Activity level: 🌶️ 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Modes of transportation: 🚌🚢🛥️👟
We missed our bus slightly (our concierge told us 8:00 and they came at 7:45), but they looped back around for us.
We didn’t get the best night’s sleep because we had a snafu. Sarah thinks she saw a cockroach scurry away near her bag, and neither of us likes them very much. So we ended up sort of sleeping in fear, and leaving the lights on (and our bags closed) so they wouldn’t walk too freely around the room. People have told us we’d better get used to it for India, but that’s a bridge we’ll cross later. (Editor’s note: boy do we cross that bridge in India…)
It was about a 2.5 hour ride to Ha Long, and we had a guide who gave us a little history of Vietnam and Hanoi on the drive. Not all of his jokes landed (like when he said he only regretted marrying his wife a “little bit”), but he was very knowledgeable and it made the ride more interesting.
On the way, one of the stops was the Ha Long Bay oyster farm, where they seed oysters and harvest pearls. They gave us a tour of the operation, even demonstrating the “surgery” and seed implantation in front of us. Apparently, the smaller pearls take about 1-2 years to form, with some of the larger ones taking 3-5. It was fascinating!
We finally made it onto the boat (via a smaller boat) and we checked into our room. Lunch was ready for us, so we sat at a table with two women who turned out to be Taiwanese. We had a great lunch of fish, clams, squid, among other things (the food was fantastic), and we started to make our way into the bay.
Next, we went up to the top deck to hang out and enjoy the views while we sailed through the bay. We ended up making friends with a couple from Seattle who quit their jobs and were going a 4 month long trip through Asia (Editor’s note: their trip ended up lasting almost a year!). It was great to meet other people on the tour since there were only 14 of us on the boat.
Our first stop was a cave called Surprising Cave or HANG SÚNG SOT, which was surprisingly huge (way bigger than any of the ones we saw in Belize). It was pretty cool walking through—it was fairly built up and our guide gave us a tour of the different formations and their names.
After that, they dropped us off at Titop island, where we hiked approximately 450 steps to the top and got pretty views of the bay. It was a stepmaster kind of day.
When we made it down. We had a little time left, so we relaxed in the beach.
At the boat, we relaxed on the top deck for a happy hour and made friends with an Italian couple who was on vacation in their offseason. We talked all about travel, and they were pretty chill. The staff led us all down to the dining room for some dinner, where they made us sit at a table by ourselves (we weren’t sure why).
They ended up making a small speech thanking us for celebrating our honeymoon with them, giving us sunflowers, and making us espresso martinis. It was so nice, and it made the cruise feel really special. The food was great too, with about seven different dishes of seafood that were all tasty and delicious.
The tour guide said we had two options for after dinner: squid fishing or karaoke. As soon as they said karaoke, the Taiwanese women looked at Eric (and he pointed back).
We first started with the squid fishing with most of the boat, but we didn’t have much success (and apparently almost nobody does).
Since we weren’t having any luck, we decided to go up to the top deck for karaoke. It turned out to be a few people’s first time, so people were reluctant to go first.
So Eric sang “Let It Go” and started it all off. From there, everyone ended up singing. One of the Taiwanese ladies was a pro, and knew almost all the major English karaoke hits. We tried to find songs everyone knew, so we ended up playing lots of international hits (with dances where appropriate) like “Gangnam Style”. Owen, from Seattle, requested “Cotton Eyed Joe” and we even did a full hoedown dance (which apparently spans cultures – from Taiwan, to Italy, to USA) We ended up staying up drinking until around midnight, which was the latest in the bay. Sarah even bought a round of shots, which was a terrible idea.
Earlier in the night, we could hear competing boats, but we outlasted them all (and hopefully didn’t keep anyone up). The karaoke first-timers all agreed that they were hooked.
We crashed pretty hard after that. So with an early morning ahead of us, we chugged water and tried to get some sleep.
Last image is failing to load but here’s the caption so you get the gist
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