Ha Long Bay

We found out yesterday that we've been an hour ahead of everybody else here in Vietnam. It's not that we've been wrong, it's that the entire country doesn't care about daylight savings time, even though it's very much active here.

We spent two scorching days in Hanoi and were ready to hit the waters at the world famous Ha Long Bay.

After a 3 hour ride on a van with members of our tour group, we arrived at the port city of Haiphong, where we continued our journey to the bay on a huge boat. Much more luxurious than the first Ha Long bay trip I went on, but that doesn't say much, because when it's 200% humidity, and air conditioning won't get turned on until 8pm, nothing can be too comfortable. The first day was mostly about relaxing, but again, hard to relax when you are soaked in your own sweat and you have nowhere to hide. Dave took some cool pictures of our visit to the "Amazing Caves" (actual name), which I'd seen before but this time around, I got to experience a paradox - inside the cave was cool, as in, temperature, but we were more sweaty than we'd ever been. I didn't think you could sweat even more in a low-temperature area! 900% humidity, perhaps?

We were fortunate to have a great group of people onboard, in particular a couple from England that has been hilarious to hang out with - they have given us new perspective on how normal citizens of other countries see the United States: it's pretty easy to poke fun of us...

Other highlights:

• Incredible seafood. It doesn't get much better than fresh crab, clams, and prawns.
• Kayaking the bay - being that close to the surface of the water, with nothing but huge limestone islands all around you is a memory we won't forget.
• Trekking the jungles - I didn't appreciate almost walking mouth-open into the biggest spider I've ever seen in the wild, but being scared for my life for a good 40 minutes was pretty cool.
• Cycling Cat Ba National Park - a bit rough at times on a single-gear mountain bike from 1920, but it was all part of the fun.
• Watching Dave and the other boys jump into the water from the top of the boat, and narrowly escaping jellyfish wrath every time. Don't worry mom! We hear these guys only "hurt horribly for about a minute", no actual neurological damage. But still. I can swim, maybe 30 seconds at a time, so I'm not sure I'd ever be able to survive getting hit by one of these guys (there are a TON of them everywhere you look this time of year). Getting a little nervous about "deep water soloing"...
• Sleeping on the boat was better than expected. You have to ignore the cockroaches a bit, and the fact that you have to shower over a toilet, but waking up to an early morning thunderstorm and realizing where you are is an incredibly peaceful experience.
  

We're going to meet our tour group soon for dinner, but one final note: I'm glad Dave still wants to be married to me after so much...sweating.