Down By the Bay [UPDATED 2/21/11]

I didn't see any watermelons grow, but some way better stuff.  About three hours outside of Hanoi by van, which came as a great surprise when it picked me up and just kept driving--I thought, then hoped, then prayed it was the van taking me to a nice spacious bus rather than my means of transport with five other people--I arrived at Halong Bay, spotted as a dalmatian with islands, similar to sea stacks in the Olympic peninsula and the craggy isles I saw off the coast of Pylos.  They raise their heads above the water, too rocky for habitation, but there are enough around so they don't get lonely.  I was under the impression that the temperature would be in the mid-seventies, but it hovered closer to arctic.  Bedecked in my shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, the weekend proved very brisk, but once I set foot on land of some kind, the hiking and spelunking soon warmed me right up.

Instead of charming polished wood, like every single other boat I saw, ours was bright orange and blue.

Floating fishing village.

Making the most of my fifteen minutes in the sun.

Misty mountains.

I met two young Australian women in the van who ended up on the same boat as me.  They were taking a last-minute two-week vacation through Laos, Hanoi, Halong Bay and Sa Pa.  Thank goodness for them, or I would have been all by my lonesome with nine sixty-year-old Germans and one of their Thai girlfriends who must have been younger than me...It was seriously oogy.  The Aussies and I spent our entire twenty four hours on the boat trying to figure out what the other Germans thought about this arrangement, if Herr Geriatric Creeperstein had just picked her up on his Southeast Asian travels or if they'd been travel companions for a while.  God, how I wanted not to think about it, but found it difficult with her four-inch, fake Christian Louboutin boots staring me in the face.

Serious ooginess. :/

Fortunately, there was plenty to distract me.  First, we had a humongous lunch on our way to an island cave.  It was something of a trek up to the entrance, but the views were lovely.  I was expecting a pitling little cave, but it was more of a cavern, large tunnels opening to vast and expansive cathedrals of mineral.  The most popular formation was called Good Morning Rock, which the boat captain/guide described as a finger, but which everyone else (including the gaggle of young Brits in front of me who couldn't stop giggling after their first sight of it) would say resembled something a bit more...phallic...thus the name.

Holey giant island, Batman!

This is the cave we actually spelunked.

Small interior lake.

I'm still not impressed with their weird lighting choices.

If you look closely just right and down of the center, you can see a "finger-like" protrusion lit with red light--that is Good Morning Rock.

Here's a slightly blurry version of Good Morning Rock, in case you couldn't spot it.

The views outside the cave were even more gorgeous, and I can only imagine how breath-taking they would be with sun out in full force, glistening off the turquoise water.  It was only broken by these odd, kitschy trashcans.  At first glance, I thought it was a penguin, one of the Aussies thought it was a dolphin, but we finally decided it must--for an as yet unknown reason--be a killer whale.  Just one of those weird things touristy sites think tourists like, I guess.

It looks like I've been photo-shopped onto a beautiful bay background. ;)

Trash can. Now you know as much as I do.

There are a bunch of these women who row about from tour boat to boat selling snacks, real food, and shell and pearl.

No one in their right mind was going for a swim that afternoon, and although I would have been up for it, no one on my boat wanted to kayak either.  I was neither going to guilt someone into going with me (for fear it'd be the awkward, somewhat brusque ship captain) nor attempt to kayak for the first time by myself, so afternoon passed into evening from the window of my cabin.  After a huge dinner with seafood and rice and veggies carved into flowers, during which the Aussies and I compared diction (food baby=poo baby, bangs=fringes, condoms=frangers), I snuggled under two comforters and awoke early to a dim, drizzly morning.

Other, more adventurous bay visitors.

Breakfast, thank goodness, was comparably light, and we then set out for an obviously man-made beach at the base of a trail leading up a spectacular three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the entire bay.  It was so expansive, I just HAD to take another video for y'all. :)

The Beach (sans Leo DiCaprio).

It wasn't the ideal trip, with a lack of familiar faces and warmth, but Halong Bay is apparently gorgeous under any weather conditions.  I got to relax, stuff myself with scrumptious food, and meet some really cool people in addition to the views I'd been anticipating.  The highlight was most definitely at the little beach Saturday morning, the only moment the whole trip I was properly attired.  I abandoned my flip-flops and squished my toes in the sand, letting the Pacific water bathe my feet in water of a surprisingly comfortable temperature.  That experience was easily worth twenty four hours of shivering and teeth-chattering.

