I’m still getting caught up with our blog so this’ll be short and sweet with lots of captioned pictures 😀

Today we left our hotel after breakfast and headed to Ha Long Bay. It’s approximately a 3 hour drive so since we left around 8:30, we were to have lunch on the boat. The drive itself wasn’t very exciting, quite a bit of countryside with corn fields and banana tree groves.

When we arrived to the harbor, it was packed full of people and other ships returning from their journeys. We had to climb across 2 other boats in order to reach our boat since it got stuck near the back rather than near the dock. We settled into our rooms and set sail before we had lunch. The cabin rooms were actually very nice with wood paneling and complete with your own bathroom and AC unit. Even though the AC didn’t work, it was nice to have a fan and electrical outlets for recharging batteries.

We had a nice lunch on the middle deck, including lots of fresh seafood. After lunch we all went on top deck to relax and bit and take in the sights. We saw the famous “kissing chicks” rocks. We were headed towards some caves which were discovered I believe by the French. It was a trek upwards then into the caves then back down. There were very interesting rock formations.

We headed quickly to a floating fish farm to check out their fresh seafood: fish, crabs, shrimp, and squid! Then we rushed to a site called Titop which is considered one of the most beautiful places to take a picture of Ha Long Bay. It was a steep and difficult climb up those stairs but it was worth it for the view and cool breeze.

The sun had already set so we headed back to the boat for dinner. Again, wonderful seafood for dinner. Since we were docked for the evening we decided to try some night fishing. We were actually trying to fish for squid using these special squid hooks, the have 6 prongs. The squid are attracted to your boat by a bright light that shines underneath the water and once the squid swims by, you’re supposed to yank the hook to catch them…

Unfortunately, none of us were successful but at least we tried. The moon was beautiful as it was recently the full moon but there were few stars out in the evening.

In the morning we would be heading back to Hanoi and then leaving for Singapore. It was so peaceful being out in Ha Long Bay, it’s hard to leave.

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