Halong Bay, Viet Nam - January 23, 2018

Every day is indeed a new adventure!

We missed modern Hanoi. We missed it all together because our limited time here caused us to focus on the historic and culturally rich Old Quarter. We are told we only missed a city area with more modern-looking buildings and more modern, wider streets but everyone agrees it's still much like the Old Quarter, crowded and busy and offering all kinds of small shops and street food. We understand it too is packed with noisy motor scooters, people and cars. They say people on the streets in New Hanoi might dress a little better than those we saw in Old Quarter since they are involved with for office and retail work. Somehow I feel a loss and I'm sorry we did not see New Hanoi for ourselves.

We were picked up by our driver at 8 am. We left the city and drove four and a half hours to Halong Bay which is situated to the north and east of Hanoi. We drove through small town after small town and here's what we saw . . . coal mines, cemeteries (will tell you more about their cemetery and burial custom later), huge coal-fired electrical plants, colorful, perfectly manicured vegetable farms, duck farms, rice paddies, coal mines, marble quarries and all kinds of shops and small restaurants. We passed Thit Cao and Thit Meo restaurants. They specialize in serving dog meat or cat meat - very expensive delicacies here. Most people now a days keep these animals as pets not food; but some people still like to get a group together and make an event of visiting a restaurant and having a dog meat dinner together, especially to celebrate a special event. I cannot imagine!

Because of the coal and marble mines, most streets in towns and villages we drove through look a bit sad and dusty. I asked about all the Karaoke bars we saw- our guide, Tuyen, said those were actually fronts for houses of prostitutes. So were the standalone hotels and the massage parlors. A curtain across the doors often gives away the secret. Prostitution is illegal here but . . . like in so many places, it is overlooked. Most of the residential houses were small, cramped together tightly and in bad repair. Occasionally we passed a multi-story mansion. These usually were homes of the district Party representative.

The road we took from Hanoi to Halong Bay is the road to China; it is busy with trucks carrying goods to China for export. While people drive in two lanes in each direction here, there are no marked dividing lines. Sometimes people drive three abreast if they want to pass. There are very few rules of the road. I do not recommend renting a car here; an experienced driver is a must. We past several coal fired electrical plants and huge, I mean huge brick-making factories, some maybe a quarter-mile long. Apparently the clay in this particular area is especially good for bricks. Then we left the big highway and turned east. Then we began to see oyster farms and pearl farms.

We stopped about half-way through the drive to stretch our legs and take a bathroom break at a place that produces marble statues and all kind of Vietnamese goods. All tour guides do this . . . they stop at a pre-arranged place that offers a nice a snack bar, cleans restrooms and great opportunity to for tourists to spend money. This was a very interesting place for sure. They had a garden of wonderful locally-crafted marble statues for sale. In the grand scheme of things, it's probably the cheapest place in the world to buy a marble statue, that is if you want one. We could have bought a large life-size statue for a couple of thousand dollars and had shipped back home for only about and extra $160. They were beautiful for sure, but I cannot seem to picture a statue in our back yard; I rather like the wooden post with my grandmother's dinner bell mounted on top a bit better. We could also have purchased silk embroidered pictures . . . hand stitched onsite by young women. Some women sit at a table copying a photo, sketching it onto fabric using chalk. Then other women embroider the drawing, stitch by stitch with a tiny needle and fine silk thread to create a vibrantly colored work of art. One picture can take two to three months to complete. Some pictures have stitches so tiny and uniform that it is difficult to tell that the picture was sewn with thread and a real photograph.

We each could have selected a fully-lined silk kimono to take home also sewn there on site, or e could have picked up reasonably priced jade, pearl, sapphire or ruby rings, pendants or other form of jewelry. There were shelves of carved wooden ornaments and colorful lacquerware to tempt tourists. We did not purchase but were completely fascinated with the work the young women were doing. After we left I began to regret that I did not buy a silk table runner. It might have been a nice souvenir that I could actually use; I think it might have looked nice on my Oriental design dining table. Not finished visiting Viet Nam yet, I think I might find another somewhere.

Finally we arrived at Halong to meet our junk, The Valentine Premium, for our three day, two night stay on Halong Bay.

I don't know where we missed this detail in our planning or how much this excursion cost, but Stan and I are on a private junk with seven crew members for the next two nights. We are the only passengers. Yes, we are the boat's exclusive guests! They will cook, clean, entertain and guide us for the next three days! Yikes! (We thought we were on a small boat with three or four other couples that we might dine with and play Monopoly with for the next few days. Again, I say, "YIKES!"

A tender took us to our junk. It turns out the junk's name, Valentine Premium, means we not only get exclusive, personalized service but we also have privacy . . . as if for honeymooners! There is even a big Jacuzzi in our stateroom bathroom on this small boat! Ha!!! We are laughing our bohunks off!! But more importantly, we get do get amazing service and WIFI!!

We settled in and lounged on top deck as we began to cruise out of the harbor. There are many, many boats that conduct overnight sails and still there are many more that offer day cruises only. Our cruise is completely over the top. Aside from the nice accommodations, we never dreamed there was this much beauty and miraculous island formations in the world. The Bay of Halong is on the Vietnam East Ocean (others call this body of water, the South China Sea). It is a beautiful body of water that is filled with tall, pointy or dome-like rocky and green islands. There are over 1600 islands in this bay all formed by the erosion of limestone formations over millions of years.

Even though the sky is still hazy like a cloud on the land, the sun managed to peak through at the top of the sky today. We dozed in teak chaise lounges until lunch was served - soup, salad, steamed Halong Bay shrimp and calamari, and finally fish with vegetables. Dessert was cream cake and fruit. We dozed a bit more. Around three we arrived at Surprise Cave (Hang Sung Sot). We disembarked the junk and the tender and climbed up steep steps on the mountain to the entrance of the cave. This cave was discovered by two French women in 1901 and named it Surprise Cave because of the surprise everyone even today experiences when they enter the three huge auditorium-like caverns inside, each one greater than the last.

Before dinner, the chef visited us and gave us a demonstration of food-carving. He is an accomplished garner as well as an experienced gourmet chef. Right before our eyes he carved a cucumber flower, a tomato skin rose, carrot lilies and an apple swan.

Later, dinner was five-star! All meals are prepared on board by the chef and the ingredients he uses are completely fresh. If we have soup, it has just been made; and the seafood we enjoyed had been caught only earlier today. We had pumpkin soup, clams and shrimp and steak with vegetables. A cream dessert was served but I was so sated, I could not begin to eat it. Stan did!

After dinner, we anchored for the night and slept.