Cruising along Halong Bay

We arrived in Hanoi and quickly realized that 15 degrees here feels a lot different than a dry 15 degrees at home! North Vietnam is basically having their Winter at this time and it felt almost as cold as Tokyo! We didn't see much of Hanoi because Adam and I don't do too well in the cold lol. We explored the Old quarter, and I got my hair dyed since my grey hairs were driving me crazy while Adam got his hair cut also. We had most of our meals at our hotel this time but ate at Essence Cafe in the Essence Hotel, which had really high quality Vietnamese food. Our hotel was located on West Lake, which I imagine is really beautiful in the summer! Our purpose for coming up North was mainly to see Halong Bay, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Halong Bay is definitely one of the highlights of Vietnam. Halong Bay consists of a "dense cluster of over 3,000 limestone monolithic islands each topped with thick jungle vegetation, rising spectacularly from the ocean. Several of the islands are hollow, with enormous caves. (Wikipedia!) Some of the islands have lakes within the limestone islands, and there are some floating fishing villages around some of the Islands as well.

Most people opt to take overnight boat trips to explore the area, sun bath on the roofs of their boats and kayak through areas where the bigger boats cannot explore or hire fisherman to take you through the inlets. We opted for a day trip from Hanoi because of the season. If it had been any other time, an overnight trip would have been nicer and we would have had a chance to see more of the caves. It was worth the trip nonetheless especially since we probably won't be back to Asia for decades!