Davids kayake oar sank

14th August

Today waking up was a slight problem, with again some dry mouth syndrome and dehydration at its worst. But up we went as we were on a tight schedule, and breakfast was done and dusted in minutes.

Kayaking around the bay was our next priority, but once again the rain started pouring down, which in fact made it a nice adventurous trip around the limestone rocks of Halong Bay. We paddled to little caves and back out again, while admiring the view and once more the tranquility of the bay. Then David decided to test out if the paddle would float, and it did float, well for a short while at least. Suddenly it started to sink and David could not grab it out of the water, so we watchd in horror the paddle disappear deep into the green coloured water of the bay. Oh oh we thought, now we are in trouble, as nothing comes for free in Vietnam or in the rest of the world so it was just a matter of seeing how much it will cost. On the way back i paddled with shaky arms and we were trying to come up with a different story rather then come back and say "Oh we just wanted to see if it could float" But couldn't think of anything clever at the moment. So we decided that David would sneek up on the back of the floating little house and take off his lifevest and pretend he never went on it, but on arrival back to base, the dollar signs lit up in the owners of the kayaks face. (she knew what we'd been up to) She was very excited and kept shouting "I give you two, I give you two" la la la blah blah blah". Anyways the price was a $20 dollar fine. (The situation is this, when there is a problem with the room, (for example our room on the boat- the water was dripping onto our luggage for hours) all they say is "I very sorry sir, very sorry", BUT when you break or loose something of theirs, they say "you pay, you pay now", so the moral of the story is.......you break it then you pay for it, you have a problem then you pay for it aswell, so on and so forth. But it was funny coming back with just one ore...haha

(I bet that woman swam down looking for the oar the next day just to make some extra business)

Angela

The lifevest felt a bit big

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Angela

Some people can't get pretty, no matter how hard they try

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David is...

...showing off his big pumped up arms for me
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Handstands competition

Once again the Scandinavians were the strongest, and lasted the longest

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We sailed back in time to catch the bus back to Hanoi City, and then catch our bus to Hue in central The bus is going to take 13 hours, overnight. But its a sleeper bus, so praying for it to be comfortable at least a little bit.

Angela & David