Vietnam 2: Halong Bay

We arrived in Vietnam late Sunday evening (I think it was around midnight when we finally stepped into our hotel room) and spent Monday and Tuesday exploring Hanoi, then Wednesday morning we left for Halong Bay. We were picked up at our hotel at 8:30 or so and rode in a van for about three and a half hours to the dock in Halong. The trip of course included a stop to buy souvenirs (which they pretend is a bathroom break). There were four couples in our van, so when we stepped out at the souvenir stop, four Vietnamese employees attached themselves to our group, and then as the four couples started going to different parts of the shop we each had one employee shuffling along behind us.

Anyway, one other couple from our van was on our boat (the other two were on another boat), so the four of us got on the boat and sat on the deck drinking sweet tea for maybe half an hour until another van of people arrived. Eventually we set off and had a big lunch while we sailed into the bay. After lunch we saw a floating fishing village and some amazing scenery, and at four Mark and I set off for a kayak trip. We were the only two going in the afternoon, so it was just us and our guide, which was really nice. We kayaked for about two hours and the best part of that was going through a little cave into a lagoon where we were the only three people (that's where the picture above was taken). After kayaking was dinner and then drinks on the deck.

The next day after breakfast we got out to see "Amazing Cave" and then before we knew it we were back at the dock and on our way back to Hanoi. We have tons of pictures, but I didn't want to overload this post with images, so I hope you get the idea of what it was like. The first picture is our boat, the Dragon's Pearl, and then it's Mark and me in our kayaks, then two pictures of Halong Bay, one around sunset, and one at five in the morning when we got up for sunrise (though as you can see, it was too foggy to see anything).

Thanks for reading!
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