Ha Long Bay

Thursday Ha Long Bay. We drove through the crazy traffic on the road toward China. It took a long time to get through the city including about 10 minutes at one grid locked intersection. The road took us past a fairly industrial zone, including a huge Canon factory. After about an hour we were in rice paddies, passed a huge coal mine and coal fired power station. The town nearby was covered in coal dust but people still sell all their clothes and cosmetics out of the front rooms of their 5 storey houses. Even though land is not such an issue here, the houses are still very narrow and 5 to 7 storeys high. Looks odd when one is on its own. Approaching Ha Long Bay there are some small limestone carsts on the land. The town is developing rapidly with a lot of hotels being built. We got on our boat, a small floating hotel, and one of about 100 waiting to take tourists. It was really comfortable and we soon settled in to lunch. We had a crew of 5 people cooking, cleaning and driving the boat.

The day was very misty and we were worried we wouldn't see much but soon we were amongst the most beautiful mountains rising out of the sea. We sailed along then came to a cave high up on one of the mountains. We docked the boat and all got off to go through the cave, not sure what to expect. It started off small, then we went through a small gap and it opened up into something the size of about 2 football fields. Various armies have hidden in here over the years from the French and the Americans. On the way back to the boat we saw some monkeys up in the jungle. A couple of us took up the offer to go kayaking and we set off past a whole lot of boats, past some sort of toll gate to a lagoon, secluded amongst all the other mountains. It was like a lake in the middle of the sea. Incredibly beautiful. We paddled around for a while, enjoying the calm. We came across a rather large jelly fish in the middle. We headed back, glad we had a crew member as a guide, cause we didn't know which ship was ours and it was getting dark. We enjoyed a gin and tonic and a lovely meal, then we all went to bed fairly early, some jet lagged Americans who endured big delays getting here. One woman from England has not arrived yet, due to the Heathrow thing. Hopefully she will join us in Hanoi.