Does it hurt when I do this?

Hanoi
April 9, 2009
7:00am

YES! I am so sore right now. The trek from the last three days wore me out but it was absolutely amazing. One of the best things that I have ever done. When we set out we had to drive for about 5 hours to get to our beginning spot. The drive was beautiful. The country side and topography is unlike anything that I have ever seen. It is very lush and tropical. The trek on the first day was only about 2 hours so not too bad, although it was uphill for most of the journey and climbing up the side of a mountain is not easy at times. When we arrived at our first village for the homestay we came into a large valley. This village was very basic and not very affluent but it was just fine with me. We spent about 2 hours exploring the village and take pictures before we had dinner. After dinner was homemade rice wine over a fire. A very nice evening.

The second day was the tough one. After having breakfast we set our for our 5 or 6 hour trek. All of today was downhill so I didnt think it was going to be so bad. It turns out that it also included going down the side of a mountain that had to handrail, hundreds of feet drops, and a path that was littered with the most slick rocks I have ever seen. This path as Sid our leader pointed out is where people get hurt and break bones. Lucky me that I happened to have the worst traction on my shoes out of the group. After falling on my ass several times and developing some nice bleeds over my body, our cook cut me some bamboo walking stick and proceeded to walk behind me holding the back of my backpack to stop me from falling. It felt a little embarassing but it was also funny as shit. This lastest the whole of the 1000 meter decent. But after a long struggle we did in fact make it down and the rest of the walk was like a dream. We proceeded to walk through small villages, through rice paddys, into towering bamboo forests, and meet with local children who would sing us songs along our journey. Let me say that the scenery was absolutely BREATHTAKING. We where of the large tourist tracks and in the middle of true Vietnam. I canèt put it into words how amazing it was so whenever I have the chance to upload some pictures I will post them and let them tell my story for me.

That night was met with a traditional meal including bamboo, which was not very good but not horrible. After that our whole group and the local family that we were staying with proceeded to indulge in the rice wine again, which tastes different in every village because it is homemade. To make a long story short, everyone got very drunk last night and four people proceeded to get sick. I was one of those four people. Not one of my proudest moments but we have such a great group and we all laughed it off and just enjoyed the fact that we were having fun. Just to note that the rice wine is good stuff and goes down smooth so it was hard not to drink just a bit more. Thank God I slept it off last night. I feel much better.

Today should be another very fun day. We are leaving in an hour and a half for Halong Bay. When we get there we will kayak around and explore the scenery. After that we have a private boat in the bay that we will eat dinner on, swim, and sleep for the night. I am going to make sure that I sleep on deck underneath the stars. I cant wait. Tomorrow we will go to a small deserted island and spend some time on the beach and swim before heading back to Hanoi for one more night before we start the next part of our trip. Ill post again tomorrow. Peace