Spectacular Ha Long Bay

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So picture the scene. You're floating on an 80-foot Oriental junk boat in the middle of a spectacular bay. Strange karst mountains covered with greenery shoot up out of the water all around you. The air is warm and moist and perfectly pleasant, a nearly full moon shining brightly overhead. And there you are, surrounded by fifteen drunk Europeans, downing cheap Vietnamese vodka and singing horrible karaoke at the top of their lungs to such songs as “Sweet Home Alabama,” “New York, New York,” and “Country Roads Take Me Home." And you’re not alone, as there are dozens of other junks in the same bay, all full of kararoke-singing tourists and way too much alcohol. Ah, welcome to Halong Bay.

If you’ve followed our blogs of Yangshuo, the landscape here will not surprise you. The cliffs are the same jagged, truly bizarre limestone formations…yet instead of dry farmland, over 3,000 of these mountains form islands around a bay slightly larger than Lake Okeechobee. It was recently voted in as one of the “Seven Scenic Wonders of the World”…and it’s not difficult to appreciate why. Yesterday alone, I snapped over 250 photos, as every thirty seconds the scenery changes and new cliffs appear over the water. It is truly a sight to behold, right up there with the Grand Canyon or similar natural wonder.

It’s a three-hour bus ride east of Hanoi to the coast and Halong City, the gateway to the bay. “Halong” in Vietnamese means “Descending Dragon,” as they believe that millennia ago, dragons descended from heaven and created the eerie rocks formations as they connected with our world. Romantic idea, anyway. And it would be quite the romantic spot, if not for our loveable European friends bringing back distant memories from our childhood and adolescent years with such songs as “Ice Ice Baby,” “Wonderwall,” and “Can’t Touch This.” We are, as usual, the lone Americans on-board, surrounded by Brits, Scots, Irish, Germans, Swedes, and even two Hungarians. The E.U. is pretty well represented by our little group, which is why hearing them belt out John Denver (it would've made the good people of West Virginia proud!) last night was a riot. Almost as funny as our Vietnamese guide “Lucky” and the crew watching cheesy music videos from the 80’s for hours and hours before and after dinner, as if MTV was just invented yesterday. I’d heard karaoke was popular here, but I wasn’t expecting Flashback-80’s for half the night. It was great fun, even after we went to sleep and were laying there laughing and listening to the party outside as the vodka vanished and the singing grew steadily worse.

The day was truly spectacular, though. We cruised the bay for several hours under a perfectly sunny sky - couldn’t have asked for better weather! Lunch consisted of fresh boiled prawns, seafood spring rolls, squid salad, sesame pork, and plenty of rice. Our first stop was “Surprise Cave,” not nearly as stunning as the Seven Stars Cave in Guilin, but pretty to walk through nonetheless. After that we stopped at a floating village and proceeded to try our hand at sea kayaking - a great workout and much tougher than it looks! We kayaked through a “cave,” really just an opening in one of the rocks about ten feet above the water, but you sail right through into this gorgeous cove surrounded on all sides by narrow soaring peaks. Awesome.

After kayaking we headed for a narrow beach - the crazy Europeans plunged right in, but the water was a little chilly for us pathetic Floridians. However, back on board before sunset, a few of the guys decided they wanted to jump off the top deck of the boat (about 30-35 feet down!). Not wanting to be shown up, I did my Florida-redneck roots proud and was the only girl to take the plunge (even Jeremy didn’t do it!). I was so proud of myself, though I admit it was absolutely terrifying. Definitely the biggest leap off a boat I’ve EVER taken - you get probably five seconds of air time before you connect, so you have plenty of time to think on the way down ("I'm falling...I'm still falling...Wow, I'm still falling..." Splash!)

Dinner last night was more seafood (tasty but nothing too spectacular). We've been getting a kick out of educating the Europeans on how to properly peel shrimp (as the prawns here are served whole, heads and all, and you must clean them yourselves). I guess peel-and-eat shrimp never caught on in northern Europe, because they all fumble in the most endearing way and end up ripping the things to shreds. It's been quite amusing and it's nice to have something worthwhile to add to the dinner table (as we're really not up on soccer or the latest Prime Minister). Though Jeremy is loving the food here, it's not particularly loving him back...he's having a lot of stomach troubles again. Nothing nearly as bad as the food poisoning in Yangshuo, of course, but what little weight he has is quickly whittling away...but he's being a trouper about the whole thing and is still having a great time. Me and my iron stomach are doing just fine, though I have been getting loads of headaches (I suspect from the poor air quality).

Anyway, dinner was followed by stiff negotiations for bottles of vodka instead of individual drinks...in the end, they talked them down to 3 bottles of vodka for 1,000,000 dong (yes, that's a million!)...or about $50. Then came hours and hours of the aforementioned karaoke, which was actually quite fun (I was a spectator only, though I joined in some group songs and the chorus line for "New York, New York"; while Jeremy grabbed the microphone and proudly belted out "Pretty Fly For a White Guy"). We retired about 11pm, but we heard the party went on well past 3am this morning (and an additional two bottles of vodka apparently)...

This morning we awoke to a breakfast of eggs and toast (their bread in northern Vietnam, like much of their food, is LOADED with sugar. Our guide was explaining that they love sweet flavors in the north, while in the south it's all spice). Around 9am we docked on the largest island in the bay, Cat Ba Island, where we'll be spending the night before returning to Hanoi tomorrow. Today we went on a grueling hike through Cat Ba National Park - more bouldering than hiking, really, as the trail was incredibly steep and rocky. It would have been nice to be warned about the nature of the hike, as many of us were wearing flip-flops and not carrying nearly enough water. The jungle was thick around us and the heat and humidity suffocating as we pushed our way to the top. The view from the top was pretty, but the island is so large we actually couldn't even see the coast in any direction - just loads of mountains and trees. Cat Ba Island looks remarkably similar to the Panama/Costa Rica area - thick, heavy, sweaty jungle and peaks, dotted with brightly painted slightly run-down roadside shacks...very reminisce of central America, for sure. As we were driving down the road, a sickeningly sweet scent hit our nostrils - huge patches of wild marijuana, growing right alongside the road!! Definitely not something you see every day...and it's pretty funny that we had to inform a few of our British colleagues who didn't even recognize the smell ("What's that burning?")...

So tonight we are staying here at a 3-star hotel, quite nice actually. After lunch today most of the Europeans headed for the beach, but we opted to nap and work on the blog, as today was a bit overcast compared to yesterday and we sweated quite enough already this morning, thank you! Not to mention the poor sleep we got last night from the relentless karaoke blaring outside...so anyway! Hope you enjoy the photos of this beautiful place, and we'll write again soon from Hanoi or wherever our next destination south may be...

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