Well, I haven't been on-line in about 6 days, but it's because I've been having such a good time. I've been on two trips during that time, the first to Halong Bay, which is this amazing body of water full of karst caves and rocks sticking straight up from the water. It is a great place to go exploring on a boat, and also to do some kayaking and swimming. I have been travelling with "the Germans" for the past six days, Sven, Andrea, and Anastasia. Sven, amusingly enough, has done an internship right outside Philadelphia and was wearing a West Chester University sweatshirt when I met them!!
We went by ourselves on the bus to Halong Bay, which was an interesting experience involving three buses and a boat before we finally arrived in the town of Cat Ba. It's not much of a town, and it was clearly low season as our hotel was largely empty. We had two rooms with balconies facing the bay. The walk up to the 5th floor was a bit daunting, but the view more than made up for it. Our hotel owner arranged a boat for us (owned by his cousin, of course) and we set out for a tour of the bay. What amazed me the most were all the floating houses in the fishing villages. They are surrounded by a latticework of nets with wooden frames. All of these places have at least one dog, and all I could think about was all these dogs with absolutely nowhere to run. I suppose they could swim, but I didn't see any of them in the water.
We really lucked out with the weather, as it rains a lot in the area this time of year. the sun was deceptively strong under the light cloud cover, and I did wind up getting burned a little bit. We picked up kayaks from "the kayak guy" who basically runs a floating business out in the middle of the bay. Kayaking was lots of fun, although Andrea and Anastasia managed to capsize their kayak and had to be rescued by our boat. There is lots of coral and some interesting shells washed up on the various beaches throughout the bay. I felt very lucky to be on a small boat with only 4 people, and we really didn't see too too many other tourists out on the water.
The "tourist special" for breakfast is banana pancakes, and I have eaten many of them so far in Vietnam, along with pseudo french bread with butter and jam. I love the Vietnamese coffee, which is very strong and served along with sweetened condensed milk. Most of the tea to be found is either local Vietnamese tea (green tea, a bit bitter), or Lipton!! I guess I wasn't expecting that. We went to a fish restaurant for dinner when we got back to Hanoi; they only serve one dish of fried fish with greens, noodles, fish sauce, and peanuts. You cook the vegetables yourself at the table, and the restaurant is popular with Vietnamese as well as tourists. Very fun.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
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