Ha Long Bay

The folktale says that the dragons came down from heaven to help the locals by spitting jewels and jade to the sea, forming a natural fortress against invaders.

We jumped on a tour bus at 8 AM with the other families in our group and headed to Ha Long Bay, a three hour ride from Hanoi. Driving around here is completely nuts! Seriously, we are only alive because of the grace of God. The way it works is that anyone is free to pass another car anytime (see below), even if there is a truck or another bus coming straight at you.


All the driver does is honk the horn, speed up and jump quickly back into his lane within inches of hitting the oncoming vehicle. Unbelievable. This was especially heart stopping on the ride home in the dark... I just couldn't look. To add to the fun of that ride, we were completely squished in a small bus...none of us could move our legs for the entire ride. It was surely an adventure.

We did make a rest stop on the way up to the bay. Here are a few of the scenes we saw as we were waiting to get back on the bus.



We've seen families of four on a bike like this. Apparently, out of the six million people living in Hanoi, three million have scooters.



Ha Long Bay is simply beautiful. We hopped on our boat with tour guide, Jack Sparrow. We cruised around the bay, stopped for lunch at the local floating fishing market, visited a few caves, then headed back to the dock. There is a floating village in the bay with an elementary school.


This is my favorite photo of the day:





After we checked out the caves, this is how we got back on the boat. When we were backing out, we simply ran into the boats in our way, bumping into them until we had enough space to turn around.


Here is our crew:

Until tomorrow...