Day 3 - Saturday, May 2, 2009 - Off to Halong Bay!

Woke up at 7 to pack up and eat breakfast. I had an egg & cheese omelet and a fresh baguette with Vietnamese coffee. The van picked us up and we drove around Hanoi to pick up a few more people that would be on the cruise with us. There ended up being 16 people in that 15 passenger van with all their gear too.

It was almost a 3 hour drive to Halong Bay, but it felt pretty quick (probably because I was sleeping like a bobblehead doll in the middle seat of the van). We passed through all the craziness happening on the pier, boats going in and out people boarding and exit all around, and loaded up on our boat. We relaxed for a bit with a cool towel and some flat orange soda, before we took off out to sea.

After an hour or so our lunch was ready. We ate shrimp, rice, tofu, and fish. It was decent food, but there wasn't a lot of it. We went to a spectacular cave first ****(I can't wait to post pictures of this Halong Bay trip and the cave, it was one of the most beautiful breathtaking views I've ever seen).

After the cave we went kayaking in these dual seat, heavy fiberglass boats with 15lb fiberglass paddles, haha. After returning from our hour of kayaking we were able to jump off the top of the tour boat. I jumped off a few times and Meghan has a water proof camera so she got a few shots of us from the water.

After swimming was finished dinner was served and we had fried shimp, beef and vegetable, Bok Choy type steamed greens, this food was also very tasty, but alas left me wanting more when it was gone.

James and Meg taught me to play the card game euchre, i think i almost have it down. Pretty soon our tour guide Kip busted out the Karakoke dvd for a while and some people went swimming again. A 7:30 breakfast tomorrow as we make our way back to Hanoi and then on to Hue.