Vietnam Part 2

We had arranged to do a junk boat tour of Halong Bay through an agent. The bus picked us up in the morning and we had about a 2 hour bus ride to the bay. We had quite the eclectic crowd on the boat: Mike & me, a 30 year old single guy, originally from Seattle, who is a lawyer and currently lives/works in Singapore, and a Canadian gay father who was without his partner, but was in the company of his two ten year old sons. Eclectic, indeed.

Halong Bay is beautiful and we enjoyed the tour a lot. We had great food, had time to play a lot of cribbage & banana grams, and time to talk with the other guests on the boat. We also had the opportunity to go kayaking in the bay and tour a massive cave. 

On the 2 hour van ride out to Halong Bay, we took a pit stop at a crafty place...

This is how I pictured Vietnam... beautifully green rice fields

Halong Bay

Our bedroom on the Classic Sail

Quite the fancy-shmancy bathroom. I would have never expected this marble bathroom from the looks of the outside of the boat.

Mike on the bow with our friendly dragon

Famous rocks of Halong Bay. You see what you want to see, but these 2 rocks are known as the 2 fighting cocks.

Sorry for the graininess... you can tell this was taken on my point & shoot instead of the SLR. I think it might have been in a plastic ziplock baggie at the time too. :)

Kayaking through the bay and in some caves.

On our way to Sung Sot Cave

Sung Sot is a famous and beautiful cave, belonging to the protected zone of Ha Long Bay, which was trice recognized as a world natural heritage for its aesthetic values and its geology geomorphology by UNESCO.

Here's our group: M&K, Matt (the lawyer), Harry (the dad), Pierce (white kid) & Evan (Vietnamese kid). Granted, Evan is ducking down a little bit, but he actually is older than Pierce by a few months. Vietnamese people are pretty petite!

Coming out of the cave, this was the spectacular view...

Back to our boat

My favorite picture all trip (well... aside from all the funny kayaking pictures of Mike)

Pierce, Evan & Matt... saying their farewells.

Matt and our Vietnamese tour guide, Mike. Mike sure is a man of short stature... even I was taller than him!