Dragons and Melbournites

Wow! What more can I say? Ha Long Bay was absolutely amazingly beautiful. In one spot where we were kayaking through the mountains in an incredibly serene location, I named Ha Long Bay one of my two favourite places in the world (the being a mountain field near Nelson, B.C.).

We (Eliza and I and the Melbourne couple we met on the aeroplane--Davina and Len) departed our hotel just after the breakfast of my last post. The four hour van ride (with an additional four couples [another from Melbourne, a Swiss German couple, a couple from Italy, and a couple who live in German Switzerland but are from Holland and Germany], our driver, and one of our tour guides, Kiem) was fascinating. Again with the "interesting" lack of road rules. When we missed our highway exit, our van driver simply backed up in our lane to get back to the exit (with everyone behind us honking and swerving around us of course). We saw lots of interesting buildings. For the most part, they were thin and long (like Native American longhouses) and made of concrete. The fronts were painted with different facades--some Elizibethan, some Victorian, some Spanish, some French, etc. The sides and back were just left as white concrete. It felt like they were movie sets out of MGM or Universal Studios.

When we arrived at the bay, we were escorted onto a beautiful mini-cruise boat. There, we waited 45 minutes for the captain to check our passports and for a few more people to board (one of which was an American originally from Boston, but who has been working around the world for the last nine years). We then enjoyed a tasty lunch as we departed.

Our first stop was a small cave that we hiked through and then out the other side up a cliff to a magnificent view of the bay. Then we reboarded and went on to the "Cave of Surprise", which is a cave full of rocks that look (completely naturally so they claim) like different animals. The biggest is a dragon in the ceiling who laid down to rest and formed Ha Long Bay. We were led through the caves by our second tour guide, a cute little 22 year old named Chi.

Breakfast again, more later ;)