Ha Long Bay

Well, I’m a little late in telling you about last weekend. But better late than never. We went to Ha Long. It’s about a 3 hour drive east from Hanoi if you don’t stop. We, however, did stop....a lot. A van picked our whole crew up at the hotel at 7:15 a.m. on Saturday morning. The travel agent was there to make sure everything went just right. We loaded up luggage for our little overnight trip, and we were off.

About 15 minutes after starting, we stopped at the travel agent’s office and were motioned to get off the van. Apparently, we were to wait for another van that would take us all the way to Ha Long. We waited a few minutes and boarded another van. After 2 hours of picking up other passengers, we finally got on our way. Let me explain though that this van was a little bigger than a 15 passenger but it had about 25 very small seats that were very close together. And the air was not working well to say the least.

Oh well, we wanted to make the best of our little adventure. We were just excited to see the natural beauty of Ha Long Bay. After a 4 hour bus ride, after the 2 hours of picking up passengers, we arrived. And it was beautiful. I wasn’t expecting so many tourists. I don’t know why, but I had envisioned just our team at this remote, quiet place on the beach of Vietnam. I had that totally wrong. There were hundreds of tourists boarding boats for the weekend.

We boarded our boat and got settled in for the weekend. For $43 a person, it was a good deal. We had nice rooms. And the food was decent. The scenery was outstanding. And we were able to go kayaking in the ocean.

The only downside was the 4 hour bus ride back with 50 people on the bus and there was absolutely no air conditioning. It was in the heat of the day so it was really rough. But we made it back safe and sound.