Ms. Loan - Hanoi and Halong

Over the past 6 months I have been corresponding via email with Ms. Loan, a lady who works for Poseidon Junk Boat Sail tour company. The emails have been excessive, she consistently spells my name different (and never correct) and always ends the email with "waiting to serve you". Through these countless emails Ms. Loan has become quite the character in our minds and we were so looking forward to meeting her. Unfortunately we still have not met this women, but the emails have been supplemented by several confusing phone calls with her and she has arranged for us to be taken care of.

We wandered Hanoi for one solid day seeing everything worth seeing. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, so it comes with the big city attributes of lots of people, tons of traffic and lots of pollution. The Old Quarter of the city has lots of shops, tour companies, and restaurants.

Ho Chi Minh is a God in this counties and it is impossible not to know who he is or what he looks like because his face is plastered more places than George Washington. Ho Chi Minh complex in the city is a place Vietnamese people flock to to see Ho Chi Minh's embalmed body. The complex felt communist with tons of guards ordering you this way and that in order to see the embalmed body and Ho Ch Minh's old residence. The experience was weird to say the least.

We also went to the Temple of Literature (which is extremely old) and to Hoa Lo Prison. Hoa Lo prison is extremely historical- it contained Vietnamese during French rule and then American's durning the Vietnam war. It was good to learn more Vietnamese history. While in Hanoi we also went to a water puppet performance which was hysterical. We couldn't understand the majority of what was going on but it was entertaining to see the puppets splash around in the water and it remains a mystery as to how they work.

Halong Bay
We were picked up early Wednesday morning by our tour company, Poseidon Junk Boat. Our hopes for a young English speaking crowd were dashed as we boarded a bus full of older Asians. It was a 3 1/2 hour drive to Halong City. The harbor was packed with junk boats and thousands of tourist. Our 3 story junk boat is comfortable for 15 passengers and spacious compared to our sail boat in Greece. Luckily Halong Bay is a perfect temperature- warm and sunny and we can actually put on pants at night!

After an extensive 8 dish lunch, most of which was shellfish which Jorie couldn't eat, we headed to "the amazing cave". Our tour guide, Duk, took a liking to us, so he made me, "Alice" (as he liked to refer to me), the main character of all the myths he told us about the cave. The cave was massive with three different rooms of stalactites, stalagmites and rocks that looked like animals if you use your imagination (Duk found an animal in almost every rock). Jorie and I took a short kayak around the beautiful landscape as the sun set.

Halong Bay is gorgeous and is a natural wonder. There are some odd 1,900 limestone islands that have extremely steep topography and are covered in green vegetation. The scattered islands create a maze of bays, lagoons and isolated areas that feel extremely remote.

We anchored for the night in a popular junk boat area near the famous cave. Our dinner was even more extensive than our lunch. After dinner the karaoke became our entertainment... A young Malaysian couple was like a human jut-box knowing every song and having no shame to belt out their duets. After a few songs Jorie made her debut with quite an impressive performance of both dancing and singing. Her performances included "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" and "Heaven is A Place On Earth". Jorie has always claimed that her mother's musical talents were not passed down to her but now I know that she has just been hiding them all along. The Malaysian couple, an Australian guy and the two of us had a great time singing all together to countless songs. It was comical to say the least.

We spent yesterday getting away from the thousands of other tourist and seeing the real beauty of Halong. We took a small boat with two other older couples and a tour guide to the more isolated areas. We hiked to the top of one of the islands and had spectacular views. Then we went to a pearl farm where we learned about the labor intensive process of culturing pearls. The rest of the day was spent exploring in kayaks. We paddled through a floating fishing village and saw a school room in session with the children's small boats floating outside. Our guide, Kay, also took us through a massive cave where we could not see a thing and had to paddle blindly until we saw the light at the end of the tunnel, literally. The other side was an entirely enclosed inland lake with the cave as the only access point. We explored two more remote areas via caves, and I loved the peaceful isolation. The water was a perfect temperature for swimming. On the small boat they managed to cook us just as massive of a meal as they had on our junk boat. It was such a fun day of exploring and seeing the less popular areas.

We had a whole new group of people on our boat for our second night, including Ruby a 7 year old Australian girl who was an absolute stitch. We actually had previously met Ruby at breakfast in our hotel a few days back so it was fun to see her and her family again. Ruby stole the show for most of dinner and karaoke. Jorie and I seem to be coming down with a cold of some short, Jorie way worse off than me, so we have been spending the rest of the time resting on the boat.

We drive back to Hanoi this afternoon to quickly turn around and head to Sapa, in the northern mountains of Vietnam, on a night train.