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Tag: adventure tours
04/11/11
After running in the humidity last night we decided to give the morning a go to compare the two and it started well, with a cloudy early morning sky and nice solid sand near the waves we both felt fresh and awake at 8am. That all changed as the sun came out and the temperature jumped 20c in seconds and suddenly I felt like I was running in treacle , how is it possible to be this hot this early in the day?
As the restaurant was closed on Fridays we decided to rent the bike and eat on the road somewhere. Our destination today was the national park and lighthouse on the southern tip of the island a good 30k away but mostly straight roads, according to the map. I must have looked...
01/11/11
We tried the diner attached to our hotel for breakfast and found the prices normal, so by the looks of things the only place open for food last night was the most expensive in town (I'm convinced the taxi driver took a cut from this!) and by 0930 we were on Kata beach, creamed up and ready to relax. By 10am we were both getting restless, we really are crap at sun bathing and drowning in our own sweat as the sun was beating down already. The sea cools you off, but by the time you are back to your gear your melting again, how on earth do people just lie there day after day for weeks on end and say they have had a holiday?
By midday we had both had enough and decided to walk alo...
14/10/11
Bitty day today, it's the night train to Hanoi again tonight so we have to check out of the room by 1030. I was woken at 3am last night by a huge storm going on outside and the rain on the window sounded like someone trying to get in. I pulled one of the curtains aside and was almost blinded by the lightning, is it strange there was no thunder to go with it?
The rain continued into mid morning so the day was pretty much taken up with writing this and watching the new arrivals entering the town. If you arrive during the week the place is a lot quieter, but from Thursday to Sunday it's a mass of day trippers and new arrivals, so I was glad to be leaving, but for this reason o...
12/10/11
Another early start but this time we were mountain biking from the town into the lower villages along the river valley and yet again the sun had decided it was summer not winter! We had the same guide, Hoe, as the day before and I hoped he was a fitter biker than he was walker, so water on board we started out along the road for 6k. Once the nightmare traffic was negotiated we hopped off onto a dirt track and into the first village, waving at the kids and trying to avoid the farm animals who seemed intent on killing themselves under our wheels!
The first climb and all hopes of a better biker vanished, Hoe soon realised that we had done this before and was left trailing some w...
08/10/11
Nothing worse than an early bus ride in the rain to Halong Bay. It's 3 hours on some of the worst roads in the world, and our bus seems to be mounted on two pogo sticks so writing is almost impossible, at best I'm correcting more words than I write. As we move further away from Hanoi the weather has improved slightly, it's still very grey but the rain is only appearing in showers and I'm more encouraged by the dry roads.
I'm told that our junk will be the Paloma and it was build in 2009, so unless we hit an island, there is no real risk of it sinking, so let's hope they have better captains than they do drivers!
On arrival at the dock we are herded into a small boat which w...
06/10/11
We decided to to make the next destination Hanoi in the north, I had spoken to a few locals and they all agreed that there really is not much to miss in the middle, plus storm number 3 was passing through the area and the middle highlands were pretty much no go due to the rain. Our choices were a 2 day train or and hour flight, well, it's a no brained really!
As we stepped off the plane two things happened, first the temperature dropped by 15 degrees and secondly the rain came down in buckets!
We found a taxi ($16) which took us to our hostel for the next two nights. Ms Han, the owner of the Hanoi guesthouse, speaks fantastic English and could not be helpful enough and it o...
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