Ha Long Bay

I was in northern Vietnam so, duh, of course I had to go to Ha Long Bay! They are currently trying to make it one of the Wonders of the World. It totally should be! I, personally, don't understand why there should only be seven. Rude.

Anyways, Cinthia and I decided that doing a three day/two night tour would be better than a two day/one night tour. We signed up for the Asia Cruise via our amazeballs hostel, Hanoi Hostel. We were picked up for our tour on Saturday morning and we went around Hanoi picking up the others that joined this tour. I was super nervous at first because of the endless number of couples that kept coming onto the bus. By the time we started on the road towards the Bay, there was Cinthia, Chris (Australia), three English girls, Jack (England), and I - as the only "singles." So that left five couples with us for a total of 17 people. Our tour guide informed us that, because so many of us signed up for this cruise, they were going to have to break us apart. Oh man, this was when I was pleading (in my mind, of course) that I wasn't going to be stuck with a bunch of couples.

The trip to the Bay took about 4 hours with a 20 minute stop in between. We got to the dock and they divided us up and, thankfully, I wasn't stuck with JUST couples. On our boat it ended up being Cinthia, Chris, and myself with three couples (Tim and Emilia, Mark and Ines, Paul and Debi) who ended up being BY FAR the COOLEST couples anyone could ever get stuck with! Tim and Emi live in England, but Emi is from Spain. Mark and Ines are both from Spain; Mark couldn't speak any English, so Ines did a lot of translating, but I got to practice my Spanish! And Paul and Debi are from England. I spent most of my time with Paul and Debi. They are so sweet and awesome. I had a blasty blast with them!

[official] Day One: we got onto the boat and had lunch, yum! And then we went and visited this huge cave... I forget the name of it in Vietnamese, but I think it translated to "Amazing" in English. It was pretty cool. I mean, I've been to caves before, so it wasn't really anything special, but it was neat I guess. After the "Amazing" cave we went to the floating villages and got to kayak around for 30 minutes! Not nearly enough time, but I love kayaking, so it was a ball! When we finished up kayaking, we got back onto our baller boat and got to go swimming in the Bay! Oh man, was that cool!? The water was a green color and such a lovely warm temperature: not too hot, but not too cold... Goldilocks would've loved it. We were allowed to jump off the boat, too! All of the guys and Ines were jumping off the third story! I wanted to, but it was really high! So I started at the bottom and worked my way up... to the second floor. When I jumped off the second floor, it felt like I was falling through the air for eternity (echo: eternity eternityy eeeternittyyyyyy), but it was fun. It was nice being able to swim around after sweating so much. The water was super salty and bit gasoline-y, too. That wasn't really nice, but whatevs. When everyone had finished swimming around, we all got back onto the boat and went and met up with the other boat that the other half of our tour people were on. They anchored our boat RIGHT next to the other boat (RIGHT next to it being that we could literally step right onto the other boat easy!). We ate dinner and then sat around under the stars. It was glorious.

Day Two: woke up at 8 am and had breakfast. After breakfast, we got onto our tiny boat with all of our stuff and said good-bye to our baller boat: we were heading to Cat Ba Island. On Cat Ba, we had the choice of either going hiking up a mountain or going biking. I really wanted to go biking, but NO ONE else wanted to go biking, so all 17 of us ended up going hiking. The lady who took us up the mountain said it was a 2 hour hike total, so I thought it was gonna be easy. It wasn't really that easy, but it wasn't, like, super difficult. What made it super difficult was the HEAT. Oh man. I stepped out and every part of my body was soaked in sweat. Lovely. The most difficult part of the hike up was these metal ladder/step things they had on the mountain. They were rusty and had sharp edges, which I promptly cut myself on (excellent) and they were slippery from all the mud that was caked on them, which I promptly slipped on and had a huge knot on my leg from (super!). At the end of the hike up we were literally rock climbing! I have wanted to rock climb, but not in this extreme heat, but hey, whatevs! At the top, it was a pretty view. Just mountains and mountains that looked like it went on forever and ever. Then started the climb down. Not as bad, thank goodness. We also went a different way to avoid the metal ladder/step things. Instead, I basically sat on my butt and slide down a bunch of rocks. I slipped a couple times (weird), but it was nice cos I was in the front and far enough ahead of people that I didn't get laughed at too much :).

We loaded back into the van and drove to a different side of Cat Ba Island where we caught a ferry to Monkey Island for the night. It was about 1ish when we arrived, and we ate lunch and then we had free time to swim in the ocean! HOLLA! That was awesome. I really enjoyed that. The water was so perfect again! That afternoon, we all just hung out. Some people walked to the other side of the island to see the monkeys, but after my last experience with monkeys in Lop Buri, Thailand, I decided I didn't really want to see any monkeys and I was perfectly okay with that. We had a lovely bbq meal that was provided, once again, by our resort. That night, we just hung out and played Uno with a couple people (English couple, Spanish couple, Swedish couple and me). It was funfunfun!! I forgot how much I liked Uno! Went back to Cinthia and my bungalow and fell fast asleep.

Day Three: This day was just traveling back to Hanoi, basically. From Monkey Island, ferried to Cat Ba, drove to the other side of Cat Ba, ferried to our big boat in the bay, boated back to port, ate lunch and hung out til we disembarked and got onto our van to head back to Hanoi.

I had a great time in Ha Long Bay. I am SO happy that I decided to do the three day one instead of the two day one. I feel like I would've felt rushed doing the two day tour, plus we got to see more on the three day one, baller! I met so many lovely people, as usual. I feel lucky.

Peace, love, & granita!