On last Hurrah (Vietnam Pt 2)

Continued...See below post first, technical difficulties confuse things

After a final day of relaxation we decided to hit the elusive beach in Hoi An (which involved a 5km very scenic bike ride through this farming area (Below)). This beach was very different from the ones we had been used to. It was completely secluded and the water stretched on forever, and it was beautiful.
Later that night, we boarded a 14 hour over night train (the first of this trip, first ever actually) for Hanoi.The train was smelly and our cabin had a loud snoring Vietnamese man in it, and the food was DISGUSTING, but overall it was better than the bus, a lot better. We arrived in hanoi at 430 am and took the morning off (obviously). We woke later to go to the Prisoners of War museum (though we're kind of done with war museums in general) and the temple of literacy (which was nice because it is chinese style, dedicated to confucious, and we hear he's a cool guy when he wants to be). We also booked our boat cruise/trip thingy to Halong Bay for the next day. Pretty much everyone here does one and though we only had time for the one night trip, we wanted to give it a shot.

As part of this trip we visited some caves (which really, if you ask us, are incredibly tacky excuses for deciding rocks look like all animals, dragons, turtles, etc. along with a waterfall that was "50% natural and 50% man made", we're guessing the water pump is the fifty percent man made, liars). We then went to a charming little floating fishing village where everyone lived pretty far apart on separate barges (don't know how they kept dogs there but they did), and took a smaller boat through two caves and around to see the school.We met some great people as part of our last hurrah of travelling and spent the night in darkness or the boats' terrace.The boat was "basic" but it was our home for the night and with all homes, we came to love it. Of course this was largely due to discovering our cabin was free of rats, cockroaches and otherwise scary creatures. It was also Halong Bay, so you don't need much to enjoy the scenery.

The second day was essentially just tanning, some swimming, and lots of reading. Overall it was a great last tour of our travels.

Now, we await our evening flight to Bangkok for two days of shopping, sight seeing, and *hopefully* a little bit of a reunion with whoever happens to be around. As long as we keep far away from those young'uns just beginning their trip...