Lacey: Lance and I made plans to go to Ha Long Bay with some of the other teachers from Maplebear school. Lance had been talking about going to Ha Long Bay, after looking at my pictures, for months and months! We were excited about getting away for a bit, after quitting at Maplebear and before starting at Morningstar. We got up very early to meet at the tour agency to catch the bus.
While waiting for the bus I decided to join some locals on the street for breakfast and enjoy some Pho soup and Tra Da, green tea! The Vietnamese are shorter for the most part but I have found they must be very flexible because you see these mini chairs everywhere!
It was a 4 hour bus ride that took us to a dock to get on our boat where we had lunch. There was a nice upper deck where we could sit and enjoy the scenery. We took a short tour around the bay and then stopped to check out a cave. It was a really cool cave, minus the 500 people and fake neon lights!
These beams of light coming in to the cave reminded me of lights coming from heaven!
We spent more time on the boat around the bay and drove by some fishing villages, where people live right on their boats on the water. It was quite impressive. What a sight to wake up every morning to the big beautiful karsts and water around you! We got to spend some time kayaking around the bay through some caves and around the bay which was very relaxing!
The fishing village.
A lady selling fruit from her boat. Even though it seems that fruit seems to be in abundance here, it seems to be quite expensive. It's all sold by the kilo and most of the fruit (I assume at the foreigner rate) is about 50,000 Dong a kilo, which is $2.50/kilo...which is about $5 a pound! I think we need to work on our bartering skills and on some key Vietnamese phrases!!!
Unfortunately, Lance was not able to enjoy this trip as much as he was hoping to because his immune system decided to give out! Lance woke up the 1st morning with aches, pains, chills, sweats and some sinus issues. He was a trooper though and made it through the day until we got to the island where we were staying that night. He had wanted to go to the doctor, but that didn't seem to be a high priority for the guy running our tour! Lance missed out on some great trekking and sight seeing.
We arrived on Cat Ba Island and Jordan and I made the steep trek up to the top of a mountain to get a look at the scenery. At the top of the mountain was a rickety old tower that we climbed to get even higher in elevation to get a better look!
Some of the terrain on the way up the mountain!
Jordan and I successfully made it to the top!
Looking down from the top of the tower we climbed up!
You can barely see the tower on the top of the mountain in the background, but that's where we got to!
Once we were done with that we got to Monkey Island, where Lance went straight to our little bungalow and tried to sleep off his sickness. Our friend Jordan was nice enough to share some of her drugs with Lance to try to help him ease his pain! Jordan and I hadn't had enough trekking and climbing so we ventured off to get some more glimpses of our surroundings from higher up!
This trek was as hard and steep but we were also surrounded by and climbing on the sharpest of rocks! We were very careful to not make a wrong turn or slip!
A view from the top of Monkey Island! Unfortunately we did NOT see any monkeys on our trek!
Our hut for our over night stay. We were very happy that we didn't see a big spider about 4 inches in diameter like some girls a few doors down!!! We did get to enjoy an awesome thunder storm during the night though!
We enjoyed getting to spend some time with and getting to know our friends a bit more!
Lance and I decided that we will have to go back to Ha Long Bay when he is not sickly!
Lance: I remember some beautiful karsts, a little karoake, a rat in our wall of the boat and then lots of hours of sleeping with a fever. That really wasn't the experience I was hoping for, but next time I will be up for some trekking and great views!
Lacey, I hope you aren't teaching math over there. $2.50 a kilo for fruit is less than $1.25/pound. A kilo is over 2 lbs! You are getting an ok, albeit, foreigner price!
ReplyDeleteThe caves and hikes look great! Hopefully you can return when Lance is strong again :)
Amanda.....I was a bit turned around....for some reason I was thinking there were 2.2 kilos in a pound...not 2.2 lbs in a kilo! It just seemed alot paying $2.50 for a mango...although it was almost the size of a football!
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