7-14 Halong Bay

We were down to four people after Mike's departure. We booked a popular tourist cruise in Halong Bay, East of Hanoi. The girls set us up with a nice 1 day/ 2 night package. They hooked us up with $55 tickets, which was a real good deal. After 5hrs crammed in a mini-bus, we arrived at a busy port and boarded one of the 30 or so Chinese Junks. They accomodate 16 people in 8 rooms, have a central dining area, and sundeck up top. There were a few hundred people at the dock that simultaneously boarded the boats around 1pm. There were no piers to dock the boats, just a contrete terraced shoreline. As the junks came & went, they literally squeezed their way in, smashing and rubbing against each other. As we departed to the East, we left civilization behind us and sailed into a maze of over 3,000 limestone karsts towering between 80 and 200 feet above us. The air conditioning couldn't be turned on until after dinner, so the only refuge from the 100+ degree heat was the breeze on the sundeck. We layed out with our books, played the ipod w/speakers, got pedicures (yes, that's right) and napped.
Our shipmates were composed of couples aged 35-55. We spoke with a physicist who was recently in Hanoi to give a lecture. Otherwise, we didn't get much of a good vibe from the others, who were happy to keep to themselves, as were we. In retrospect, we would have been much better off booking with the tour company that caters to all the popular youth hostels. 90 minutes into the cruise, we stopped at a cave located in one of the huge limestone karsts. It used to be a hideout for French troops, whom I'm sure greatly appreciated the cool temperature inside. At 600 meters long and a chilly 70*F, we were pleasantly surprised. We had no idea that this was part of the cruise tour. Aside from some 50 yr old drawings by those French soldiers, it was in very good condition. Paths marked the way and colored flood lights lit the place up in several strategic locations.
An hour later we found ourselves on a small island with a beach and viewpoint up top at about 100 meters. The sunset up top was gorgeous, well worth the exhausting climb. As the sky darkened, about 15 junks passed through a narrow pass and anchored down in a secluded bat. All of Halong Bay is smooth as a swimming pool, so there's no worry about sea sickness.
Dinner brought us all sorts of seafood like prawns, squid and baked fish which we all devoured. With full bellies and a steady, though conservative stream of frosty brews, we spent the entire evening up top on reclining deck loungers. We looked out across the flotilla of other cruise boats anchored around us, all lit up with stings of lights, creating somewhat of a constellation of florescent stars along our horizon. Some boats had bright flood lights pointed down into the water to attract squid as they fished. Others were dimly lit and quiet as could be. Some other boats were blasting Vietnamese pop and kareoke, which often would cause our conversations to pause, mid-sentence, in order to listen to the horrible sounds. It was either Asians singing, or panicked cattle being tossed around inside a cement truck, we can't be certain which it was. With techno playing loud in the dining area, our boat was somewhere in between. The floodlights of the boats fishing for squid had the side effect of sporadically lighting up the limetone cliff faces all around us as they shifted around their anchorages. Our boat also was slowly rotating back and forth around it's anchorage, causing the whitish-tan cliffs to appear to float in and out of the darkness. As we layed out flat oun our recliners, we enjoyed an unusually bright starry night and listened to some good tunes through my ipod and mini speakers. We considered sleeping on the sundeck. The stars, the views out over the water, the cool breeze, it was all though to turn down. Cold A/C and escape from the morning sun ended up being more appealing, so we retreated to our cabins by 11pm.