Baywatch

The legend goes like this: Thousands of years ago the Chinese were preparing to invade Vietnam via the seas. Hopelessly outnumbered, the home team prayed for a miracle and received one in the form of a dragon who proceeded to slap the waters along the coast. With each smack the dragon deposited large amounts of emerald and jade and before long the coastline was clogged with thousands of oddly-shaped landmasses. Confused and lost among this maze of minerals, the Chinese turned tail and fled.

The geology goes like this: The coastal area northeast of Hanoi, Vietnam, is incredibly rich in limestone and tens of thousands of years of erosion have left the locale, now called Halong Bay (Bay of the Descending Dragon) with a beautiful assortment of karsts, or limestone landmasses. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994 and is now, obviously, a popular destination for tourists willing to spend a night or two out on the water.

Our boat looked like this:

The tourist boats out on Halong Bay--and there's dozens of them--are wooden crafts modeled after the Chinese junks that have sailed these waters for centuries. Ours had some slight modifications (a sweet bar, air conditioned cabins) but its wooden hull kept it in the spirit of things. And by spirit I mean dampness. Good lord, I'm not sure that anyone who actually had to live on one of those things would ever be completely dry. After an afternoon of kayaking we had a whole set of wet clothes that I'm quite sure were more damp after hanging outside for the night.

Unfortunately, the kayaking was a really wet affair, so bringing along our camera to catch what turned out to be some really incredible scenes was a no-go. Aside from paddling through caves and in the shadows of tourism poster-worthy limestone cliffs, we saw monkeys. That's right, monkeys. On one of the small islands there lives a whole colony of monkeys and when we entered the interior of the island via a small water cave, there was a whole bunch of them sitting on the beach. We paddled up quietly and beached ourselves just thirty or so feet away. We watched them and they watched us. The only difference was that the monkeys looked really bored, whereas we were all grinning like idiots.

On Halong Bay

Halong Bay in the morning fog

After returning to port we hopped into a minibus with our fellow travelers and took a 3+ hour drive to Hanoi, rested for thirty minutes, and then boarded the overnight sleeper bus for Hue. What's a sleeper bus, you ask? Well, it's a bus of beds. The beds are too short for anyone over 5'10", but the real kicker is the way people drive in Vietnam. Slam on the break, stomp on the gas, swerve wildly, never let up on the horn--that about covers it. Ever been in an airplane lavatory when the craft hits some turbulence? Multiply that tenfold and you're beginning to understand the fun of moving around on a "sleeper" bus. They don't put seat belts in the beds for nothing.

Jillian prepares for a really lovely sleep