Hanoi to Halong Bay and Back...

The next day we did more wandering around Hanoi and looked through many nic-nack shops and then to the big market which consists of three floors of aisles upon aisles of any fabric, toy, hat, t-shirt, shrimp, eel, tool, chopstick, etc. that you would want to buy. Unfortunately, I could not take a photo because it would be a bit awkward but one of the things I will always remember is a woman in a 5*5*8ft space with clothes packed full and she had carved a little whole in the middle of the clothes and was sleeping in her booth. It was amazing. It was a bit sweaty in Hanoi so we found our way back to hotel and rested for a bit and then went for some yummy local food of rice, veggies and some tofu and called it a day.

The next day we were picked up for our first tour of the trip. It turns out that the Vietnamese are very entrepreneurial, especially in the tourism arena and everything is done through tours and it is very difficult not to use the tours (which now makes more sense of why I sometimes see massive groups of Asian tourists around). Anyhoo, we rode in a van with lots of euro tourists for a few hours and arrived at a small town on a river where there were about 50 women waiting in rowboats to take us down the river to a pagoda (buddhist shrine) in a cave on a mountain. She rowed 4 of us in her boat for 1.5 hours...these women look like they way 100 lbs. but don't let that fool you...we arrived at the bottom of a mountain and chose to hike up like the monks do every year, although there is a trolley...which was interesting because we learned then that in the past 5 years all of the regions in Vietnam are competing on who can come up with the most tourist spots...this is a new one. We hiked up to the top of the mountain and Hoyt looked liked he had just jumped in fully clothed into a hot tub due to the heat and humidity...the 2.5 miles uphill for some reason sounded like a good idea from the bottom...We hiked back and had a big lunch with our group of some squid, greens, rice and tofu and then the ladies rowed us back and we got back to the van just in time to miss the rain...we made it back to the hotel and went and found a restaurant that served some pizza (we needed a break)...

The next day we were picked up early and we began our next tour of Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island...we rode in a van with more euros and there was one guy from Spain who was working on becoming an Air Traffic Controller which was fascinating to learn about and especially since in the last year I have developed a horrible fear of flying to the point where I am starting to need to take sleeping pills when I fly but he reassured me that there are 7 checks on all that they do and when I heard about the kind of training one must go through to become an air traffic controller, I felt a bit better...anyway, we were dropped off with our tour guide to a large woode boat...more later though, I am a bit tired...