We woke up at 6:30am so that we could pack up things before breakfast at 7:00am. Once again, we had a full, multiple course meal but luckily less food than dinner the night before. After breakfast, we took the small boat over to the bay near where we were parked. We were then given kayaks and instructed to head through the cave and check out the bay behind it. It was pretty cold outside so we weren't going to get in the water and tried our best to stay dry in the kayaks. The cave was a tunnel that led into a secluded bay.
The cliff sides were very pretty surrounding us. At one point, we found a bunch of golden moneys eating down by the water. They didn't like us getting to close to them and a couple of times I thought they would jump on the kayaks and attack us. We kayaked around for about 45 minutes before heading back to the boat. Thankfully no one fell in and all cameras came back unharmed.
When we got back on the boat, we began the journey back to port, taking a different route than we did on the way there that passed through tons of the islands. It really is amazing how many little islands there are! As we hung out on the top deck, the chef came out and taught us how to make flowers out of different vegetables. His technique was really interesting and when we got to try it ourselves, we realized it was much harder than it looked.
We then went inside to one of the lower decks and learned how to make fried spring rolls. Alyssa and I had made spring rolls once before back in LA and I thought my friends Te Tee and Jane were far better teachers than this chef. The spring rolls turned out ok, but I'm pretty sure he re-wrapped them in the kitchen before frying them.
After finishing the spring rolls, we all sat down for lunch. They had fed us more food on this boat than I thought was possible and I felt like I should never eat again. Following lunch, we took the small boat back to shore and piled into our bus for the 3 1/2 hour ride back to Hanoi. I'm generally not annoyed by bus rides but for some reason, I was feeling really anxious in this bus and just wanted to get there already.
When we arrived back at the hostel, the receptionist let us know that some Chinese people had left their bags in our room instead of checking out and that it was against their company policy to move them. As a result, they had no room for us. They had arranged for us to have a room at a hostel down the street. I was pretty annoyed at first, but they are so nice and the receptionist even insisted on carrying my bag and walking us down there. It's hard to be mad after that. The hostel they put us in was supposed to be nicer but I still preferred the B&B.
We got settled into this new hostel and got ready to go out for the night. We had tickets to the water puppet show at 8:00pm so we went to grab some street food for dinner beforehand. We really didn't know what we were ordering or even how to order, but the people working there just had us point to what we wanted andit worked out ok. We think they overcharged us prett significantly because it ended up being $15 for the meal it sometimes you have to just let that go because there's just no way to communicate. The food was good though.
We made it down to the water puppet show which I was really excited to see. Even better was the fact that tickets only cost $3/person! They had a small band with singers that narrated the show in Vietnamese and we had an English program so we could follow along. They had many different acts depicting their local culture and religion that were aimed at teaching and celebrating the Vietnamese people. I really liked it and thought the fact that it was only an hour was great because it could have gotten really boring if it was much longer.
After the show, we walked around the city. The light things up really beautifully around the lake so we made sure to take Jessica there so she could get the full view of Hanoi at night.
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