North Vietnam

After a lazy few days in Laos, we were ready to kick it into high gear again for our exploration of Vietnam. We arrived Sunday night and met up with Eddie, our friend from Michigan who now lives in Japan. The 3 of us headed out for some traditional Vietnamese fare and then to a water puppet show. The water puppets are a traditional Vietnamese art form, started by farmers several hundred years ago. The performers are behind a curtain, in the water, and the acts are performed by puppets spinning around the water. The acts tell traditional stories of Vietnamese villages and life as rice farmers, living near and on the water. Even today, 65% of Vietnamese are still farmers by trade and the water continues to be an important part of every day life. The music was all traditional Vietnamese instruments. We didn’t know what any of them were but they looked like early versions of a banjo, flute, drums and a very interesting harp played with a pick and a hand crank to change the octaves. It was very entertaining, even though it was completely in Vietnamese!

After the show we met up with Eddie’s friend, Holly, also from Michigan but now working in Korea, and the 4 of us stayed up enjoying cheap Vietnamese “bia.”

The next morning we got up early for breakfast and a 3 hour drive to Halong Bay. We awoke to a huge storm with lighting and thunder so loud we thought the hotel would crumble! The storm didn’t break until we were about 30 minutes from Halong Bay and we were blessed with beautiful clear weather for the remainder of the day! Once on the boat we headed out to Halong Bay. This is an enormous area with hundreds of small rock, islands. There are approximately 11,000 people who live on the water in “water villages.” They even have a floating primary school! The area is beautiful and is being considered for one of the 7 natural wonders of the world; it is already a world heritage city. We kayaked around the junk and over to a small beach where we climbed 500 steps to reach a look out to watch the sunset over Halong Bay. Half way up we ran into Jade and Melanie, the friends who flew to Hong Kong with us!! We couldn’t believe it and spent several minutes catching up with them and exchanging restaurant suggestions. After we took pictures and said our goodbyes again, we continued the hike and saw the sun set behind the mountains. It was gorgeous. We kayaked back to the boat with a short detour through a small opening in a mountain and into a “lake” or ocean water completely surrounded by mountains. It was beautiful and we would have liked to stay longer but Shane, unfortunately, ended up with his 2nd migraine of the trip and we had to hurry back to take his medicine. Thankfully we caught it in time and he was able to rejoin the group after about 45 minutes for dinner. The lunches and dinners on the boat were delicious seafood extravaganza, not so good for Eddie who doesn’t eat seafood. He enjoyed fried tofu and pork while we ate prawns, fish, crab and calamari!

That night the boys tried their luck at some fishing off the side of the boat with bamboo poles. Unfortunately, there was no bait and the closest thing they came to catching was a small crab that Eddie managed to convince to climb up his pole and then jump off whenever he pulled it halfway out of the water.

The next morning we had a quick breakfast on the junk and then went out in a bamboo boat, rowed by our guide. We toured through the mountain tunnel again and into the lake so we were able to get some good pictures. We returned to the boat just in time to shower and pack up when the rain started again. The timing was perfect and we headed back to shore for our flight to Saigon.