Halong Bay, Cat Ba

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Halong (where the dragon descends to the sea) Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site and has over 3000 Islands with caves and grottoes...I have booked 2 days boat trip with one night in a hotel for 30$

A old Vientnameese man, Thun, who has lived in the US for the past 20 years sits beside me and makes great effort in small talk although his English is atrocious.

We make a stop at a tourist shop where physically handicaped girls are making handicrafts...and Vietnamese kids are getting their favourite bean flavoured Ice cream - which. despite being wrapped in the most beguiling and enticing wrapper, was horrible -well I'm sure the kids would say its an acquired taste....

When we arrive at Halong, I join Thun and his extendend family for dinner before we board the boat. For desert they present me with a bean cake (a mix of rice and beans) which I manage to smile most of the way through though the taste is very bland...

The scenery is spectacular, we see caves and go jumping of the roof of the boat before arriving at Cat Ba Island in the evening. Two Danish guys have their fishing rods stolen (worth 500$)...and there's a mix up with my hotel room (yes of course I wanted a single..)..A Swiss guy, Mark and his girlfirend ask me to join them on the strip for a drink...and afterwards I bump in to the Danish guy and over another drink he tells me all about his experience with the Vietnamese police (threes hours waiting to meet the guys with no uniforms, very laid back but wouldn't sign a form saying that the fishing rods were stolen)

You'd think that next day back on the boat we would be safe from vendors, right? Wrong! I took a snap of this woman (see below) who sped along side us in her boat and tied her boat to ours. She took out what appeared to be live lobsters in a pot, indicating that she would cook one for us for about 7$....


Back in Hanoi, I get my first look at the English language paper "Vietnamn News" which offers highly critical coverage (joke) of the Hanoi regime. The news dominates with Phan Van Khai's (Prime Ministers) upcoming visit to the US (first in 30 years)....but some others interest..including one which discusses the problem of a growing number of three children familiies in Hanoi and how to discourage this with penalties....a story that is an exhortation to members of the army to be selfless and patriotic....and here's an interesting one; 7 people ( a mix of Lao and Vietnameese nationals) were recently sentenced to death for drug smuggling..."In addition" mentions the paper, "they were fined a total of 2 billion dong"

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Photos

Boat Crowd
From left Chase (Ausie), Matt (Ausie lives 6 months of the year in Hanoi), Two Swedish girls, San (London)