Our trip to Halong Bay was pretty much what we needed: a break from the heat and exhaustion of Hanoi, a chance to get out of the city and get some fresh air, and, unfortunately, a chance to experience a night without air conditioning or a fan. We headed out of Hanoi Tuesday morning, riding in a minibus to Halong City, where we embarked on our rather luxurious boat. We had a delicious lunch (they were even able to cater to vegetarians, although the fake shrimp really tasted like plastic--the rest of the food was great) before heading out through the bay to the "Surprise Cave", a pretty hokey but still impressive cave with stalactites and stalagmites (our poor Vietnamese guide! having to pronounce such words was not easy for Han) all over. Afterwards, we looked forward to swimming on a lovely white beach, thinking how refreshing the water would be. It was and it wasn't. Have you ever gotten into the ocean, thinking how lovely the cool water will feel on your skin, then realized that the ocean is as warm as the air? This was our surprise. The ocean was at least 30 Celsius, maybe more! I have never swum in warmer water, and this includes years spent in California and bathing on various sides of the Mediterranean! Still, it was nice just to float, and we also jumped off the roof of the boat (4-5 meters high) straight into the water.

When we checked into our boat room, we were pleasantly surprised to find it beautifully appointed with A/C, en-suite bathroom and shower!, a pristine double bed, and wood panelling everywhere. Another delicious dinner was served us by attentive boat staff, before we lay on the roof on deck chairs watching the lightning over distant mountains and the sky right ahead and then retired to our cabin. It was lovely, much nicer than we could have expected.

The next day, we breakfasted on the boat and then transferred to a smaller boat for our trip on to Cat Ba Island. We swam some more, this time in an area with a bit of a current so the water was slightly cooler. We also had the chance to kayak for an hour or so, although it didn't seem to be a very serious activity. We still managed to sneak off the long way, but the tops of my thighs ended up a bit pinker than I like! Another lovely lunch, before we continued to Monkey Island, where I saw monkeys in the wild for the first time! One with a baby on its chest even stole a juice box! Awesome. We swam off the boat and the beach (getting the theme here?) and then finally arrived on Cat Ba, to check into our supposed three-star hotel. (By now we had discovered that the $80 trip that we took, less than half the price of the trip we had originally enquired about, was not the dirt cheap budget option but supposedly the VIP trip! It was lucky that we didn't know, as we were generally more satisfied with the trip than anyone else.) Looking forward to some A/C and television, we went to our 12th floor room with balcony, one of the nicest rooms in the hotel, only to find that while the lights work, the TV and A/C won't turn on. We call the reception, which informs us that the electricity isn't turned on in the island until 6pm. No problem, we think, it's 5:20--we'll wait. At ten past six we decide to head out for a jog while we wait for electricity, thinking that the chance to jog outside Hanoi is too good to pass up. The harbor front is less trafficked than the city, and somewhat cooler, but a slow 25 minutes still left us dripping with sweat. We go upstairs for a refreshing shower, which is the point where we realize a) there is no electricity; b) the water in the shower is salt water. So rinsing off the salt just isn't working.

At this point, our travel patience is being tried. We call down again to find that the electricity on the whole island is out, minus what comes from generators, which is not enough to power any cooling mechanism. We go down for dinner--again, the food is pretty good--and our guide shows up a half-hour late having been begging the electricity company to please get us A/C! But nothing can be done. We go down the street to find some ice cream and watch the Saudi-Korea game somewhere with a generator powering the TV. Dreading bed, we finally go to the room and take travel sickness pills to try to get sleepier, having run out of regular sleeping pills. (Shared, they have gotten us through some dodgy nights indeed!) It is impossible for me to really sleep until I lie down naked on the balcony--while it's stone, so not exactly soft, there is a cooling breeze that gets me four-five hours of restless sleep while B sprawls inside. A pretty unpleasant night, especially when followed by a refreshing salt-water shower, a rushed breakfast, and a half-hour wait in the dock until another travel group that had been waiting with us in the hotel lobby gets to the dock. Oh well. We steam back to Halong City, napping under the fans on the second boat, have a final lunch in a lovely villa outside the city, and return to Hanoi to meet our friend Ajan Daeng, who is joining us from Thailand after returning from Central America via New York the day before.

