All of us were up at 5:00 (okay, Nay and Missy slept in and missed breakfast) and ate at Handspan’s.  We were on the road by 6:20am and ready to rock whatever Anh had in store for us.
When asked, Anh said “The best thing about Viet Nam is ‘the sexy lady'”.  What?  This is a school trip Anh!
“Viet Nam is shaped like a lady”, he explained.  “The north is from the head to the chest; the middle is the waist (only 56Km wide at its most narrow) and the South is the Hips – which is the big business. The north is very important,” Anh (who was renamed Angelo by Terry) continued, “because it contains the heart and the head.”
After a bus ride, a ferry ride, a bus ride, and another boat ride – we arrived on the beach off of Cat Ba Island.
We chowed down on some great food, and the kids enjoyed a bit of free time.
Operation Elephant Flower and special secret suprise for assembly planning took place during these temporary moments of freedom.
Quickly Anh occupied us with 3 hours of character-building…er… kayaking.  
The personalities of our teams went like this:
1) Team Teachers: TOP TEAM – virtually unbeatable.
2) Team CalTer: Calvin and Terry were efficient, positive.
3) Team Anameron: Anabela and Cameron worked well together and stopped periodically to appreciate the beautiful Kart formations.
4) Team Misserley: Missy and Kimberley struggled with synchronicty, but overcame their rhythmic differences in the end.
5) Team Naymily: Nay and Emily – the most vocal of the bunch – had to trade partners halfway due to … inactivity and a big case of the “ahhh uhhhh how much more”s.
Terry, switched up with Emily, suddenly found the urge to stand up in the Kayak.  Poor Emily.  Mwahahaha. 

Dinner followed Kayaking, and the campfire followed dinner.  Calvin supplied the ghost stories, and operation Elephant flower was post-poned.    
The next day we cleaned up some beach areas that were filled with trash.  We found some interesting water creatures, but a lot of nasty garbage.  I asked Anh “Doesn’t it make you feel sad to see this much garbage?” and he responded with a “no” and a smile.  Wow.  It was worse than anything I’ve seen at Hak Sa. 

We ate lunch, packed up and returned to Hanoi for dinner and some free time. 
Roy was asleep in his room.  It was great to have our group full and together!

Tomorrow is the tour and – much to the girls’ dismay – shopping!  Night train sleep tomorrow and then off to Sapa.