Halong Bay, Vietnam

PHOTO ALBUM 1: Halong Bay (link)

In the morning, we headed by bus to Halong Bay in the Northern part of Vietnam. On the way, we passed tons of rice paddies and smaller towns. We reached Halong City which is the city that has built up from tourism because of it’s closeness to Halong Bay. There were hundreds of boats in the bay there, and we got on a larger boat with 15 of us and 5 crew members. In our group there were 7 Americans, 3 Irish, 4 British, and 1 Australian. Hearing about their travels made our 3 weeks sound like nothing. Most were taking a year off before going to University so they were going all around the world. Halong Bay is connected with the South China Sea and has thousands of small rocky islands making a majestic scene. We spent the day boating around the islands, kayaking, and splunkering in one the islands’ caverns. We also spent a good deal swimming and jumping off of the 20 foot boat into the water. The many jellyfish made swimming a little more adventurous as we did our best not to get stung. Acouple failed in this quest and got stung after jumping on some. Every time we stopped, many women on smaller boats carrying everything you might find in a convenience store were trying to sell it to us over the side of the boat. We docked for the night out in the middle of the bay where many other boats were as well and slept on the boat for the night. We stayed on the top deck having fun into the wee hours of the night. While taking to one of the crew members, he was telling me that the rest of the crew teased him for not being married at 28 as the normal age for getting married is 22. Getting married young is very common. He was also telling me how the crew members only get to go see their families for 3 days out of the month because they are constantly working on the boat. They make more money on the boat than they do in their towns and they live too far away to travel back home very often. That definitely put things in perspective.