Halong Bay, Vietnam

Our second day in Vietnam, Kelsey and I visited a location on the Northeast side of Vietnam called Halong Bay. This is probably my favorite part of the entire trip because of the amazingly beautiful sites that we had an opportunity to see.

Halong Bay is a bay. What makes it amazing is that there are dozens of island-mountain-rock formations spread out around the bay. We booked a half day tour due to time constraints, and set out bright and early at 8:00. Unfourtunately, the bus has to circle around the hotels in the area to pick up people which takes more than an hour. Then its a two and a half hour bus ride to get to the bay, in optimal traffic. It was a little longer for us, including a stop at a gift shop for a while. We didn't really need one, but I think the tour gets a kick-back for taking us there.

Finally arriving at Halong Bay, a great and beautiful land was in store. We first boarded a boat for a short ride to where we would eat lunch and kayak. Our boat was really nice, it had two stories and was easy to get a view of the bay. Our boat was similar to the one pictured below:

It was so great to cruise around all of these tall, craggly rock formations peppering the bay.

On the boat, we met some interesting people. A girl who we shared lunch with, Hannah, was a teacher in Japan. We also met a group of three girls who were good friends. One each from Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, who all met while studying Japanese in Japan. We spent some time talking with them and learning about their lives. I also got a great photo of the Korean and Thai girl recreating a certain scene from Titanic:

Our cruise first stopped at a floating house where we could see some live seafood and buy from a mobile floating fruit vendor. There were two vendors there, and each had a cute little boy along with to help sell the fruit. Kelsey bought a few mangosteins from the lady in the photo. They tasted great despite the fact that the lady refused to give her the correct change:

After a delicious seafood lunch, we were taken to another floating house where kayaks and kayaking equipment were stored. This was the exact moment where I knew that I loved Vietnam. I managed to take some photos and video while Kelsey was paddling:

One of the other kayaks

A view of the bay, with Kelsey's head

This is a video I took while kayaking through a tunnel in one of the rock formations:

An interesting part of the experience was at the end of our kayaking. I was paddling again, and suddenly the paddle broke in half in my hands. I continued to paddle with one of the halves, and upon reaching the house again, I was demanded to pay for the paddle. I insisted that a paddle failure is due to many, many uses and routine wear; not one single use. They still insisted that I pay for the paddle. I was already sick of having every dollar sucked out of my pocket that I made a fuss and the tour guide payed for it. A minor victory, but I felt bad that it may have come out of his or the tour's funds.

With that occurance behind us, we set off toward a massive cave located within one of the rock formations. The group of girls, Kelsey, and I decided to sit on the front of the boat with our legs hanging over the ledge. On the left side is me, next to me is the Vietnamese girl, and then Hannah:

The cave was amazing, though I didn't like any of the pictures that I took of it. I guess if my readers are interested they will have to go and see it for themselves.

After the cave, we cruised back to the bus and then had a sleepy ride back to Hanoi during the sunset. Another fun part of the trip was when we stopped at the gift shop for a second time and found these kittens. I held on to this absolutely tiny little kitten who was the youngest kitten I had ever seen. I had to snap a photo of it because it was ridiculously adorable:

That night we went out for some pho, and had a fairly quiet night in preparation for our flight to Ho Chi Minh, which will be featured in the next post.

The Mount Fuji

Here we are at Japan, day 2. Since we are of course an adventurous family, we wanted to explore one of the most famous mountains in the world and a huge tourist destination, Mount Fuji. This trip didn't involve any actual climbing since they only allow that a few months out of the year. It did involve a train ride, a cable car ride, a gondola ride, a boat ride, and a bus ride.

Of course I started my Mount Fuji day off, as everyone should, by drinking fire. This fire tasted a lot like iced coffee.

We started by riding the JR to the train that would take us out to Mount Fuji. In a bit of a rush to catch the next train, we ended up boarding a train called the romance car. I don't know exactly why it's called the romance car, but the seats were really nice. When the guy came to check our tickets and found out we had cheaper ones we had to shell out a bunch more money. I did something unromantic to their bathroom toilet at least.

The train did offer some nice views of Mount Fuji along the way. I'm going to level with you, this is the best photo I was able to get due to the amount of fog that day. There's an electrical pole in the way but it's still my best.

Along the way, we stopped in a town called Odawara to view a castle. It was a charming little town with some nice New Year's decorations up.

The castle was quite impressive, it had been converted into a museum about the history of the castle and with a lot of information on Samurais. I couldn't take any photos inside, unfortunately. Here's a view of the front of the castle, though:

This is a gate they were proud of for being the biggest one in the castle. It's pretty big, I guess.

From there it was another short train ride to Owakudani, where we could ride a cable car and then a gondola up a nearby mountain for a better view of Fuji. The gondola ride was one of my favorite parts because these ropes were so long dangling us over the valley.

And, in case you are wondering, this gondola does hold the Guiness world record for busiest gondola lift. It may also hold the record for smells most like eggs also, but they didn't have a sign about that.

The egg smell was because there is a lot of sulfur in this valley and a lot of sulfur mines, as seen below:

So we got to the next stop near these sulfur mines where they offer a small nature hike. We didn't feel up to it because it was ridiculously windy. So, we rode the gondala down the next leg to form of transportation number 4, this pirate looking ship. We were on one of the lower floors, and we couldn't see much from the boat. Luckily, Kelsey and I were sitting next to this little girl who challenged us to a face making competition, so we were entertained. I'm pretty sure Kelsey and I won.
The boat took us across Lake Ashi where we rode a bus, form of transportation number 5. The bus took us to another train station, another one of my highlights of the day. I liked this train because it operated in both directions, but only had one track. The way this worked was that the trains from both directions had to stop at a station at the same time because the track separated for only a little bit at the station.
Well, that was about the end of the day. We went out to eat and made it back to the hotel and were pretty pooped. We had to rest up for the next day, which you will be able to read about tomorrow.

P.S. go Packers!