Another 3 hour bus ride to board our small cruise ship for a tour of Ha Long Bay. Our ship is a little aged but perfectly suitable with nice little staterooms and a great sun deck. The capacity is about 20 and we are full. We were served a delightful seafood lunch with prawns and calamari. (Unfortunately the food went straight downhill from there!) We cruised through almost 2000 gorgeous rock islands, some large enough to house a village, some just little blips on the bay’s surface. The peacefulness of cruising past hundreds and hundreds of rock mountains in the water was the perfect antidote for Hanoi’s “city”ness.

The limestone here is either younger or stronger than the James Bond islands in Thailand because they are not “eaten away” as much here. But they are still beautiful and massive!

The funniest thing…there are 3 people here who are from Boulder!! A young man and his girlfriend have been travelling for about 2 months and his mother joined them for the Vietnam portion. A very small world indeed!

After a couple hours on the move, we stopped at a beach for a kayak and a swim.

The evening activities included a lesson in wrapping spring rolls, squid fishing (no one caught anything) and karaoke with only the Vietnamese passengers interested. We spent the evening trading traveling stories with the Boulder couple and a lovely pair of young women from the UK. Supposedly wrapping a good spring roll is a very important skill to show one’s love for someone so all the men made a spring roll for their loves.

After a quick tai chi lesson and a pitiful breakfast, a cave tour was on the schedule. I still have not recovered from the Perfume Pagoda and the day of walking Hanoi; the cave is, of course, up a long steep flight of stairs and when I found out how crowded it was, I was glad I had passed and stayed on board to blog and write postcards.

The bay is quite clogged up with cruises; I heard there are 40 different companies to choose from and about 900 boats between them. But the difference between here and Aleppy in India where we rode the houseboat is that in Vietnam they have a genuine interest in protecting the environment, unlike the Indians. Plus this is a UNESCO Heritage site and the bread and butter of many so they have a vested interest in keeping the bay clean. The beach we were on yesterday was pristine.

The oyster farm is where they grow various types and sizes strictly for the pearls. They actually implant the oysters with a membrane harvested from other oysters to encourage pearl growth. Only about 50% of the oysters live and only about 15% of them have pearls of any value.

Later in the day we were transferred to another boat because we were heading to Cat Ba Island and the rest on the boat were going back to shore. We made a quick visit to Cat Ba National Park. We were given the option of riding bicycles or taking an electric car. The guide described the ride as very hilly so we took the car. Perspective is everything; it was flat as a pancake! But the park is beautiful and we got to try a fish pedicure au naturel! Man, the nibbling was so much more intense than at the spas; we could hardly keep our feet in the water!

Then a visit to Monkey Island for a swim. The water was fabulous; the sand fine and beautiful and the monkeys mischievous!

A bungalow on Nam Cat Island was our home for the evening. The flat part of the island was only big enough for about 20 bungalows and a restaurant. Man, it was heavenly. With the rocks as our entertainment and a Nam Cat Island Special (or two) as our refreshment, life and our thoughts slowed to a snail’s pace. We considered staying an extra night but the weather forecast encouraged us to head back to Hanoi the next day.

Back in Hanoi, again, we headed into the Old Quarter for the night market. It was drizzling and the traffic was crazy and loud and I was reaching my irritation point for big cities. We headed to the coffee shop where we got the Egg Cream coffee on the food tour. The place looked like there had been a riot; sunflower seeds were everywhere. Who knows what the hell happened there? So, we are drinking our coffee and 2 young girls come up to us and say they are students and would like to practice their English and did we have a few minutes. We knew that this was a possible scam: they offer to give you a free tour of the city to practice their English then you end up buying them meals or they give you a sob story and you give them money. But I looked at them and realized they were way too young for that so we said sure. We chatted with them for about 15 minutes and they were very sweet. They asked what kind of food we ate in America and did we have any traditional clothing and which part was the prettiest. Buzz noticed one of their mothers sitting over in the corner watching approvingly. It was a really nice experience and I got over being mad at Hanoi.

Next Stop: Ninh Binh.