Hanoi & Ha Long Bay

Our last stop on this amazing trip was Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. Although Hanoi lacks the relaxed and fun vibe of Saigon it's a much prettier city. There are dozens of lakes and small parks throughout, and this is where more of the historical buildings and sightseeing stops are located. Some of the buildings that are commonly visited include the famous Vietnam Opera House (they told me it was famous - I never heard of the freakin thing); the Presidential Palace; and the tomb of Ho Chi Minh:

The hotel we stayed at in Hanoi was really cool. It was built on a lake with bridges connecting 'pods' of rooms on man-made islands. The building with the red roof is an awesome bar!

Hanoi and it's surrounding areas is where I saw some of the weird/silly Asian shit that I had expected to encounter throughout this journey. A few examples:
(1) Vietnamese people LOVE Christmas. This probably doesn't seem odd, most people love Christmas. However, only about 8% of the population is Christian! 85% are Buddhist! 'Let's go balls out for a holiday directly affiliated with a religion that we don't practice or believe in' - silly Asians. There was sooooooo much Christmas stuff all around Hanoi it was sickening (FYI I did not see one menorah), but the best example was this (look closely what the X-mas tree is made out of):

(2) The traffic in Hanoi was just as bad as it was in Saigon even though it's population is about 2 million people less. Besides driving, there were a number of things that you could do on the streets - it's hard to tell, but this is a really short clip of a guy getting his haircut on the sidewalk (he even fix murret)

(3) This was some freaky shit. We stopped at a large store about an hour outside of the city to grab some drinks and look at souvenirs. When I came across this on the shelf:

SNAKE WINE - Eeeeeeewwwww. It supposedly gets you pretty F'ed up however they don't drink it to get drunk; they believe it's a remedy for certain sicknesses or ailments.

From Hanoi we took a trip up to Ha Long Bay; this is one of the 'new 7 natural wonders of the world'. We spent one night on a luxury boat and had such an incredible time.
Ha Long Bay is a huge bay with almost 2,000 rocky outcrops or isles. If you're into Geology, Climate change, Erosion & Biodiversity you would find this place fascinating. I'm not into any of that stuff (I actually had to use a dictionary to write the last sentence) but it was still really cool.
We sailed around on our 17 bedroom boat checking out the different rock formations, and took a smaller boat over to some of the outcrops to explore massive caves within the structures. There were also beaches that we hung out on, kayaking, and peaks that you could climb for a better view.
Here's our boat:

This is one of the beaches - they had volleyball, soccer, kayaks, etc:

Here's one of the Floating Villages in Halong Bay. It was amazing! These are people's homes - they go to shore and buy goods, or go out fishing, or even grow food on the islands then 'sail' around to other homes/villages/boats and sell their goods! What an amazing way to live...

Finally, this is the view looking out over Halong Bay from one of the peaks that you can climb (450 steps!):

This capped an incredible trip. Vietnam is highly, highly recommended. I know I can't wait to go back.
And for any of you that read my post Waiting and Praying - I did get business class on the flight home from Hong Kong. Holla at ya boy!