Vietnam Trip Day 3 & Day 4

On our third day in Vietnam, we got up early and drove about 3.5 hours to Halong Bay.  At the halfway point, we stopped for a rest at a conveniently placed huge souvenir shop where I think they take all the tourists.  They were even making some of the crafts there.  We really liked these embroidered pictures that you can see being made in this photo.  Each one is hand stitched.

Here is one of two pictures we bought with the girl who made it:

We then arrived at our boat for an overnight cruise on Halong Bay.  Here's a photo from our boat of the area that we left from.  We drove over that bridge to get there.  It was a pretty cloudy day, so the photos are hazy.

We had a really nice cabin with a balcony.  I posted pictures of the cabin on facebook.  Here is a photo of the dining room:

The scenery was beautiful. It reminded me of the scenery from the previous day, but on a larger scale.  The cloudy, haziness just added to the whole surreal experience of it all.  Halong Bay has 1969 small limestone islands.

Later that afternoon we visited one of four floating fishing villages in this bay.  About 300 people live in this village.  There is even a school for the young children.  Older children must go to the mainland for school, but many do not as they go into the fishing industry.  We were taken by rowboat on a tour of the village.  The men of the village fish and the women work in the tourism industry.

Here are some photos of the houses in the village.

There were quite a few kids.  We saw them go from house to house using the boats that were in between the houses.  Every one has a generator and all the houses had TV antennas.

 

After the village tour, it was back to our ship for dinner, which was fabulous.  After dinner, you could go to the back of the ship and try to fish for squid.  Max tried, but didn't catch anything.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast and then went to the Hang Sun Sot Cave on one of the bigger islands.  Here's a photo of where we were heading to.  We walked up about 200 stairs.  They told us in case some folks couldn't do it. 

This next photo is a view of the harbor from the ledge in the previous photo:

It was really hard to get any photos inside the cave but here's a couple.  This first photo shows a walkway inside the cave which is much bigger than it looks.

After we finished the cave tour and were walking back to the smaller boat that would take us to our "junk" boat, we saw six monkeys on the side of the limestone wall.  So cool.

 

Here's a photo of our "junk" boat "Victory Star" on our way back to it:

 

Once we got back to the boat, we had a really nice brunch and then packed up our stuff and returned to the mainland.  Once there, we were met by our guide and driver who took us to the Hanoi airport (a four hour drive).  At that point, we had to say goodbye to our favorite guide and to the north part of Vietnam and we were off to the central part.  After a one hour flight we arrived in Danang.  We were met by our new tour guide and driver who drove us to our hotel in Hoi An.  We arrived at the hotel just in time to catch the last shuttle bus to the old town.  We had a really nice dinner, walked around the old town for just a bit and then caught the bus back to the hotel.  Really nice evening in Hoi An. 

Love to you all!

Karen