Luckily, we manage to meet, only to find that the hotel refuses to honor our reservation, takes us somewhere else wearing enormous backpacks on the backs of motos, clinging to Vietnamese drivers a third of our size, terrified as we roar (it seems) through crowded alleys at breakneck speed. It gets worse when they put two of us, including luggage, on the back of one with a driver! The hotel is horrible, no windows in the rooms and few of the promised amenities, but in return for a promise of nicer accomodation the next day we decide to stay.

After a shower (fresh water!), we go out to dinner at Hanoi Seasons. A real advantage of having a third person around is that we can suddenly order much more food off the menu! AD has trouble keeping up with us as we devour fish in apricot sauce (again), veggie and seafood spring rolls, amazing eggplant with spring onions, and so on.

Yesterday involved some sightseeing, a lot of resting, a disappointing meal at a veggie cafe, and a delicious dinner at an old quarter restaurant, a screaming fight with the hotel staff who refused to move AD to the promised nicer room, paying for a Laos visa to be rushed through in 24 hours, a run at one of Hanoi's nicest hotels, and the Vietnamese celebration of war martyrs and invalids day. B broke 20 minutes for a 5k (I hate him!) while I suffered through a four-mile tempo run and AD napped (literally) in the pool--we are gathering an interesting collection of expensive but delightfully A/C gyms on this trip! Dinner was fabulous: fresh catfish spring rolls (you roll your own with mango, cucumber, and herbs), vegetarian fried spring rolls, green papaya salad, tomato and cucumber salad, eggplant with garlic, fried catfish with dill, fresh lime juice--including drinks, $5 per person.

AD and I head down to a local stage to find out just what the 60th anniversary celebration of war martyrs and invalids day will look like. There is music coming from the stage and a bunch of people (mostly sitting on motos) looking at it expectantly, but it's not clear than anything is actually happening. Suddenly, everybody rushes toward us as we are standing under shelter and it has just started raining. Instantly the stage is packed up, only to be reprepped when the rain stops a few minutes later and everyone comes back. Again suddenly, a troupe of acrobats appears on the stage, the girls dressed in very formfitting white satin outfits and the boys wearing cutoff T-shirts with shiny patterns and tight white pants. They put on an impressive display of athleticism, with boys standing on their hands held up by two other boys, then doing backflips and returning to handstands--it's hard to describe, but it was pretty cool. At first AD and I are the only two people applauding, while loudly discussing whether it's just against Vietnamese culture to applaud (we don't see any other foreigners around), but after the first couple acts, others start to clap also. The girl acrobats generally aren't as impressive as the boys, although one of them turns out to be a very elegant juggler. The acrobatics are equally suddenly interrupted by three boys, one dressed as a woman with a small ponytail, appearing on stage and acting out a small tableau where the woman-boy escapes from the other two while swatting at them with his fan while the two try to grab his hips. They exit stage right with the woman-boy riding on the other two who have turned into something like a human donkey. It's very amusing and confusing at the same time, so when the acrobatics start up again we go back to the A/C room and watch soccer. (Satellite television here includes a seemingly endless number of soccer channels showing classic, recent, and all other kinds of European, Asian, and what-not soccer games.)

Today we have sweated through some sightseeing, as B is describing next to me, and are dreading our evening trip in a six-person compartment (supposedly A/C, but given our hotel's dishonesty so far we have little reason to believe they are telling the truth now... but Sapa is at 1600 meters above sea level so even an outdoor long run might be possible, I hope. We're planning to cross into Laos near Dien Bien Phu, the site of a famous battle against the French, and then perhaps float down the river to Luang Prabang. This should take up most of next week post-Sapa. Apparently accomodation on the way consists of hammocks strung on bungalows (less than $2)--since I have trouble in humidity and AD dislikes critters and squat toilets, this may not be the most pleasant part of our journey but we'll see. Two nights or so in Sapa should help some, we hope, and the Laotians are supposedly very hospitable.