Ha Long Bay tour

Getting sick and missing the tour with my friends turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I met some really fun, really interesting people on my tour.. but I'll get to that later.

I opted for a three day 2 night tour of Ha Long Bay. The bay is littered with towering limestone cliffs. They form a beautiful backdrop as you cruise along the water on a boat. It was a little cloudy the first day, but it cleared up on Christmas Eve, which was a very nice early present from Santa.  The fist night you spend sleeping on the boat. The cabins were much nicer than I expected.  As I was a single female, I was given a roomate. Tess, from Texas, was absolutely fantastic. She is taking a year long trek around the world and has amazing stories and pictures to go along with them. We had a blast together.

Boat dining room

Dinner on the boat was an array of seafood dishes, and one chicken, for the more discriminating folks. The squid was supposedly caught directly from the bay. I tried my hand at squid fishing that evening, but failed miserably. However, since ALL the boats in the bay had lights on and hooks out, I didn't feel so bad.

One of the more interesting characters I met was Bobo. Bobo is a chill surfer dude with a gnarly California accent. He is also the host of the show, Finding Bigfoot, on animal plant and discovery channel. Talking to him was an absolute hoot. His group had been filming in Vietnam; hunting for some type of ape-man out of myth. I've seen the show a time or two, it is always entertaining.

My first brush with celebrity

Getting back to the architecture of the bay... wow. Rarely have I been in such beautiful places. My favorite was the climb to the top of Monkey Island. The rock was very jagged and sharp, but gave some fantastic hand holds. Using my rock climbing skills, I channeled my inner monkey and climbed to the very top.

We spent the afternoon exploring Cat Ba Island. The island is a national park and home to the endangered Cat Ba langur, a black monkey with a white mohawk. There are only about 60 left on the island. We biked along rivers, through valleys into the village. It was very peaceful. I kept an eye out for interesting insects, but there weren't any, other than the occasional butterfly.

I spent my Christmas Eve in Cat Ba Town. It is very touristy, but my hotel room had a view of the ocean. After dinner with my boat friends, we headed out to a local club for some kaorake. It was decked out in true Christmas style, with icicles and pink heart balloons suspended from the ceiling.

Christmas morning I was able to skype with my family with the hotel's free wireless (yay!). The internet quality and availability is so much better than in Africa, although I suppose that is to be expected. I spent the day traveling back to Hanoi and as soon as I got there hopped a night bus to Sapa in northern Vietnam. Yay for back to back adventures!