Crazy Beautiful Vietnam

After being on the road in Vietnam for about 10 days now I've come to the conclusion that people here buy their driver lisence on the street. Driving here is litterary "TUT OG KJOR", it's worse than Bangkok insane.
The way to do it in the city, as far as I've understood, is to honk as much as you can and just go. The more and louder you honk, it seems the more rights you have. The roads are packed with mopeds, cyclos and kids riding bikes, and crossing on foot is a really interesting adventure the first time you do it. Saigon is especially busy, and as the bible says; "wherever you go you're gonna have to cross the road eventually, so do as the locals do and just start walking". We did, as slow as possible, and after many small steps we arrived safely and intact on the other side.
The worst, in my opinion, is the motorway. The white line in the middle doesn't seem to excist here, or they use it as a guideline for where you should be when cars are coming the opposite way. Everyone (but an occasional roadtripping foreigner, mopeds and pedestrians) drive in the middle of the road. About 2 seconds before hitting the vehicle coming the opposite way (also in the middle), they both honk and make a sharp turn out to the right, only to make a sharp turn back on to the middle as soon as they can. It makes travelling more fun, in a sick way, but also a little more terrifying.

From Hue we took another night bus directly to Hanoi. It ended up being the worst bus trip any of us had even been on - 12 hours of being thrown back and forth, sliding up and down in the long seat, and no sleep at all.
The plan was originally to go straight to Halong Bay, but when we arrived in Hanoi at 6 in the morning and neither of us could keep our eyes open we went with the first guy offering us a place to stay (wich wasn't too bad, a 10 dollar room including cocrooches(kakerlakker), free internet and breakfast). Despite a tiring start, it ended up being a pretty good day. After 6 hours of sleep on above average comfortable beds we spent the rest of the day realaxing in the sun by one of the lakes.

The next morning we got up (an hour early), and left for Halong Bay. (We have now officially given up on time zones, as they seem to change day by day). Instead of doing the whole thing on our own, which would have been more expensive, we joined a two day-one night trip on one of the big Halon Bay boats you see on all the post cards. All meals included (good ones too), kayaking, disco-caves (lacking the music though), and swimming. One time only, for more we were told to pay 5 USD extra on each spot. Halong Bay is really amazing. It looks a little like Krabi in Thailand, just a lot bigger, and it's so beautiful. There are people living on the sea, in tiny houses floating around, and on our kayak adventure we found an old pirate cave.
All in all it was two GOOD days. Being away from all the noise and pollution in Hanoi was maybe the best thing about it, and also seeing the stars again.
All the star formations, like Little Bear, Big Bear, Orion etc are all upside down here by the way.

I hope all is good back home in Norway and NC. We are leaving to Laos tomorrow and I have no idea about how easy/hard it is to find internet access there, but we'll keep staying alive and having fun :)