March 5!!

We have had an interesting  and wonderful last couple of weeks! Last week we went to Ha Long Bay and had a wonderful time there.

The first night of that excursion was spent on the Luxury Imperial Cruise ship in a large room with a private bathroom. We got to see an enormous cave with huge, old formations called Surprising Cave. The cave was totally dead from all the hands touching the formations, but it was really cool. Who doesn't love a good cave? When we emerged from the cave we headed to the place where the kayaks were kept and got to spend and hour kayaking around huge limestone karsts. It was fun but I was soaked and ready to get out of the kayaks when the hour was done.

We met some fellow Americans on the boat, Janice (sp?) and Adam and had a great time eating dinner with them and talking over a few drinks until we went to bed. The music that the crew of the ship put on for us to listen to was hilarious. First, it was the original "Killing Me Softly" and a mix of other similarly old songs. Then, when that cd started skipping, we asked one of the crew members to change it so he put on some techno music with a dvd of the Victoria's Secret fashion show to accompany it. Finally, when we couldn't take any more techno and lingerie, he put on Lady GaGa's latest masterpiece of an album. Probably not the music we would have picked if we were the DJs, but it was so funny, we couldn't complain.

The next morning, we had breakfast with our new friends and then said our goodbyes to them before we got on another boat. This boat took us to Cat Ba National Park where we got to ride bicycles around the island and take a hike through the jungle. We saw a lot of interesting flora that we were unfamiliar with. Unfortunately, our guide, Frank (a lot of the guides and hotel employees give themselves English names to help the tourists pronounce and remember them), despite his adequate English, was pretty inept and never did really explain what anything was to us. However, we still got to go on a hike through the JUNGLE OF VIETNAM, so it's hard to complain about a crappy guide.

When we were done with our hike, we biked back to the boat, which took us to our bungalows. The bungalows were on a very small beach wich we walked in about 5 minutes. However, once we were done with the main beach, there was nothing else to do so we went exploring under the stilts of our bungalow and found a whole separate beach on the other side that, based on the amount of coral and shells we found there, looked like not very many people discover this spot during their stay there. We found a tide pool with 14 starfish in it and so much coral I can't even explain it. I never ever thought I would pick something up off the sand on a beach and say, "oh, it's just another piece of coral," and put it back down. It was pretty awesome.

That night we had a buffet style dinner, followed by a fire on the beach. We met an older woman named Nancy, who leads a very interesting life. Her husband died a few years ago and her only child is grown, so Nancy takes her retirement pension, and the money she got when her husband died and uses it to travel the world. In the U.S., she lives in a motor home and travels all over the country. She has been to 45 countries and 49 states and her goal is all 50 states and 100 countries. She was traveling with a Taiwanese woman she met on a tour in Egypt a few years ago. She was certainly a free spirit. I don't know if I could ever live like her but I definitely admire her for having the guts to go out and do what she wants to do.

The next day, we left the tour group and headed to Cat Ba Town for the night. Right now is the lowest of their tourist season so we were just about the only people there. That day we went to some beaches and collected more shells and coral. After dinner at the hotel, we took my mom back to her room and went out on the town. We first went to get a massage, but the place we went to was very strange. It was just a middle aged man and an old woman with a couple of massage tables upstairs in their house. It was a very uncomfortable and weird hour, but it only cost us a total of $12 so at least we didn't blow tons of money on it. Throughout the day we had seen several neon signs advertising karaoke, so next we thought we would go get a drink and sing a few songs. The first place we came to with a karaoke sign out front just looked like some lady's house at the entrance but she pointed to the sign and pointed upstairs and waved at us to come in, so we did. she took us up a couple flights of stairs to a door that had flashing colored lights and loud music behind it but we didn't go in that door. We kept going up the stairs. A few flights later and we came to a second door with the same flashing lights and even louder music. At this point we were thinking, "ok, cool, this must be some kid of multi level bar like the hardwear bar in Harrisburg. This is gonna be great." Finally, after even more stairs, we came to a third door with the loudest music of all. The woman opened the door and instead of the raging bar scene we were expecting, it was an empty room with white paint on the walls and no decorations. On the wall next the the door there was a flat screen tv and a karaoke machine with a vietnamese man squatting in front of it, singing at the top of his lungs with the mic volume all the way up. Dustin told the lady we were looking for a bar and she told us to stay. We exchanged one look and booked it down the stairs and out of the building. It was a hilarious experince, but I don't think we'll be hitting up any more karaoke joints any time soon!

The next morning, we checked out of the hotel and spent the whole day traveling by boat and bus back to Ha Noi. On the boat we got to take a cooking lesson and learn how to make yummy spring rolls. Since we've been back in Ha Noi, we've gotten to see the Temple of Literature, the Fine Arts Museum, and the Hoa Lo Prison, a.k.a. the Ha Noi Hilton, where John McCain was held as a POW in the Vietnam War. It was really interesting and sad. The portion of the prison where they talked about the American War, however, was a propaganda machine. They made it look like American POWs had a good old time in the prison and spent their whole time there playing ping pong and chess. There was a video on loop and the last thing it said was "The American's should not forget that they were lucky to have been war prisoners in Vietnam".

Last night, we dropped my mom off at the airport and sent her on her way home. It was great having her here and we are going to miss her. We are excited to get out of Ha Noi, though, and explore the rest of the country! Here is a basic itinerary for the next couple of weeks, which is subject to change:

3-5:  Take a sleeper bus down to Hue (14 hour bus ride!)
3-6: Visit the DMZ and the Vinh Moc Tunnels
3-7: Take another night bus to Hoi An
3-9: Night bus to Nha Trang
3-11: Night bus to Mui Ne Beach
3-13: Night bus to Ho Chi Minh City
3-14 through 16: explore Saigon
3-17: Take a ride on the Mekong into Cambodia!

Our bus ride with stops in all those cities is over 1000 miles and cost $60 each!

We hope all is well with our friends and family. Again, just another reminder, we do not have access to facebook so we won't be able to post on there any time soon. To contact us email Dustin at d.lowry11@gmail.com or me at mm1293@ship.edu
We also see all the comments on our blog so don't hesitate to comment!