop so she could get out to the airport for her flight to Thailand. I would've had to get up anyway due to the fact we have several locks between us and the street and so there is no way to get out of the house and lock it up again without a set of keys. As Zoe was leaving Vietnam for good she couldn't exactly take a set of keys with her and so I had to get up to unlock everything anyway so decided to go to the bus with her. There was a market in full swing just down the road on the way and I got to see the wonderful sight of a chicken being killed and sliced up for a customer. What more could you hope to see at 6am?!

This afternoon Alison let me have a ride of her bike as I think I'm gonna try and get myself a motorbike soon. Once I'm sorted with a bike I'm going to be driving like a granny rather than a local and I'll use my Western driving skills such as stopping at red lights, looking both ways before pulling out across a road and using my mirrors to reduce my chance of having an accident. That still doesn't stop me being caught up in other peoples stupidity but I'm gonna be hyper aware of other people around me so that hopefully I'll avoid any dodgy situations. I only rode Alison's bike up and down an access road that was fairly empty but it was good to get a feel for how a bike works. I'm going to cycle around Hanoi a bit to try and get a bit More of an understanding of how the traffic works before doing much more with a motorbike as I don't even have to think about what I'm doing on a cycle so I can devote all my attention to working out what to do on the road. Then I'll rent a bike for a bit and see how that goes. Fingers crossed it doesn't kill me!