Halong Bay

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Mui Ne - Hanoi via sleeper buses covers more than 1,500km at just $40USD. The catch? It takes 42 hours. Honestly the reclining seats made it pretty nice - I can only imagine how cool fold-down seats on transoceanic flights must be... Four transfers, five major cities and two meals later, I arrived bright and early in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam.

I booked another bus the instant I hit Hanoi and 8 minutes after grabbing my pack I was en route to Halong Bay, about 4 hours east of the city. Named a UNESCO world heritage site, this remarkable system of islands was also a filming location for Bond films, Man with the Golden Gun and Tomorrow Never Dies.

The origin-lore of the bay name is actually pretty cool. When the last native tribe to inhabit the regions was being attacked my an enemy armada, legend holds that an army of dragons swept down from the heavens and cried pearl tears, which turned into island citadels that blocked and broke up the advancing fleet.

The dragons then settled in the caves in some of the islands and radiated 5 colors on the walls ever since. Not bad right?

It is a truly gorgeous place once you get past the disaster of tour buses and hawkers at the docks. A bit misty when we were there, but stunning nonetheless. There are two very touristy cavern systems, one very dry and the other very wet. They were impressive, to say the least.

I'm not a world-class spelunker by any stretch, but I've been through pieces of Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, the world's biggest cave system and a half-dozen smaller sites from NY to NC. This was distinctly different. The colored flourescent tubes were a bit kitschy though symbolic I guess, but the formations themselves were pretty sick.

Saw a floating village, got to swim through a cave to a lagoon beyond, and a nice long trip back through 50+ islands. Hotel on Cat Ba island. Blackouts the entire time - backup generators for basic lighting.

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