Good Morning Vietnam!

We finally made it to Halong Bay, Vietnam last night after a very long and adventurous 36 hour journey from Hong Kong. Monday morning we headed for a two hour train to Guangzhou in mainland China. When we arrived there, it was clear we had left the lovely international city of Hong Kong where everything is written in English and people are exceedingly helpful. We were immediately ripped off on our overnight sleeper to Nanning, but this was to be expected and we will try to move past this! The bus station was chaos with thousands of people milling about, not a word of English spoken or written, and filthy as all hell. We're pretty sure we saw half the population of China converged on this one station. We managed to catch the 14 hour train to Nanning, and thankfully due to jetlag, we slept for about 13 of them! We arrived in Nanning at 6:30 in the morning. It was still dark out, and now for the difficult part- to find a bus to the Vietnamese border. With ripped out pages from my china book with bits of mandarin written down, I showed the taxi driver the word for long distance bus station and hoped he would bring us to the right place. We were in luck! We just made it in time for the daily 8:00am bus to Dongxing, the chinese border town that leads to Halong Bay, and not the usual route most take to go to Hanoi. We went on a lovely 3 hour bus to the border, walked across the bridge, took our snapshots, and now we were in Mong Cai, Vietnam! Hooray, we did it... or so we thought. Immediately we were whisked away by taxi motorbike to a local bus to Halong Bay. We prepared for the 4 hour trip through rural northern vietnam, and were excited that we had made all the connections so far no problem. But the excitement dissipated with a very rocky ride through partially paved extremely muddy roads, which were causing accidents and traffic jams. It appears that northern vietnam is completely under construction!! After one 2 hour stop, we continued on only to be stuck in another one. By this time, we had been on the road for 7 hours, and our local passengers now looked like they were making their seats into overnight beds... as it got pitch black, the mosquitos came out, and here we were in the middle of nowhere vietnam on a tiny muddy road backed up for miles both ways. After a slight moment of insanity, we found our zen, accepted the situation, put on our insect repellent and tried to get comfy. Finally, the traffic moved and another hour later we arrived in Halong City, only 7 hours later then expected... So yes the adventure has definitely begun! Along the route, our digital camera was also sacrificed, so we won't have pictures for a while. My 35mm is being put to work! Halong Bay is rainy and stormy today so no touring and we might be on our way to Hanoi tomorrow, a day earlier then expected. But our spirits are still high- they have to be, we are on the vacation of a lifetime in beautiful Vietnam! So happy birthday to Thomas as we rest in leisure today...

-Ronit

p.s. if anyone wants to reach us on the road, send emails to ontheroad@funktionfive.com. this is what you get when your boyfriend is very into technology! :)