Took an amazing two night trip to Ha Long Bay. It means "bay of the
descending dragon", and some of you will know that that was enough to
get my juices flowing. But regardless of my fetishes it really was
spectacular. I took loads of photies, but the scale, colours and the
beauty have to be seen to be believed. There was a lot of talk on the
trip about it being named one of the seven natural wonders of the
world, and I cannot argue with that sentiment.
The first
day we took the boat out into the bay and had lunch and then we visited
some caves. None of my photies from inside came out well enough. They
were enormous cavernous spaces as impressive as the islands outside.
Each new internal landscape was more impressive and fantastical than
the next. I half expected to see Gandalf leading the Fellowship through
there at one point.
Back to the boat and some kayaking, then
some swimming. The bay is so sheltered it is like being in a swimming
pool, and you float easily in the highly salty water. We had dinner and slept on the boat that night out in the bay
with hundreds of other junks, all lit up. It was gorgeous.
Day
two of the trip and the boat took us to Cat Ba Island. We went on a trek in
the nature reserve. A two hour vertical trek in thirty five (at least)
degree heat. I'm not cut out for this sort of thing at all, but somehow
I did it. I was very thankful I was wearing Auntie V's shoes (thank
you!) since parts of it were very slippery. One of our group was wearing
flipflops. Silly boy.
After that we'd earned another nice lunch and a relaxing afternoon on
monkey beach, then dinner and a night in the hotel. (I'd have loved
another night on the boat, but the hotel was popular with the boys,
since every bathroom had unique tiles which made up the picture of a
Vietnamese lady who had lost her clothes.) There was a risky moment
after dinner where karaoke threatened, but I managed to escape unscathed.
We returned to Hanoi for one more night before flying back to Thailand.
