Halong Bay

Hi everyone! Just a quick post as I have to get to bed so I can get up early to catch the Super Bowl! I found a new, better, closer place to watch it which I can walk to, so I am excited about that. So, when you all are sitting around your TVs watching at 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, think of me because it will be Monday morning here, and I am going to get up at 5 a.m., leave around 5:30 to walk to the place, and the game should start at 6:30! And get this - I was sitting in the movie room here at the hostel researching my next city to go to, and I heard a girl talking with a pretty obvious WI accent, so I asked her where she was from - WI!! Living in Wuhan, China right now, and she knows my cousin Julie who is living there too! She and her brother are also Friends of China teachers. Anyway, her brother (and her, if she can get up) are going to join me to walk to and watch at least the first half with me. Imagine that ~ I get to watch the game with other Packer's fans, who also know Julie, here in Hanoi! Sometimes I am amazed at how small the world really is:)

So I got to spend the last two days in an amazingly beautiful place - Halong Bay. I will post a few pics soon, hopefully tomorrow afternoon. Until then, you will just have to rely on my description of the beauty. We took a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from Hanoi to Halong City, and then waited around for a long time for our guide to show up, and then waited longer, until we started realizing that maybe Vietnamese idea of time is similar to the Chinese idea, sort of a "whenever" kind-of attitude. Eventually, we boarded a boat, which took us out to a bigger boat, our floating hotel for the next two days. It was pretty fancy, and the meals were good and the rooms nice, although when I went to turn on the bathroom light this morning, it blew up! And, no hot water in the shower. But, other than that, it was a great experience. Once we checked into our rooms, we went up to the dining room for lunch, which we ate while cruising through the limestone formations. As even the Lonely Planet says, words alone cannot do it justice, but I will try. First of all, it is a Unesco World Heritage Site. 3000+ islands rise out of the water, creating a magical, mystical landscape, the kind that you feel like you have to just keep taking pictures of because it keeps seeming more beautiful. So we just kept on going, through more and more of the limestone karsts, until we got to an area where we again switched to a smaller boat so we could go to one of them, and got off so that we could go tour through a huge cave that seemed like it was out of a cartoon or Tim Burton movie. All our guide kept talking about was stalagmites and stalagtites, though, and it was pretty funny. After the cave, we went kayaking around the karsts for an hour, and just missed getting really great pictures of the sunset:( Then we headed back to the big boat for dinner, and after that several people tried their hand at squid fishing, of which I believe two were caught. I didn't really know what squid look like other than being cut up as calamari on a plate, so I was surprised they looked that way. The first one, they threw back, and the second one, they kept, and it proceded to spew ink as a protective mechanism, which I also did not know they do! After that, it was time for karaoke, which the Vietnamese crew got much more into than any of us tourists did! There were ladies rowing around in boats always trying to get us to buy food and drinks, which was funny because we had all of the same items on our boat. Anyway, we bought some Choc-pies from one of them finally, because they really are everywhere in this country, and we were curious what they are. Consensus is - not good. They have marshmallow inside, and fake chocolate on the outside. It satisfied our curiosity, anyway. So then I headed to bed and slept well. This morning, we woke up for breakfast and cruised around the Bay for a few more hours before heading back to Hanoi. Overall, it was just an amazing place and I am so grateful that I got to go there, and highly recommend it to anyone that visits Vietnam! You will get a better idea when I post pics:)

Tomorrow, after the Packers win the Super Bowl, I will stay in Hanoi for the afternoon before finally beginning my journey south. I plan to head to Ninh Binh to stay, but really to go a short distance from there to Tam Coc, which is similar to Halong Bay but the limestone formations come out of the land rather than the water. It is supposed to be amazing as well, some say even more so than Halong Bay. I just bought my open-tour bus route pass tonight, and am disappointed because it is double the price of the normal cost because of Tet. It is becoming more and more frustrating being here for Tet, they just charge extra for everything because they can, and then they extend the high prices for a week beyond that. Anyway, this journey will involve some overnight bus rides, which should be interesting. My initial trip to Ninh Binh will be only about 2 hours though. Ok, so I said this was going to be a short post, and it may be the longest one yet. Sorry for babbling, I think I am tired again. Not to be redundant, but GO PACK GO! My next post will be tomorrow afternoon, after the Super Bowl! Can't wait to watch the game!