Hanoi and Halong Bay! Mountains Out of Nowhere!

Good Morning Vietnam!!

I heard that's a movie--I just see it on shirts for sale everywhere here. Didn't spend much time at all on Hanoi. Missed the mosoleum to see Ho Chi Minh, which was really disappointing, but it was because I was booked to go to Halong Bay, a candidate to be one of the 7 Wonders of the World. Definitely worthy of the title. This place was AMAZING!! There are limestone mountains that just come out of nowhere from the Bay. Such a beautiful site!!

I took a 4 hour bus ride to the Bay with a tour of about 60 people from my hostel. It's a pretty well known tour that keeps things fun at night, but great during the day. We ended up parking our 3 boats in the middle of  the bay so we could take a swim, and then we got to go kayaking around the bay to a cave where we walked around the the pitch black until we came upon a lagoon to swim in. Kayaking was so hard! My arms were like jello, and  I was horrible at steering us! We ended up crashing into several rocks and a ship in the bay before we got the hang of the kayak, and even then, my arms are too short, so I kept hitting my fingers btwn the oar and the boat. Ouch.

The next day we went to a private island where we'd be spending the night in little huts with no AC and holey mosquito nets. haha. It was fun though. We had this little beach to ourselves, there was volleyball, more kayaking, and we had the option of going tubing via a speed boat, wake boarding, or rock climbing. I decided to give wake boarding a try since I've never done it and it was so COOL! I got up on my first try!! I don't even know how that happened!!  I did fall plenty, but I managed to get up 4 or 5 times out of my 7 or so attempts which was great! There was one guy on our turn that didn't get up at all, so I was really glad that I at least got up since I was the only person who was a first timer. My tan is pretty ridiculous right now, so I might have to start easing up on the beach before I get home. haha...or not.

We got back to the hostel, and I became good friends with a Canadian couple on my trip, so I'm heading south with them for the rest of my trip I think. On a bus at 5:30pm so we can get to the next place in Vietnam called Hue. The bus should be interesting since it's a sleeper bus, but hopefully it's kind of like the buses I rode in South America.  It's a 14 hour ride, so I really hope that's the case!!