Day 4: All aboard the Reunification Express

We got up today at the unearthly hour of 7:00! ;) for breakfast on the Halong bay boat whilst we journeyed back to the harbor. The harbor was amusing because all the captain did was just drive into the back of another boat that was tied up to the harbor. Thing was, every other junk boat thingy in the area was doing the same, there were already about 100 docked, and another 20 coming in. So we started the day after breakfast boat hopping to get to dry land.

The journey back was pretty boring, this time we stopped of at a ceramic factory where they made those blue coloured asian bowls that you see about. I must admit they look a lot more impressive before they go into the kiln. All hand made of course. For some reason Andrea was preoccupied with the toilet so i wandered around and ended up sitting next to a Vietnamese lady that was doing the artwork on teapot lids. She gave me a saucer which had a sketch of some lilly pads and a dragonfly, i had to colour it in with the paints that she used. She complemented me on my colouring in skills, but i get the feeling she was just humoring me. She also asked me if I was married, that would of been a really long story so i just said "no". She then said that she's not married either, was it a hint? ;) By this time Andrea was getting into a whole heap of trouble with her bartering skills. She bartered the lady down so low that the girl just took the items and put them straight into her bag, then took the money and put it in her pocket !!! Andrea was shocked, i mean after all, it's just not cricket!

Anyway, nothing else happened on the journey back except that we saw a scooter that had a scooter on the back of it. We had a free afternoon this day which gave us time to catch up on the blog, wander about, and take about 10 showers. 6:00 we departed for the train station, this involved two cyclos taking every ones luggage and all of us just walking there. The train was pretty much as we'd expected, our filthy home for the next 14 hours. The train was going from Hanoi to Hue. We had to share with another couple as it was 4 bunk beds per berth. The journey out of Hanoi was fairly interesting as you could see right into the living rooms of the locals that really did live along side the track, we're talking about a meter away from it. It just went dark after hanoi so there's was nothing to report on the view. We stayed up to the giddy hours of 10:00 playing blackjack and eating rubbish. It's still to early to tell whether we've got head lice at all.