Halong Bay

As our time in Vietnam moves forward Sam and I are amazed that a whole week has passed.

Thus far we have moved from Hanoi, to Sapa (northern Vietnam), and now over to Halong Bay (which is north east of Hanoi). Sam and I will fly to Laos, Luang Prabang, when we return from Halong Bay. We decided that traveling to Ho Chi Minh was going to take too much time and we want to move on. We remind ourselves that time spent in the beginning of our trip will eventually affect time at the end.

Our tip to Halong Bay has been wonderful. It seems that Vietnam/Hanoi tourism operates on a tour based system, which has it's pros and cons. The pros are that it's convenient and more or less well priced (even if one were to do the excursions solo it only saves you a few bucks, so you might as well do the tour and meet some nice people along the way). The cons are that you don't know what you're paying for until it's too late... From the brochures they all look good. The best advice Sam and I could give, book the tour through the tour agency NOT through a hotel. The hotel takes a cut of the funds--leaving you in accommodations that are not as nice as they would have been had you gone directly through the agency. We booked through our hotel and the tours have been okay. But, being bargain shoppers I know we could have saved $10 had we booked directly. In the end we are just happy to be here and the $10/20 is insignificant.

Our tour is the equivalent of the "deluxe" package. Which is probably one of the lowest (but, we didn't want to spend the money for the superior accommodations so we got what we expected). The accommodations have been clean and bug free (which is a big criteria!). A bus picked us up from our hotel in Hanoi at 8AM. We drove for about 3 hrs with 10/12 other people. Of course stopping at the tourist "hot spots" for shopping along the way (these shops have western prices, and Sam and I are too bargain savvy to fall for them).

We arrived in Halong City at about 12:00 and boarded our boat. The boats are totally cool, and look like old Vietnamese war ships... really old, wooden, ships, with multiple decks (I'll post photos). The crew had lunch waiting for us as we motored out of the harbor. These ships never sail, and it looked like only the nice ones bothered to put up the sails.

Halong Bay is famous for the scenery which is very unusual. The story goes that an old emperor of Vietnam called down a dragon from the heavens to fight off an invading army. After the dragon expelled the army, the emperor told the dragon to go back to heaven. But the dragon was angry, he wanted to stay because Vietnam was so beautiful he thought this was heaven. Eventually the dragon was forced back to heaven but as he left he smashed his tail into the land causing water to flow between the islands... Granted we obtained this story from locals that barely spoke English... So it may not be really accurate.

We spent the afternoon hiking in a limestone cave and kayaking around the bay. We also met this really sweet couple on our boat from the Czech Republic (Suzanne and George) who have been fun to hang and chat with. Sam and I slept for 11 hours on the boat! It was SO nice to not have the honk honk beep beep noise of Hanoi.

Day two of our excursion provided us with some much needed exercise. We motored to Cat Ba island, which is one of the biggest of the 1,968 islands. It is also one of the only islands that has residents (halong bay is now a national park). We spent the morning mountain biking and hiking--which was really fun. Whenever we biked into small villages the children would run into the street and say "hello!" with their little accents.

At around noon our group checked into our ghetto-fab hotel. It was this 13 story, Florida knockoff, gaudy building that was probably only about 5 years old. However, due to it's "quality" construction it looked more like it was built 20 years ago. The wood in our room had suffered serious water damage--the tong and groove had separated and worn and the slabs of granite in the grand staircase were worn down to about 1/4 of an inch thick. Poor design and cheap construction aside the hotel staff were very nice and it was the first hotel we stayed in that had wifi in the bedrooms!!!

Post lunch we all hopped back into our van and drove a short while to another port, where we took a smaller boat to Monkey Island. Monkey island was definitely the highlight of the day. When we exited the boat a guide gave us bananas and as we walked down the beach 4 little monkeys greeted us. Now, I though we would be able to feed these suckers, but hey had a different agenda. They are very quick--and they DO NOT want to be fed. Once you see them barreling toward you the desire to feed them quickly leaves you and you throw the banana, for fear of monkey attack! The scenery was quite beautiful, a white sandy beach, little monkey's running around (we even saw little baby monkeys), turquoise blue water, limestone islands all around, and wooden Vietnamese ships anchored off the land.

It was hot on Monkey island. Maybe not for the locals, but for us! Sam suggested, let's go swimming. I only had my bra and underwear on but being a Currier I have an unnatural desire to jump into water when I see it. I hesitated, feeling self conscious about my garb. But in the back of my head I heard and saw my sister saying, "who cares!?" within minutes I stripped down and plunged into the bay. And oh, it was beautiful! It really was the perfect moment.

As the sun set on the bay and we cruised back into Cat Ba Island, we looked at each other in amazement--wow, we're in Vietnam!