Cave Hoppin' in Halong Bay

Our first big trip on the tour was to Halong Bay, which is about two hours northeast of Hanoi.  We had a pretty nice private bus with lots of legroom, so it was a reasonably pleasant ride.  We made one stop on the way, at what is called a "handicapped bathroom."  Now, contrary to what you might think, this is not a bathroom with particularly large stalls and extra railings.  Rather, this is a rest stop where travelers can use the bathrooms for free.  They're actually really clean and well-staffed.  However, before you can reboard your bus, you have to walk through a giant showroom full of handicrafts.  These handicrafts are all made by disabled people, so the crafts are more expensive since each craft takes longer to produce.  However, this is a way that the Vietnamese government props up handicapped people and enables them to make a living.  We didn't really purchase anything, but it's still a very interesting concept.

Halong Bay!

Yours truly

Small boats like this would sail up to the side of the junk boats
and try to sell things tothe passengers, such as fruits, drinks, beer, etc.

Some of them even had kids aboard.

There were lots of boats on the bay!

Once we arrived at Halong Bay, we boarded our private junk sailing boat, where we were all two-to-a-room.  It was a pretty sweet boat equipped with a full top deck and a dining room.  All three meals onboard the boat were huge (6-7 courses) and very seafood heavy.  And weird seafood. Like steamed calamari, but all of the tentacles still had giant suction cups on them.  I mean, don't get me wrong. I love calamari. When it's deep friend and you can't discern the gross parts.  I tried a bit of the calamari, but didn't each much of it.  We also had steamed shrimps that came with their heads, legs, toes, everything!  It's much less fun to each these things when there is so much work involved in getting at the yummy part!

Lemongrass-steamed shrimps - they just kinda tasted fishy.

Calamari, when not fried, is super chewy...

Clams - not my favorite, but Silvan sure loved them

These were crab-stuffed crabs or something. They were super good.

Then we went onshore and explored a giant cave that was gorgeous!  Unfortunately, in order to make it look nicer, there were lots of bizarre-colored spotlights illuminating portions of the cave. It gave the cave an artificial look that made our pictures come out kind of weird, but it was still nice to wander around the cave, especially since it was super cool - natural air conditioning!  In what is seeming to be a theme on my Asia trip, at one point, we rounded a corner and there was, what our guide described as, a "surprise," aka a phallic-shaped rock. Whoohoo. 

View of the bay prior to entering the cave

Inside the cave - it was like natural A/C in there, so I was happy!

The "surprise" - seriously, why are these all over SE Asia?!?

Upon exiting the cave, we all get super hot and sweaty immediately. Gross.

Immediately following the cave, we returned our junk boat, from where we were all going to set off in kayaks to explore a lagoon.  Now, most of you know that I am not the most outdoorsy of people, and I had never kayaked before, but I had decided to give it a go.  My roommate Natasha had never done it either, so naturally the two of us decided it would be a great idea to share the same kayak.  Well, she got in without a problem. But when I went to get in, I managed to flip the stupid kayak over, dumping both Natasha and myself out into the water.  What a great start!  On my second attempt, I got in first and managed successfully, but the end result was that I was terrified of tipping the kayak over for the entire hour we spent out on the water.  We were pretty bad at synchronizing our rowing, so we kept drifting to the right.  No matter how hard we tried, we could absolutely never go straight, and were only occasionally successful in steering to the left.  This was problematic while we attempted to pass through a cave in order to reach the lagoon -- we basically ran into the wall of the cave!  I was able to use my paddle to alleviate some of the impact, but let's just say that I am maybe not the right kind of person to be in a kayak!  Plus my legs barely fit inside making it pretty uncomfortable.  The lagoon itself was gorgeous.  Since it was only accessible by kayak, it was pristine and undisturbed.  It was definitely worth all of the pain and effort to have gotten to see it.  Once we were both back on the junk boat (I somehow managed to get out of the kayak without flipping it over!), I realized that I had cut my leg pretty badly when I had fallen out.  Unfortunately this became an injury that plagued me for the rest of my trip and ended with a trip to the international clinic once I reached Saigon.  But I didn't let it stop me (which may or may not have been a poor choice on my part).  We went swimming in the bay, which was actually much cleaner and nicer than I had expected, although the water was very warm and ridiculously salty.

At dinner that night, our tour guide, Pong, told us about a tradition common to all of his tour groups.  Instead of talking about going out drinking, he said that we should call it "saving the babies," because that way if other people overhear us, they will think that we are very altruistic and giving people.  In fact, Pong calls getting wasted saving babies because you try to drink up all of the alcohol so that there is none left for the next generation!  So if I get back and ask any of you to go and save babies with me, you'll understand.  So, after dinner, most of the group went up to the top deck to save babies.  It was a great way to get to know each other.  We played a few hilarious drinking games, and then when we got bored, Daniel (the German) suggested that we play Truth or Activity.  Oh how I love mistranslations.  Unfortunately, none of us were really in the mood to play Truth or Dare(Activity), so instead, Silvan (the Swiss guy), brought out his ukulele and we sang some songs.  It was a really nice end to a long day full of adventure.

A few thoughts on Vietnam in comparison to Thailand and China.  The Vietnam-Thailand comparision is relevant because they seem to be at similar stages of development.  Vietnam generally seems to be better organized and cleaner, which I can only attribute to its status as a Communist country.  However, although foreign influence is evident in Southern Vietnam, there is a distinct lack of commercialization in Vietnam.  In Thailand, you will find a 7/11 on every corner, and McDonald's and Starbucks in the major cities. In Vietnam, the only chain I found was KFC.  The soda in Vietnam, although it's called Coke or Fanta, tastes completely different, and it distinctly says that it's only for sale within the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, aka Communist Coke.  And it tastes awful. Just sayin.  The comparison between China and Vietnam is interesting because of the Communist connection.  However, because China is very open economically, it has a lot of commercialization and Western influence, which is not really the case in Vietnam.  On the other hand, English is much more widely spoken in Vietnam, which makes it a much more tourist-friendly locale than China. 

Okay, that's all for now.  Over and out!

-- Priya/Pri/P/Preesh/Pixi/LPJ/P-Money/Baibiya