Finally, on an unrelated note, I updated Campuchia and From Russia With Love with the promised pics and videos at last.  I'm really starting to get lazy. :/

So, on 2/21/11 I'm also updating this post with news of a TRAGEDY that occurred last Thursday 2/17 at Halong Bay.  A ship sank, the largest recorded accident at the bay, killing twelve of the twenty seven people on board, including two Americans, one of whom is a recent graduate from one of the schools I've applied to for this fall.  I can't believe I was there just five days before this happened and just how lucky I am.  Hopefully the government will now be cracking down on ship safety regulations.  They should have been strongly enforced this whole time considering the vast numbers of people, especially foreigners, who the visit the bay every single day.  I'm one lucky girl. :/

Takin' It Eeeeeeasy

In the immortal words of the Eagles, things have been pretty chill the last couple days.  The hustle and bustle of Hanoi are steadily returning to full throttle, while I've been slowing down and trying to regain my momentum after Cambodia's monumental marathon.

Tuesday was supposed to be simple.  I was going to take a nice leisurely stroll around the east side of Truc Bach Lake and up to the north side of West Lake on a very important mission: find Hanoi Boutique Tailoring (located in someone's house) and start the process of having two dresses made from silk and cotton I picked up in Phnom Penh.  Easier said than done, my friends, as the trek from our apartment to Hanoi Boutique Tailoring was way longer in person than it appeared either on the map or through the balcony window overlooking the lakes.  After an hour and a half of squeezing through traffic, perilously traversing along the edges of deep ditches, and asking eight different people for directions only to receive eight different responses, I made it, tired and frazzled.  But the tailor, Nhung, was very hospitable and helpful, especially considering she had a baby just three weeks ago.  (Bella, and she's super cute! :))  My dresses should be done two weeks from this past Tuesday, giving me a rather slim window in which to make final fittings and adjustments.  I can always get Kyle or Roman to pick up and ship them to the States, but I'm looking for slightly more instantaneous gratification than that.  Fingers crossed Nhung will come through.

The upside to that wild and crazy schlep was that I got to pass through the "Western area" filled with shops with English names and people who look like me...I didn't realize how much I missed that.  I stopped at Segafredo Cafe to rest my weary bones on the way, and discovered carrot cake, which is like a rare-colored diamond over here--it's so hard to find--and espresso granita, which I languidly sipped while thinking of my barista buddies. :)  On the way back, I found a grocery store and scored some Honey Nut Cheerios and Smacks cereals--SWEET!  But I figure it's okay, since I made up for it with eel and rabbit for dinner.

In addition to Tuesday's Western food extravaganza, I had a bacon cheeseburger yesterday.  That's right, I couldn't go four weeks without a burger.  But it wasn't the burger itself that I desired, and thank goodness for that, since I have to admit it was sub-par, even for my low-set expectations.  Rather, I was longing for what the burger represented, something familiar and as etched into my psyche as the American flag, Saturday morning cartoons and the sound of my sister's voice.  I won't say I'm homesick, but neither can I in good conscious say that I haven't been thinking about home and the people who make it lately.

The sun came out yesterday.  Feeling its warmth on my face was just what I needed, and, like a long-slumbering lizard, I was energized by its heat.  I strolled in sunglasses with my face turned toward the sky, a cat on a mission of no great importance without a care as to its success, just simply enjoying a lazy day in the sun.  I managed to make my way to St. Joseph's Cathedral on...wait for it...Church Street.  Compared to other, older cathedrals I've seen, it's interior architecture isn't significant, but the fact that it exists in the middle of Hanoi drew my curiosity, an everyday exoticism.  The Vietnamese government aren't particularly fond of its existence, churning up deep-seeded feelings about French involvement here, but the church casts its impressive shadow on bustling shops and cafes in the immediate vicinity.  Inside, the cathedral was fairly quiet, though, and cool and still, novel concepts for Hanoi and just what I needed.

Tomorrow I'm going to Halong Bay.  It was the first and only thing on my list when I arrived in Vietnam, and the only thing I would have been sad to miss before leaving.  I set out at eight in the morning, take a bus, then I'm on a boat for Friday afternoon and night and Saturday morning.  This will be a solo expedition (Kyle's planning a going-away party for Sunday evening and Roman's...doing his Roman thing), but it's a ten-cabin boat, and I think I can put my quiet shyness aside for forty-eight hours and try to make some short-term friends.  What's the worst that can happen, right? ;)

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it! :D

Highlight, highlight, highlight...hmmm.  While walking around the Cathedral, I found this tiny little shop that specializes in jewelry made with insects in resin.  The bugs they've chosen are actually really cool and pretty, so it makes you want to take a second look rather than shying away in disgust.  I got someone a present there, a bug bracelet, but that person shall remain nameless so you can all hope and dread that it's for you.