The year our family traveled the world: Ha Long Bay

As I think I mentioned before, we ended up spending a bit more time in Northern Vietnam than we would have liked as we're more the hot weather beach types than the cool wet climate types but we made the most of it with our last days in Vietnam on Cat Ba Island. We got a taxi one day to take us around the island and see yet another (hospital) cave and climb yet another mountain. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Missy on the beach

The harbour right across from our hotel

Another local fishmarket... the clams/oysters and mussels were amazing (and dirt cheap). Wished I had some cooking supplies!

Octopus anyone?

And off we go to climb yet another mountain!

Making planks the old fashioned way

He's cheating....

Almost there!

Made it!

And on 60 times zoom, there's the car!

This cave is a bit more modern that the others the VC used... they had 300 or so in here at all times

This was a training area... you chased a guy in here

And he jumps out of the ceiling at you!

These are the ugliest damn bugs I've ever seen. It's about 15" in diameter and has about 12 legs... some sort of a crab I guess. We saw them in nearly every restaurant window.

Its another cold and foggy day and we are really missing our beaches in Mui Ne and Phu Quoc but had decided to spend the last 5 days in Ha Long Bay before we flew out of Hanoi for Paris on the 5th. We'd hired a private car to take us the 140kms from Ninh Binh to Haiphong Harbour. We somehow ended up with the slowest driver (outside of that bus to Can Tho) on the road. Even scooters were passing us at points. Our drive took over 3 hours but we were happy to find out that we could catch a high speed hydrofoil over to Cat Ba Island in two hours (1pm) when we got there so we grabbed a very good lunch from a restaurant across the street and watched Slyvester the Cat try to get Tweety Bird with the staff while we waited for the boat.

The bridges around Haiphong were fairly heavily bombed during the war with the US trying to stop Russian, French, Swedish and Chinese ships mostly from bringing in war materials for the south. Johnson had refused to allow his pilots to bomb any of the ships/docks as he was worried about the impacts of hitting a non-combatant ship even though those very ships were bringing in guns/ammo to kill US troops. Yet another paradox from the war. If you are going to fight a war, you go all the way. You don't telegraph to the enemy what they can/can't get away with.

The Hydrofoil was an experience. I'd never been on one. It was interesting but every time he had more than a 10 degree course correction, he'd stop the boat and point it in the new direction and then start up once again. It was a bit strange but had a very smooth ride. Then we got a hotel in Cat Ba City and arranged a 2 day/1 night boat trip through Ha Long Bay which I'll cover by saying, is amazing. Jen did her usual bargaining and managed to get us on a boat for about 25% of the going rate with a commedian for a guide. We had a ball. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves but we just wished it was another 15 degrees hotter and less f/smog. Being here in summer would be even more spectacular but then it's also monsoon season!

Somewhere out there is our junk

Our taxi to the junk

Feeding the fish in the fish farm (they were some fairly large monsters in here!)

On the road again....

A junk like ours

Chopstick Island... for obvious reasons

And more caves too!

More caves too!

Local fish market (they are all alive). She would collect your money with the net behind her and then pass you up the handle so you could collect your fish!

This was the bank we used most often in Vietnam... do not know if this one had an ATM or not....

A Ha Long Pickup

Those are all shells in the background... about 200 feet up in a cave. I guess that sea level does change every once in a while... and without Global Warming to boot!

Le Boat... our home for 2 days

We got to do some kayaking through some more caves into private lagoons. Caves, Kayaks and Mountain climbing... can never get enough of it!

A Sea Urchin (there were thousands of them on the shallow bottom beneath us). They can leave a very nasty sting when they get bigger but these little fellas are harmless (and fun to watch slowly crawl using their spines).