Cruising Hu Long Bay

The V'Spirit

Thursday, June 8 and Friday, June 9

Eating squid

Thursday morning had us up and on a four hour bus ride to Ha Long Bay.  Luke vomited the whole way.  Fortunately for Cindy and me, Nate was Luke's seat partner.  Our arrival at Hu Long Bay had us start with lunch on the boat.  The food was delicious and plentiful.  Our afternoon involved a tour of a huge cave, and then off to Ti Top Island for a swim and a view.  The island was named after a Russian pilot.  The swim was nice, but the water is very warm, and I will assume very polluted.  We then headed back to the boat for dinner, again delicious and plentiful.  The boys had the chance to fish for squid in the evening, but no success.  It was explained that the full moon makes it difficult to spotlight.  Love the rules in this country.

Kissing Rocks, and a bit of boat traffic to see it

Friday had us up early for Tai Chi, of which all our boys got up on their own accord to participate in.  After a big breakfast (of course) we went kayaking.  Our kayaking into a tunnel ended up being an entrance into a massive lake inside the island - stunning!  This was probably the best part of the cruise, as we had close to an hour to kayak around this secluded little part of the bay.  Even though there would have been 40 other kayaks in the area, it was still very peaceful.  We were laughing at the indepth direction our guide had given on how to steer a kayak prior to our going out, but after witnessing the crazy driving of some of the people on the water, now I understand.  One poor Chinese man kept running full out into our boat, apologizing the whole time.  We then got to watch the monkeys.  Nate was laughing how the big monkeys would run behind smaller monkeys, grab them and give them a shaking.  Oh the innocence of it all.  Sex ed in grade 5 is going to be a real shock for him.  We then headed back to the boat for our cooking lessons.  We thought the food we ate from the cooking lesson was lunch, but our mistake.  Our table ended up with lots of left over food.
We then grabbed our bus and returned to our hotel in Hanoi.