Fortunate Son

Back in good ole samoa. The rest of our trip was a bit hectic and unfortunately I didnt have time for any more updates.
It was very hard to leave Pai in Thailand. We even thought about cancelling our tickets to Viet Nam and just staying in Pai for the rest of the trip. There were 3 days that were pretty rough there...our last night in Pai we ended up staying up until just before the sun. That afternoon we boarded a 4 hour bus through the mountains to chiang mai where we boarded a 13hour sleeper bus to bangkok. We met up with Doug and Kira for dinner one last time in bangkok and then woke up at 4am the next day to make our 630am flight to Hanoi which we found out once we arrived at the airport had actually been cancelled. Luckily air asia put us on the 1030am flight ot hanoi.
So we arrived at our hostel in hanoi very hungry and VERY bitchy. Our plane was to travel down the coast to Hoi An which is apparently tailor heaven, but we found out that would be another 16 hour bus ride there and then another 16 hours back and at the moment we were a little travelled out so we decided to save Hoi An for the next trip. Instead we signed up for a 3 day, 2 night trip to Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba island. It was a very nice little excursion. We got to kayak in Ha Long Bay (YES!) and spent the night on a boat with a bunch of traveling Europeans, aussies, kiwis, etc. They all thought we were pretty cool because they never meet Americans travelling outside the US. I agree, we are pretty cool.
After our 3 day excursion we came back to Hanoi for shopping and site seeing. I sorta dragged Steph to the Viet Nam military museum which was very interesting. Its strange to see pictures with captions about "enemy movements" and "enemy ships" and realize that we were the enemy. The museum itself was pretty bare bones, but it was obvious that the Vietnamese were very proud about having "conquered" the Americans and the French.
Our last full day we signed up for a bike tour that travelled outside of Hanoi into the villages. Turned out Steph and I were the only ones that signed up. So we were lead through rice paddies and small villages by this nice little Vietnamese lady. It was very cool! It was amazing to feel like the only ones to have this unique look at villagers and their work. It seemed so untouched by Western influence.
The next day was a bit unreal. We were in 4 different countries, held 4 different currencies in our wallets and somehow it was January the 15th almost the whole time. Our flights went from hanoi to bangkok, where we had an 8 hour lay over, then Bangkok to Sydney and Sydney back to home sweet home.
To sum it up, Southeast Asia rocks my socks off! If any of you reading this have an opportunity to go there, GO! The best part is after 3 weeks of buying all my meals, flights between countries, hundreds of presents and clothes, and hostels I just barely spent $2000USD. Seriously that place is amazing. There will be more pictures to come, but I have a few Viet Nam pics on my facebook page for the moment. Hope all is well wherever you are!