Hanoi and Ha Long Bay

Turns out I can't fit the country of Vietnam into one post. Seems fair enough considering how much I enjoyed it. From Saigon we flew to Hanoi in the north of Vietnam and spent two days there before heading out on a two night cruise through Ha Long Bay. Hanoi was a great city, although the pollution unfortunately took away from some of its charm. It had a very walking old city, with lots of little alleyways that would named for the products they sold their. There was what we called "shoe street". As you can guess the street was covered in backpacks... JUST KIDDING. Checking to make sure you all are paying attention. There was a backpack street however, and I bought a brand new real north face day pack for the insanely cheap price of $15. After two days exploring Hanoi we were off to Ha Long Bay. If I can ever get Picasa or Flikr to work I'll post some pictures cause this place was amazing. It is made up of an estimated 2,000 islets around about 1500 square kilometers. To put a picture in your heads, it looks like there was once a huge island in the middle of the bay, and a bomb hit it, exploding the island into, well 2,000 pieces and the pieces scattered themselves all around the bay, somehow floating above the water. There are various floating villages, in the more sheltered parts of the bay to avoid the typhoons. The people that lived on the lake used to float around from fishing spot to fishing spot, but when Ha Long Bay became a UNECO world heritage site in 1994, the government made these people relocate either to floating villages, or to the mainland. The floating village we visited was a sort of self sufficient kibbutz like place. Each house had a special spot, and a special fish they caught, then the fish would be pooled together and sold as a community, the funds would then be redistributed around the community equally. It seemed to work extremely well and everyone in the village lived fairly equally and happily.

The company we went with specialized with the more off the beaten track places in Ha Long Bay which was awesome because we never ran into that many other people. The food on this boat was incredable. Each meal (excluding breakfast) had at least 5 courses choc-a-bloc with amazing seafood. The highlight of the trip was the final night when we had a bbq dinner in a huge, two cavern cave on an island correctly named "Paradise Island". I expected it to be an average walk in, be able to see the outside cave, but it was completely surrounded by these amazing walls with two entrances. When you were inside the cave, you felt like you were in the center of the island.