The first stop of
our cruise was Ha Long Bay aka the Bay of Descending
Dragon approximately 3 hours drive from Ha
Noi. I have heard about this bay but never had a chance to see it until
this cruise.
We booked the junk boat
tour to see the bay from the cruise line. The junk boat picked us up
directly from the cruise ship. It was drizzling that morning but
fortunately, no heavy rain. We went to the top of the boat to maximize
our view of the bay. The view was breath taking! We saw many stones with
different sizes and shapes. Some stones resemble a fish. Others looked
like a swan. Not surprisingly, there are many tourist boats in the bay. I
saw several boats rushing against each others just to have a closer look
at a fish shape stone regardless of the passengers' safety! I was glad
the captain of our boat kept a safe distance from the crazy crowd. Our
tour guide was a young Vietnamese girl born after the war. She tried hard
to explain the bay history to us using her English with heavy Vietnamese
accents. I gave her credit for doing her homework and gave it her best
shot. One merchant on the boat noticed us as Vietnamese USA citizens. She
occasionally approached us for some proper English vocabulary advice for
the merchandises she was selling to the tourists. We were glad to help
her. During the tour, there wasa small boat going after ours trying to
sell tropical fruits. The mother did the selling and her teenage son was
the captain. Life is tough out there and people are trying to make ends
meet at any given opportunity.
Our tour included a
visit to a cave accidentally discovered by local fishermen in early
2000's. Now the government makes it a tourist attraction with steps and
lightings inside. The cave is somewhat smaller than the ones we had seen
in the USA
but in general, those caves share very similar characteristics and
sceneries. Again, our tour guide tried hard to explain the chemical
components making up the cave. She really did her homework!
After about 3 hours
touring the bay, we were back to the cruise ship. Since we still had a
little time left, we decided to explore Ha Long City
near the port. We didn't have time to go to Ha Long downtown with only
little time left before the cruise ship departure for Da Nang. We decided to try the icons of
Vietnamese food beef noodle soup and egg roll. May be we were in a
tourist area, those foods didn't meet our expectation in term of taste
but looking at the bright side,we didn't get stomach ache after eating
the food! Walking back to the cruise ship, I was thinking of trying
Vietnamese baguette, another icon of Vietnamese street food, but the
baguette shop didn't look that appealing so I passed it.
We were back to our
cruise ship on time catching our dinner and resting ourselves for the
night.
We were ready for
our next stop: Da Nang.
Dennis
Phan 潘家墉
Khai Minh, UCLA and Investools
Alumni
Los Angeles, 10 May 2019
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