Beautiful is an Understatement
Trip Start
Jun 17, 2007
1
21
28
Trip End
Aug 20, 2007
Halong Bay, Vietnam
Saturday, August 4, 2007
We road three hours through picturesque rice field and arrived in Halong Bay. We loaded our 16 passenger ship that resembled an old pirate ship. It was a beautiful vessel. We had two days in Halong Bay but could have easily stayed for weeks. We both had high expectations for this earthy place because of all of the picures we have seen. The views exceeded our expectations. This place ranks up there with Bora Bora (see pictures). We cruised through many of the 3000 islands and had to set the camera down to take it all in. Every island, every turn was a new beautiful picture. The boat dropped us off at an enormous cave (picture). Neither of us get really excited about caves, but this one was impressive....there was a huge stalactite that was lit up and resembled a penis! It looked familiar. After the cave, the boat took us to our own grotto where we had a huge bay to ourselves. We jumped off the deck into the green water. It was rejuvenating because it was extremely hot out. The weather was beautiful with just the right amount of clouds in the sky to add to the beauty. We showered up, mingled with some nice people from Fort Worth and Oklahoma and then ate a nice seefood dinner. At dark, we enjoyed the moonlight view on the deck, shooting stars and all. The next morning we woke up early to watch the sunrise over the bay and then went kayaking for a while. We kayaked through a cave and watched a woman who lives on her boat chisel oysters off the side of the cliffs...she offered me one to eat, after pondering food safety for a few brief moments and watching the reaction of heidi out of the corner of my eye, I decided to take her up on her offer. It was quite good. We kayaked back to the boat, took a quick swim, and then cruised back to the port. It was a nice ride back but knew there were more to Vietnam that we wanted to see. On our trip back to Hanoi, we saw a few motorbikes with huge pigs strapped to the back....and they were alive! We could not get our camera out fast enough, but it was a site to see. We arrived to Hanoi, had a coffee at a restaurant overlooking a busy intersection and headed to the train station to take the overnight train south to Hue, Vietnam.
