Halong Bay

Think of New York City on speed; that's about the activity level of Hanoi. But compared to what we saw in Saigon, Hanoi was pretty mellow. We spent a day exploring the city and then prepared for our three day trip to Halong Bay.

We woke up yesterday morning and drove about 100 miles east to Bai Chay.



At Bai Chay, we boarded a junk, which is kind of like a mini cruise ship. It had a common area to eat, a roof to lay out on, and about ten rooms. We set sail on a three hour tour (all together now: "a three hour tour...") of Halong Bay, wondering if the captain of the junk had ever crashed into any of the 3000 limestone islands (mostly uninhabited) jutting out of the water like baby volcanoes.






Like in Cambodia, the tour company was apparently having labor problems, because the next thing I knew, I was driving the boat.



Our first stop was a place modestly named the "Amazing Cave." I personally can never get enough of stalactites and stalagmites (depending on my mood).





It's pretty amazing what a little sea water and limestone can do, if you give it enough hundreds of millions of years.



From the cave, we got on some kayaks and paddled our little hearts out to a nearby lagoon. Once we reached the lagoon, we turned around and came back. Not the most productive journey. When we returned to the junk, we dropped anchor and took a dip in the bay. The water was warm like a bath, but much saltier.



Above in the pic are Joy from Australia and Lori from Canada. They were our shipmates along with about ten other tourists from Holland, Singapore, England, and Australia.



We stayed overnight in these junk rooms (the adjective of course describing the location of the rooms and not the quality). I woke up early this morning to catch the sunrise. It was totally overcast so I went back to bed for another hour. After breakfast, we sailed to Cat Pa Island, the largest island in Halong Bay (136 square miles) and one of the few that is inhabited. Half of ths island is a national park, and that was where we landed first. Once on shore we bicycled about 2.5 miles to a point where the forest got too thick for bikes. We hiked for another mile or so through the brush until we came to this small village.



Our guide Tung (pronounced "toom") had been threatening the whole trip that he was going to make us try snake wine.



In much the same way that a worm adds that special flavor to a bottle of tequila, a snake adds to what would otherwise be boring old rice wine. The more poisonous the snake, the better the wine is. Had the one contributing to today's inebriation bit me, I'd be dead in five minutes.









I honestly can't say it was any worse than some of the shots I did freshman year of college. I stopped after two glasses, but mainly because it was 40% alcohol and I didn't want to be too drunk to ride the bike back to the boat.

The boat then took us to the other side of the island.



There is a thriving tourism industry here, although the island is still predominantly a fishing community, as was evident by all these fishing boats returning at sunset.



Half of the island is a national park, which we probably will not have time to see. Tomorrow morning we head back to Hanoi via a smaller boat that gets us to a larger boat that gets us to a minibus that gets us into the city. Once we are in the city, we head south on an even larger bus that will drive eight hours overnight to Hue and Hoi An on the central coast.