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One of the new 7 world wonders. Ha Long bay. Not to sound cliche and all but this a million times more beautiful in person.. —currently 11:23 pm and I’m laying in bed in our crowded hotel room in downtown Hanoi. I have an 8am flight tomorrow to nha trang But the blundering sounds of motor scooters and the thick northern Viet accents of the shop keepers downstairs echo through the alley ways making it hard to sleep. So I’ll recap.

After 2 nights in hong kong I reunited with faces in saigon that I haven’t seen for over 7 years. I’m surprised at by how warmly Ive been embraced. Arms stay open as long as “I continue to remember,”my relatives keep saying. So far…I’ve visited local temples, Buddhist monasteries/orphanages, bargained in the night markets and celebrated the new year on rooftop of a hotel sipping champagne and pounding shots of tequila then running across the gridlocked streets of ho chi Minh city to dance the night away. I recently flew to Hanoi and went on a tour with my family to a night cruise on ha long bay, visited stalagmite caves and kayaked the freezing waters, climbed the heights of monkey island and biked along cat ba island where we stayed for a night. And now I’m here.. Lol and I still have quite a few more days to go here.

The tourism, the government, the commerce the foreign influences the changes that this country has gone through is quite overwhelming.

I’ve also found myself enveloped in conversations with foreigners from across the globe who too wanted to see better scopes of this culture. So many walks of life, so many more things to explore. I’m home sick..but I feel like I might not ever want to return home.

This taste of the traveling across the world is making a life of stability seem tad bit boring to me.