All of the major travel websites strongly recommended an overnight stay on a junk cruiser in Halong Bay, so we got our hotel in Hanoi to organize a trip for us, and the next day we were off at 8am on a 4 hour bus ride to Halong City (a dump) where we’d board our boat for Halong Bay (paradise). Somehow, the captain of our boat was an hour late (which led to a round of Captain Stube-id jokes) but by 2pm, we were on our cruiser and ready to set sail for a trip around the hundreds of limestone karsts and isles emerging spectacularly from the clear blue water.
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| Our Amber Gold Cruise boat |
The junk cruiser was a neat experience. They served copious amounts of tasty Vietnamese food, had a nice deck on the top floor and comfortable cabins. The view from the deck was gorgeous. We were also able to kayak for a couple of hours in Halong Bay, which translates into Descending Dragon Bay is a UNESCO World heritage site and it’s difficult to compare to anything else I’ve seen. It’s the backdrop of James Bond’s “Tomorrow Never Dies” flick. Some of the islands are actually completely hollow and we able to into one of the biggest ones, Hang Dau Go, which is a massive cave that contains stalactites and stalagmites as well as 19th century French graffiti.
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| Our Titanic moment |
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| Chilling on the deck |
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| Sunset from our kayak |
One of our boat-mates was a Vietnamese man who had moved to the US in the 1970’s and was now returning to Vietnam for the first time. The amazing thing was that he was travelling with his in-laws and their family, none of whom he had met before…and his wife was back in the States ! His English was pretty good and he reminded me a lot of famous poker pro Scotty Nguyen because of his affable, engaging personality and his love for Tequila Sunrises regardless of time-of-day. Although his in-laws didn’t speak much English, it appeared that they all bonded quite well over several rounds of drinks
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| Scotty Nguyen loves ya baby ! |
We also bonded with a Quebec couple, Roger and Catherine that have taken a year off to cycle around various countries. They had completed 3 months in Turkey and were making their way through Vietnam before headed to AUS/NZ. Their fantastic blog, written in French, is found at http://rogeretcatherine.blogspot.com and it's worth a click just for the photos. Similar to at least half of the Canadian long-term vacationers we’ve encountered on our travel, they are noble school teachers and we enjoyed sharing our Rwandan teaching experiences with them.
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| Lunch with Roger and Catherine |
Speaking of Quebec..Habs-Leafs game this Saturday and I'm thrilled to say I'll be watching an internet feed of it from my McGill buddy Venka's place in Bangalore at 5:30am Sunday morning ! It'll be the first hockey I'll be watching all season and of course I'm a huge Leafs fan and he's a big Habs fan. For inspiration, I'll be playing this video regularly leading up to game time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmq7WGF55yQ
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