No necessary alarm this morning which results in waking up to rays of sun softly lighting the room as the sneak in besides the curtains. I repeat yesterday’s ritual of opening the curtains and top it of by also opening the doors and waking Marlies with a happy dance on the balcony. As we are one of the last to enter the restaurant the chef is ready to make our omelets and we finish breakfast with coffee in the sun.
Although we could have gotten used to living in Paradise a bit longer our stay at Topas Ecolodge comes to and end today. We therefore have to pack our backpacks again ready to be collected by the staff to keep us from breaking any unnecessary sweats as the temperature is rising. We spend the rest of the morning by the pool and do nothing but reading. Unfortunately a very large insect messes up my plans and forces me to jump up and challenge him to a duel to death, the poor bugger didn’t stand a change to Marlies her cute pink Nikes. It was quite a manly performance specially together with me complaining about having to move, Marlies points out the irony of the fact that I am reading the book: Bitch not so. (Zeik niet zo dus en een superleuk boek, allemaal kopen en lezen, niet lenen anders komt Suzette nooit in Broek).
After calming down and some more reading the alarm on my phone rings telling us it’s time for a massage. Yes another massage and this one only for back, shoulders and neck as we both almost kicked the masseuses knock out when they touched our feet during the previous massage. After sixty minutes of treatment we are all relaxed and ready to spend the last hours in Paradise swimming and eating before we settle in the luxury van that will take us back to Hanoi.
As we head down the mountains we catch a last glimpse of the resort on top of the hill before after a last stop the van drives into the dark as the sunsets. The nest 2,5 hours the view is limited to all inside the van which is lite up with the many led lamps in the ceiling. The charged e-readers help us kill time until we enter Hanoi again. When we enter the city again we are dropped of at our hotel, or at least our driver tells us it’s just down the street. We enter a backpackers friendly street with mainly neon hostel signs, we might travel with backpacks but we don’t do hostels. As get to the end of the street without having seen our hotel we double check the address and walk back to find our hotel down an alley. After a warm welcome and some confusing about our booking we are shown to our suite, yehes free upgrade. A very comfortable room and the staff is helpful with booking our train tickets for the nights rain to hue on Thursday. We have dinner across the street and prepare for tomorrow’s cruise to Ha Long bay.