After a long time of blogging absence I’m back online and today I found some time to write something about what happened the last days…or should I say the last week?

Moritz and I arrived at Vietnam on December 25th. We were picked up from my father and my cousin. After that I spent a night at my grand-parents’ house while Moritz and my father went to Hanoi.
On December 27th Ralf — a fellow student from Munich — arrived and we showed him around.

On the next day we went to Ha Long Bay, one of the most beautiful sights in Vietnam. Unfortunately, it was winter, so we had bad luck with the weather. It was rainy, foggy and cold — really not the optimal weather to be at the sea and besides of that we couldn’t go to the caves. But we found a ship which took us out to the sea and we could admire the landscape and took some pictures.
My father in the meanwhile had lot’s of fun with his old mates from Germany, they drank and ate the whole time while we were visiting the bay. But we had fun, too. We didn’t see Thomas for a long time and it was our first trip together.

The following days we did sight-seeing in Hanoi. On New Year’s Eve we went to the Sword Lake (centre of the city) and it was so crowded that you had to walk on the road between cars and motobikes. The funniest part was that, because of his height Ralf was one “attraction” among the Vietnamese people. Everybody looked up and estimated how big he was. Some girls wanted to say something, but while they were practising their text, we went away ><.. And slowly the new year arrived and because we were watching lanterns flying into the sky (or staying stucked in trees ^^) we missed midnight by three minutes. And Ralf went into the new year six hours before his parents in Germany =)

Our plan was to go to Sapa (city in the mountains) for two days during the weekend, but then one of us got sick and we had to cancel it. Instead we took a break and went to some places near Hanoi, for example the pottery village Bat Trang. There we found really nice bowls, plates, tea sets and much more. Too bad, that I don’t have an appartment yet -.-

Tomorrow, we’ll start our Da Nang — Hoi An — Hue — Phong Nha trip. Then I’ll write more. See ya.

Anh Thu