Ha Long Bay, Luang Prabang, Kouangxi Waterfalls…

 I am exhausted, and we’re tenitively scheduled to go out tonight with some friends and drink snakes blood. then catch our flight to China tommorrow around 5 am. Hanoi is fucking nuts. If traffic in Cambodia felt like a dangerous choreographed dance, Hanoi traffic is akin to a knife fight in a burlap sack. On our way back i we got to see first hand what happens when a driver blinks at the wrong time.

Last night we got into an altercation while out on the boat, Josh and I were rented a faulty kayak paddle and then charged an insane amount of money to replace it, trouble is it happened to a dutch couple as well; so there was a bit of a standoff, with the boat crew and kayak people demanding cash, and the 4 of us telling them to fuck off. we all eventually settled on 200,000$ vietnamese. Which is i think, around….17 dollars.

The rest of the night involved the boat staff not making eye contact with the passengers and the passengers, about 10 of us, huddled around a bottle of vodka (that cost me 5 bucks, but that they charged 20 bucks corkage…) playing asshole – apparently it’s big internationally. The mood was palaply hostile but we all did our best to enjoy ourselves, i couldn’t help thinking it felt like some kind of Agatha Christie story. 10 Strangers on a boat, someones paddle broke in half? who’s to blame? Who’s got 17 bucks?