Halong Bay

So this is a tad late... WELL BACK OFF. We have been busy; getting stuck in whirpools, harassed by tribal women, and on trains that are similar to ones one would imagine in the U.S.S.R, "in Soviet Ruzzzia you don't ride train, train rides you." K now that I have the worst things out of the way lets talk about the amazingness that was Halong bay.

Okay, I may have been lying about the worst things, there was one thing that took the cake. As we started out at 6:00am on June 10th, we opted to take the private car to the Hydrofoil, which by the way, no one here seems to have ever heard of FALSE ADVERSTING, the picture of this hydrofoil is on some sort of ski system that makes you glide seamlessly above the water, the boats looking nice and new with comfy seats. WRONG. Finally after waiting for a good 20 min past the scheduled boarding time (SIDE NOTE: Vietnam operates on a, "when we feel like it calander", time means nothing) we get on this dilapidated and pardon my French... PIECE OF SHIT. Good god. I thought this thing was gonna sink... on the dock. Natalie was already nervous so I had to put on the, its gonna be fine; I have seen way worse; and no of course this won't sink; face. Oh, and the seat I had been assigned did not exsist so I took some Vietnamese girls seat who yelled at the ticket taker that her and her cute little Hello Kitty friends did not get to sit side by side each other(or at least they thought they wanted to....) finally ol' nessy fired up in the black smoke plume and we were off. I prayed to the Hydrofoil gods: "please let us be close enough to land so I can carry my camera and passports above my head when this thing sinks."

K this story is getting too long, anyways to make this short. HUGE swells coming above the windows, Vietnamese girl (Hello Kitty girls) puking directly next to me, and Vietnamese people think its good to ENCOURAGE the driver to go FASTER over the massive swells. It was WORSE than being in a boat, or any vehicle for that matter, with AJ Pujalet behind the wheel. (just kidding AJ but only about the other vehicles part)

Well... We lived and the boat somehow stayed afloat, we were greeted by our tour oporator who informed us the boat was 2 hours late. Somehow a 45 min boat ride had turned into 2 hours and 45 min!! JEZUS this cruise we booked better be the best thing in the world... Good news; it was.

After arriving on Cat Ba island, which is a very cute, quaint island we were whisked away on motorbikes, which we had tactfully avoided riding on up until that moment. We arrived on our little Junk( name for aChinese boat). The 3 man crew instantly liked us considering we brought a 24 pack of beer on board and told them via hand motions they could have some beers too. The boat was considerably smaller than most others on the sea and thus we were able to get much closer to mountains of limestone and into smaller hard-to-fit spaces. We began the first day by visiting our captains fish farm which had some of the most delicous sea food I have ever had in my life. Lunch was served, ALL food which we watched them pull out of the water live and cook, then serve to us in a matter of 30 min. AMAZING FOOD. I am not good at describing food so how about a few pictures. This is a few meals we had while on Halong Bay. Probably the best food we have had while in Vietnam.

Yummy

We then Kayaked with our private guide, which did I mention this boat was just for Natalie and me? No one else to bother us or force conversation with, man that was nice. We were the only boat we could find on Halong bay like this and I booked this trip almost 6 months in advance. Back to the Kayaking, which is not our strong point in the relationship... we arrived to a secluded beach where we swam in water that was about 80-85 Degrees Farenhiet. Just like bath water.

Returning back to the boat we cotinued around to another kayaking spot. You know when you see little huts on a beach with a couple lawn chairs and an outdoor lounge, with no roads, white sand beach, and a huge limestone cliff behind it? No? You have never seen anything like that then please refer below for paradise.

Yah and at 45 dollars a night I would have stayed there for as long as my bank account let me. Alas, this was just a teaser. We swam around, snapped a couple pics and were back to the boat for dinner. Fast forward next day.

Wake up. On to touristy caves which if not filled with Hello Kitty girls would have been sweet but our guide was good and always seemed to know when less people would be at certain places. Please see pics below for cool limestone underground caves

The highlight of the trip...

We began by kayaking under an enormous mountain, see picture, to came out in a lagoon with that being the only way in or out. Our guide sprints ahead in his Kayak and starts making the weridest noises, at first I thought he may have been dying considering he chain smoked about 2 packs of cigs a day. And low and behold, out of a green belt comes a family of howling and swinging monkeys! There was around 20 and we got some great pictures of them going up a sheer rock face while all the while talking back to our guide. No food or payment required just some good ol fasion monkey calls. God it was incredible. Never have I seen anything like that in the wild. As always, please see the pics below for awesomeness.

**to see monkeys zoom in and look to right side of mountain

I hope all of you were watching the world cup on the 11th, opening day. and you are now thinking to yourself, wow sucks chris you missed it. NO. I did get to to watch the world cup. We were invited by the captians family to watch on his tiny 2 room house boat with 15 other vietnamese men who spoke zero English, huddled around a 20 inch TV. The offered us tea and cigatress, we both just stuck with the strongest green tea of our lives, which our guide informed us is "stay awake" tea (or sober up tea) considering it was around 11pm. Yup I stayed awake for the game and crashed so hard I hardly kept my eyes open for the 1st half of the France game.

Sadly the next day we had to head home, but not before our final kayak adventure, and boy was this one super duper fun. Not only was the tide rising but we were entering yet another lagoon that had only one way in our out. Our guide had informed us that a few times previous, tours had gotten stuck in there and were forced to stay the night. Not my idea of fun. We saw a few ENORMOUS Jelly fish that were around 4-5 feet long and about 1 foot wide and got the heck out of there. Since we had to kayak through a long underwater cave, our guide told us to stick to the right of the cave and when he meant right, he meant HUG the wall. This cave was where two currents met creating a nasty pull to the Dark scary corner of the cave where you were sure you were going to get to get eaten by "some big scary sea monster"-Natalie. We did get pulled over there, and as I was incharge of steering while Natalie thought she would for the first time take care of that. It was like watching a Looney tunes skit. Im going forward, she is going back, finally we got back to the enterance where our guide and I switched spots, Nat was banned from paddling and I took the single kayak and we got through the cave. This will make me think twice next time my mother suggests a fun family kayak trip through the mercer slough, you never know where those sea monters might lurk.

Well we made it back to Cat Ba island alive. But Natalie was not content coming back unharmmed. We took motorbikes back from the dock, Nat gets off on the right side and her leg introduces itself to the exaust pipe creating this fun little number. Don't worry, Nat plans to make a blog chronicling her "3rd degree burn" which is more like a 1st Degree.

We took another hydrofoil back, horrible to say the least. I did find it funny there was a first aid kit... THAT WAS EMPTY. We got off on some industrial dock, and hopped in the car waiting for us and waited... and waited... and waited... for about 1.5 hours. Turns out one of the cities we had to pass through had flooded horribly. Because only 1 car could pass through at a time we arrived back in Hanoi (at our little home hotel) 2 hours late. Bah man that made me tired just writing about all that. Stay tuned, SAPA is up next and coming to your computer screen in just a few hours.

All our Love,

Chris (author) and Nat (editor)