Today we left the hotel at 8:00 to board our "junk" boat for a bay cruise. We had no idea how wonderful today would be! Ha Long Bay is one of the natural wonders of the world; it was so beautiful. The bay is full of a maze of rocky cliffs jutting up out of the water. There are more than 1,000 limestone islands and islets in 1,500 square miles of bay. There are these bizarre rock sculptures that jut drastically from the water. It almost looks like someth...

Today we left the ship at 3:45am to catch our flight to Hanoi, Vietnam. On the plane we had dim sum for breakfast, which was interesting, and we arrived in Hanoi around 8:00am. We have a wonderful tour guide: he told us to call him Mango because his Vietnamese name is to hard to pronounce. He is spending the entire 3 day trip with us and is full of fascinating information about Vietnamese culture and history. He is very honest about Vietnam which surprised us bec...

We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam yesterday. We traveled up the Saigon River for about 2 hours to get to the city and it was a beautiful trip. It probably sounds lame, but it looked just like it did in all of the movies and pictures we have seen. It is very humid and warm here and the vegetation is very lush and the most beautiful green. After we wound our way to the port we set out with a group of theatre students to see a Vietnamese Water Puppet Theatre ...