After our last night in Hanoi, we woke up early to catch the bus to Halong Bay. We hopped in a minibus with about 15 other people — all cool and interesting from all over the world, between the ages of 23 and 45, and took the 4 hour ride to the bay. From there we got on a boat, were assigned our rooms (Seth and I somehow got the only really nice room with a big window on the second floor, instead of down below) and ate lunch while driving out to the bay. After lunch we all went above deck and took in the scene. It was breathtaking.

There are about 2,000 limestone cliffs sticking straight up out of the water, covered in their own ecosystems. I really don’t know how trees grow straight out of rocks, but they do here. Halong bay was formed over the last 500 million years by the shifting of tectonic plates. But according to Vietnamese legend, when Vietnam was just starting to become a country, there were many people who wanted it. So the gods sent dragons to the shore and they shot gems and jade out of their mouths, which turned into little islands to form a massive wall against the invaders. The mother dragon and her children decided to live in Halong Bay to oversee the peacekeeping of the Earth.

We went to see a cave that the tour guide called the “Surprise cave!” And he didn’t tell us why it was a surprise until the end. The surprise turned out to be … more cave. It was really cool though, and well lit for uncoordinated tourists.

He said when a girl came to the cave one time to study it, she was surprised that when you walked through, you came to three chambers, each bigger than the next. The fact that the surprise was cave inside of a cave did not seem very creative to me. But in the first chamber, we saw some different formations that looked like animals. In the second chamber, there was a formation that looked like a Buddha! Before we walked into the third chamber, our guide Daniel said “OK, we’re going into the third chamber and just so you know, you’re going to see a formation and I want you to use your IMAJATION when you see it! IMAJATION. Remember, I’m not going to tell you.”  So We were all like, “OK Daniel. We got it.” We walked into the third, biggest chamber which was lit up in different beautiful colors and saw a, ehm, cannon? Sticking out of one of the columns. At the bottom of the cannon were two big …cannon balls. As if the cannon had shot a cannon ball into the ceiling, there was a hole exactly where that sperm-I-mean-cannon-ball would have gone. We didn’t need to use much imajation for that one.

“Cannon” on the right

After walking through the “surprise cave!”, we did some kayaking around the cliffs for 40 minutes. It was surreal. The water was a warm, calm turquoise and the cliffs just towered above us. Seth and I went under one through a tiny hole in the bottom  and came out on the other side to total peace and quiet with no sound except our voices echoing off the cliffs and the water gently hitting our kayak.

I will admit that, about halfway under the cliff I thought to myself, “if this thing decides to fall, there is absolutely no way out” but it only took about 30 seconds to go under the cliff and we made it out the other side. But I really couldn’t believe how much it felt like a dream. Then after that we went to one of the beaches and swam until the sun set on the horizon. There were monkeys playing on the cliff next to the beach, schools of fish swam near the people in the water in jumping waves and there was a bar at the beach where you could sit under a straw umbrella and watch it all go down. At one point Seth and I just went into a fit of maniacal laughter about how we were swimming on a beach at a UNESCO world heritage site and not teaching 50 classes per week in Korea.

That night back on the boat, we got tipsy with our new friends, went squid fishing, I ate a passion fruit (delicious!) and Seth and I carried the karaoke party until nobody could stand it anymore. 2 years in Korea made me forget how shy people can be at karaoke.

pano beach shot

The next morning after breakfast, we went to a pearl museum on the water. We learned about how they harvest pearls and get oysters to be more likely to produce them. First they grow the oysters for two years, then they kill one and take out the part of the oyster that’s most likely to produce a pearl. They then inject that part deep into another oyster, and let that oyster grow a few more years. Seth got to pick out a potentially-ready oyster from a basket, and we watched a woman open it and…. it was dead. And rotten. It had probably died in the injection process. So he got to pick another one and… it had a perfect pearl! Daniel told us that usually 30% of the oysters have pearls and of those 1 in 3 have good enough quality pearls to make into jewelry.

Seth’s pearl (did not eat)

So Seth did a pretty good job, but wasn’t allowed to keep the pearl, which is fair. After the pearl museum, we took a cooking class and learned how to make Vietnamese spring rolls! If I remember correctly, Daniel mixed together strips of green papaya, spring onion, mushroom, ground pork, garlic and egg in a bowl. We then rolled them up into dampened rice paper. The cook fried them up until they were golden brown and we ate them for lunch. Next it was time to go back to Hanoi, where we had some final Hanoi-style pho bo before jumping on a bus to Hoi An. Most of the group stayed for 2 nights, which we wish we had done because (A) there were beach bungalows involved and (B) they were all really cool people and it would have been fun to hang out with them a little longer. But oh well. If anyone reading this blog is going to Halong Bay, stay for 2 nights! Or a week. It was just unbelievable.

Henna leftover from Kathmandu, too!

I think when we got the details from the woman booking our bus to Hoi An for us, I heard the words “nine to ten hours.” That sounds bad, but it was an overnight bus and the seats are beds! We had heard bad things about these buses because they had erratic drivers, but after two 5-hour cramped, hot, bumpy bus rides in Nepal last week, the Vietnamese bus was a walk in the park — it had a bathroom, air conditioning, a TV and wifi. So we slept on the bus overnight and if you don’t count the guy snoring next to Seth, or the man who decided to sleep right next to my bed on the floor (making my midnight bathroom run a bit complicated), it was a pretty successful night overall. The bus left at 6 so I figured we’d get to Hoi An in the wee hours of the morning. Ah. But it turned out not to be “nine to ten hours” but rather “NINETEEN HOURS.” You can imagine my disappointment when the sun shone on southern Vietnam at 11AM and I desperately wanted to go outside, but had to stay exactly where I was: reclined on the same stupid bus, with the battery dead on my tab and phone and thus no books to read.

But we made it eventually and now we’re in Hoi An, which is another paradise in Vietnam. More on that next time!