Halong Bay

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Parental apologies for the sudden cessation of the blog we understand that this might have caused some concern. We really hadn’t realised that Western Australia (WA) was going to be quite so limiting as far as communications were concerned, and should have guessed this given our plan to camp in the wild and also the geographical isolation of the state.

Sophie will finish off our trip to Vietnam, the final few days were spent at Halong Bay. We had hoped to do a separate page of photos of the different ethnic groups in Vietnam but now find ourselves completely confused with the intricacies of dress, so it’s difficult to identify some of the different groups. Anyway, we will give it a shot over the coming weeks. Sophie and Jonathan also have to do a presentation in assembly of their travels, which should be fun.

Today we got on a boat to go to Halong Bay. In the bay there are 1969 islands. The lady told us a story of how they were formed. The locals believed that a dragon had blown fire to make rocks fall off and create different shapes. One of them looked like a face. They were so high and we sailed right next some. We stopped and went swimming in the sea. It was so cold. We went to a floating village where there were doll sized houses anchored to the seabed. About 160 families live there because they cannot afford to pay for the land. People would come around on boats with food to sell.

People earned their living by fishing. A lady rowed around the village so we could look. We saw a school where 5-12 year olds go. Most children don’t go to a high school as they stay at the village to help. The houses were very colourful and small and people keep cats and dogs on them. I wouldn’t like to live there.

The next day we went kayaking into a peaceful cave, which brought us into a lake. It was so pretty. As we were returning to the boat we saw a whole group of monkeys eating and clambering on the rocks. The baby ones were so cute. One climbed up so high but it easily got down. I really enjoyed it.

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