Down poor, and yes Halong City

I had a later start then normal and got out on the road, could have been a bad move as the clouds were looking thick over Ho’s mothers. The day started with a head wind and that was pretty much it for the rest of the day, head wind and then rain, then heavy rain with lightning and thunder and more rain, great, why not throw in a bit more rain on top of the rain, so from this you can tell it rained. Or can you.
But I battled on into the rain and then thought I had found a nice busy eating spot to stop in at, little did I realize till I had pulled up what a dive it was. Decided that I needed food and this will have to do so sat down pointed at something and got some food. I have eaten dodgy meals but this one takes the cake, most of the meat I could not identify, the taste, well uuummmm hhhmmmmm, just get some dirt from outside, by a load of different parts of more than one animal, throw it in a pot with some noodles and maybe add a little bit of salt, no forget the salt, add some intestinal juice and that was my breakfast. As you can imagine I picked out the bits I could identify and eat them paid and left most of it there. So with the rain and a crap breakfast my day was looking up. NOT.
As I cycled in the pouring rain I got a view of some of the pinnacles of rock that were land locked, like sentinels they rose up out of the green of the rice fields looking out over the land, the only problem was because of industry and the want of consumerism some were being taken to pieces like tooth decay industry was scrapping away at their very soul and smashing towards the core. I am not sure what they use the rock for but it ruins the landscape. Never mind there is a whole bay of these sentinels waiting for me.
I finally made it to Halong city well the edge of it and found out where I would meet the boat tomorrow, sweet, looking forward to the Halong trip, the lady running the hotel where I was staying was really nice even though she could not speak English and she was even trying to carry my big bag up the stairs, she ended up washing the outer bag for me.
Because I had arrived early I had time to do the fun things like washing and set up a line in my room to dry everything. I had lunch of fresh Shrimp, and I mean straight out of the water into the pan which were really nice it worked out very expensive though. Later that night I did manage to find a little place that did beef soup which was one of the best beef noodle soups I have had in Vietnam. It’s looking good. I ended up going back the next day for breakfast too.