Neither of us had classes for the first few weeks of P5, and since we also didn’t have a room in Singapore until 1 November, we decided to travel for a bit before settling in in Singapore again. So we went to Koh Lipe, an island way down south on the western coast of Thailand, and Halong Bay, which is in Vietnam close to Hanoi. I had been to both places before already, but J had not been and I liked both of the places, so we went together.
Koh Lipe is simply one of the most relaxing beach islands I have ever been to. It is located close to the Malaysian border, a bit north of the Malaysian island of Langkawi, and it is really tiny. You can easily walk along all the main beaches within a few hours. Most of the accommodation is located along the beaches, and in the center of the island there are lots of restaurants and small shops. We were there a bit before the official beginning of the season, which meant that some of the places were still closed. Still, it was surprisingly hard to find a place to sleep, since we hadn’t booked anything in advanced. We ended up with a really basic (non air-conditioned) bungalow, but it was dirt cheap: Around 7.50 € for the room per night.
When we had relaxed on the island for a few days, we flew all across mainland Southeast Asia to Hanoi, spent half a day in the city and then set off to Halong Bay. Halong Bay, located approximately three hours from Hanoi, is a UNESCO world heritage site, revered for its myriad steep limestone islands and islets. We spent two nights on one of the many junks that sail the bay – curiously, when I had last been there around two years ago, the boats were all brown, in the meantime they had all been painted white. The trip to Halong Bay was fantastic – we did some nice excursions to islands and did some kayaking as well as swimming, and the junk we were on was a really nice one.
From Halong Bay, we went back to Hanoi and then flew straight back to Singapore, just in time to check into our newly rented room for the last period of the MBA.