Excuse me, please sit down.

We just returned from a three-day trip on the Halong Bay off the coast of northeast Vietnam. We went with six other people, four Germans and two Canadians, as well as a young Vietnamese man--the tour guide--who couldn't stand us if we weren't sitting down.

We cruised the bay taking photos of a smattering of rocky islets, and then we hopped into some kayaks and paddled around the bay through a couple of caves. We spent two nights on an island in a thatched hut on stilts. At high tide, the ocean was right under our floor. The hut was quite cold, and we would have been miserable, but the bed had a heated mattress. That pretty much made our trip.

Other trip highlights:

*We hiked to the top of Navy Peak, which, according to some sources, is the highest point on Cat Ba Island. Impressed yet? Jim, Jacob believes this is a fourteener, but we're not sure.

*We biked around Cat Ba national park with a bunch of other tourists, and Kelly burned the young Australian men going uphill. Jacob's bike only had one gear, so he couldn't really pedal unless we were going straight uphill.

*We ate several multi-course meals. The food was included in the trip, and the tour company agreed to provide us with vegetarian meals. We ate A LOT of different tofu dishes. Jacob loved them all; Kelly recognizes that there are other foods--ahem, vegetables--than tofu that do not contain meat.

*Kelly almost punched a Canadian guy. We'll tell you later.

*A funny story involving a tranquil sea, a group of kayakers, Jacob, and farting--of the fake and/or real variety--that can't be told here because we want to get jobs someday.

*INSTANT COFFEE IS OFFENSIVELY DISGUSTING.

*Kelly's adoption list: 10 or 12 cows (some baby cows!), 5 oxen, 20 billy goats, hundreds of dogs--some strays, some living in floating villages, several handfuls of skinny kittens, various chickens, an enormous pig living on Cat Ba island, etc.

We are back in Hanoi and we promise to get pictures up soon. Like in the next two days. We leave Hanoi Sunday for Luang Prabang, our first stop in Laos.