Continued from Halong Bay.

Woke up in the morning and our boat was moving. Eventually, it docked here. It’s early, we need to be off the boat for an excursion by 7:30am. Ugh!!

We can see Titop Island from our boat. We will take a tender there and climb to the top.

From the tender, we can see that our ship has put up its faux sails.

That has to be an artificial beach as none of the other karsts have a beach.

Alright, many many steps to the top, I think 427. Let’s do this!

So hot!! Thighs burn.

Feel the burn!!

Almost there!

Made it!!! Drenched in sweat, and the BURN!!!

The view is quite nice up here though.

We stayed up for about 10 minutes, looked around, sweated, and now time to head down.

We feel their pain.

Getting close.

Finally back down!! That’s our exercise for the day.

Then for 30 minutes, we chilled here while others from our cruise got into the cold water. We didn’t bring our swimsuits because we didn’t want to pack a wet swimsuit into our luggage later, seeing as we are disembarking from the boat in a couple hours.

Getting back to the tender, they made everyone wash their feet of sand…in the same pan.

Got back to our boat and it’s time to pack. We needed to be out of our room by 9:30 so that they could clean up our rooms for the guests who are arriving today.

Well, since we had to be out of our rooms so early, they at least fed us breakfast. This will probably also be lunch since when we hit shore at a little bit before noon, we’ll be heading straight back to Hanoi.

Might as well eat as much as we can if this will also be lunch.

Heading to shore.

Reached solid ground! Actually, the water has been so calm that our stay on the boat barely felt like staying on a boat. No worries about getting seasick at all.

On our way back to Hanoi. The same uninspiring drive.

And of course, for our restroom break, we stopped at one of those overpriced souvenir shops. They had this wall showing all the customers who had bought from them and had their stone statues shipped all over the world.

This is suspect…Mexico City does not have a port. Hmmm…

It’s amazing, but I actually see people buying stuff here. They are the reason why all other tourists keeps on getting taken here…but also the reason that we have a clean restroom at halfway points….

After that early morning and long drive, we are calling it an easy day. We stayed in our room and ate some mangosteen wafers. They were surprisingly good.

Alright, it’s going to happen and it’s going to happen today. We are out in search of a Pizza Hut. We tried to get our hotel to call one for delivery, but we were too far for them to deliver. The only other Pizza Hut is dine in and far away, but that won’t stop us. I CRAVE AMERICANIZED MASS MARKET PIZZA!!!

When we asked our front desk to help us find a Pizza Hut, they actually told us that Pizza Hut is very famous and everyone knows about it. They talked about it as if it’s some sort of special food. I felt a little bad when I told them that Pizza Hut is from America and that we’ve had it before…I didn’t have the heart to tell them that in America, many people look down on Pizza Hut pizza.

After a long drive, our taxi dropped us off at a mall and pointed inside. I hope the Pizza Hut is in the food court. It better be!

The prodigal son has returned!

Don’t have that in the States…

Not too crowded. It’s still early.

Yes yes yes! Was it the best pizza? No. Did it taste like America, did it taste like Liberty, and did it hit the spot? Yes and yes and yes! ‘Merica! Fuck Yeah!

Saw the Turtle Tower lit up at dusk on our way home.

While at the mall, I got a bottle of rice vinegar(less than 40 cents for the bottle!) to try to clean my water bottle. Over the past month, the water in the bottle has started to taste slightly ‘off’. Some diluted vinegar soaking took care of that in no time. I love easy cheap nontoxic solutions!

To be continued at Hanoi Day 4.