Hanoi and Halong Bay

We finally arrived at our last destination in Vietnam, Hanoi, first thing on Saturday morning after an AWFUL overnight bus trip. Through our own idiocy we ended up with the two worst seats on the bus and didn't get a wink of sleep all night. This meant that we were badly in need of TLC when we got here and spent all of Saturday lazing around eating pizza. On Sunday we had fun exploring Hanoi by walking miles around the Temple of Literature and Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum (he wasn't in as he was on his yearly holiday to Russia). Its lovely and cold here and perfect for walking around the city. We rounded off our excursion with hot chocolate and pastries at a french style cafe.
Yesterday we went on an organised two day tour of Halong Bay, which has lots of Unesco-protected limestone rock formations which poke out of the sea.They are actually the tips of a submerged mountain range. We took a boat trip all around the bay and did some kayaking as well. Our tour guide was completely useless and didn't know anything about the rocks. He took us to an enormous cave which was really beautiful but told us nothing at all about it, just pointed his red light at random rocks and tried to convince us they looked like turtles/dragons/buddha. Our group was good fun and we had dinner and then slept on the boat last night - it could have been a boozy night but as the guy in charge of drinks had only bought 5 bottles of wine between 15 of us that went out of the window. Today we sailed around randomly for the whole morning and then came back to Hanoi on the bus this afternoon. We were all pretty annoyed by the fact that the tour was really expensive, our guide had been rubbish and we'd not seen several of the sights which were listed in the itinerary. To add insult to injury, when we got back to our hotel (with whom we had taken the tour) they informed us that they had given our room to someone else and were now full. I'm sorry to say that this was the last straw for me and I caused rather a scene in reception, yelling and shouting at the receptionist until I was dragged away by Andy. I haven't been that angry for ages, and I totally saw the red mist. Anyway we're now in another hotel, not as nice but at least away from those two idiot men (and the building works which started without fail at 7 every morning). We are now trying to change our flights from Kuala Lumpur straight to Sabah (Borneo), from where we hope to bring you adventurous tales of orangutans, turtle sanctuaries, jungle trekking, leeches, diving and possibly even a climb up Mount Kinabalu. All simply in order to be able to eat as much as we can at Christmas dinner and not feel guilty...