Halong Bay, Vietnam: Halong Bay is 170 km from Hanoi. A bus made the circuit of several hotels to pick up all of the passengers going on the overnight cruise within Halong Bay. I believe the driver was getting paid by the hour since at no point in time did we ever exceed 30 mph. I could have walked the 170km quicker than taking the bus! When we finally arrived in the town, it was like a everyone in Hanoi decided to take the same cruise I did. I found out later that there are 300 boats the cruise the bay as well as an additional 200 that just do a day cruise. We made our way to one of the islands accompanied by 50 other boats (very intimate) and put down the anchor. We then took a jetty (sorry if I don’t have my nautical terms down correctly) to the cave and walked through it along with 300 other people. I took a pass on the kayaking but did climb the mountain. It was as tall as Mt. Everest I would estimate. After making my way back down, we headed back to the boat for a shower, dinner and then squid fishing. Halong Bay is made of over 3,000 islands. This is definitely a place to put on any bucket list!
