Wednesday August 12, 2009

Halong Bay Trip ~

Steve and the kids and I along with my freind Jacqueline and her son Yung Ting all went on a two day trip to HaLong Bay. It is on the

East Coast of Vietnam. I believe Ha Long means "Bay of the Descending Dragon". Legend has it that a mother dragon and her baby came down from Heaven to help the people of Vietnam from their enemies. The dragons formed all the rocks in the bay and that prevented the enemies from reaching the shore.

Let me just start off by saying that the whole trip was a lesson in patience. It was a 4 hour shuttle ride in which the AC didn't work so well. ( Back in the states it would have only taken us an hour to get there..lol) But we had quite the international crowd. Along with our 6, there were 2 girls from Japan, 3 girls from Chile, 2 girls and 1 guy from Barcelona, Spain. We stopped halfway there to take a restroom break and to shop. As soon as we got off the shuttle, ladies were telling us to buy ice cream, which is what Lizzie wanted. They thought that was so funny because the lady said, "Ice Cream" and Lizzie replied "I want some Ice Cream? haha What could I do? So around noon we finally get to the dock and board the boat. It was soooo hot and very humid

and our group was looking forward to our rooms with AC. However, we were told that could not turn on the AC until after dinner. YIKES!!!

.

Lunch...they kept bringing out food. Jacqueline and I were laughing because we were not sure who was going to eat all of it. :) At first I was worried about the kids and the food, but let me just say, you will eat anything if you are hungry enough. HAHA So Lizzie and Josh both had fried scallops, pork pieces, rice, french fries, fruit, and shrimp.

After lunch our tour guide took us to this amazing cave. It was nice and cool and had lots of formations. We then tried to go to a beach for some swimming, but couldn't. So we took the boat to a cove and all of us jumped into the water from the boat. Even Lizzie!! I had to overcome my fear of murky water. LOL But then it started to thunder and lighting so we all got back in the boat.

Dinner was pretty much the same, a ton of food and it was really good. BUT after dinner is when the party started. Dinner was done around 8:00pm and Lizzie was really tired so I went to put her down. That is when the staff pulled out the Karoke machine. I think they all took a turn singing, and I kept hearing clapping and laughter. You could tell they were having a good time. Well the next morning I found out WHY all the guests were clapping and laughing. Josh and Steve had stayed up and Josh danced with ALL THE LADIES!!!! Hee hee. One of the girls from Chili said that Josh was the life of the party. :) That made my heart smile, because you can tell that he is having a hard time on figuring out where he falls into this whole experience. I was just glad that he interacted with all the guests on the boat.

The last activity that we went on was kayaking. Steve and Josh in one and Liz and I in the other. Lizzie LOVED it! We went around all the tall mountains and Steve and Josh actually went into a cave. It rained on us the whole time, but we didn't care. After that it was time to head back to shore and then back to Hanoi.

We will definitely go again, maybe next time in the Fall.