Halong Bay

We spent last Monday and Tuesday on a junk in Ha Long Bay, one of nature’s special treasures. It’s somewhat like Guilin on the Li River in China, but that’s only one river; this is thousands of square miles of open water. There are more than 1,500 islands, most huge limestone rocks jutting straight up from the water. I’ve wanted to see it for years. It’s a big tourist attraction – more than 400 junks ply the islands. Most vistas have lots of boats, when I wanted pictures of islands . . . We visited a floating village, where local people build a small floating structure, then live in it (complete with kids, dogs, etc.). They fish and cater to tour boats. We stopped at one island with a cave with three large chambers.

Fran found the boat more spacious than the train. The food was good, the service was excellent, and the staff was delightful.




The junk boat in the middle has a sunrise on the sail. Someone called it the Obama Boat.





Bob enjoys the view from the deck.

Thank you to the greatest tour guide ever!

Our thanks go to Tran Dang Dinh ("Chan").
What a wonderful and knowledgeable tour guide.
Thanks, Chan, for showing us your beautiful city.

Even more from Hanoi

Hate to say goodbye!

More sights from Hanoi

Driving here is simply insanity. The streets are jammed. You need many appendages – at least one hand to steer, one hand for the horn, one foot on the accelerator and one foot on the gas – but most cars have standard transmissions.

Red lights, lane markings, and one-way signs are little more than suggestions – we saw them violated a dozen times every 30 seconds. Two four lane roads intersect without a traffic light!!

Envision a complex machine with many intermeshing gears – nobody stops, cars, trucks, motorbikes, bicycles, little children and elderly ladies crossing the same intersection alone seem to blend into everything else, everybody keeps moving, and nobody crashes. It’s a clear (Asian) indication that many people can live together, minimizing their own personal agendas, and all share space and time equitably. Non-Asian drivers wouldn’t drive here for 10 minutes without an accident.
We tried to take a picture that would capture this experience, but could not - mostly because we had our eyes shut tight!

So, of course, what do we do in the middle of all this chaos, take a cyclo ride (see left) amidst motorcycles and cars whizzing by!

Vietnam: Touring the Village of Sapa

While biking through Sapa. we saw vast terraces for rice farming, and gardens full of vegetables. Water buffalo here are tame domestic animals. We visited small ethnic villages where everything is old, except the satellite dishes, which introduce the next generation (and their parents) to things their parents never imagined. Houses are still largely bamboo stacked vertically in the ground to form one room, earthen floors, filled with people who work 18 hours a day and never stop smiling.



















This is the kitchen















These are the bedrooms in a Sapa Guest house

Vietnam: Biking in Sapa

On Saturday morning we went to a mountaintop retreat called Sapa and spent the day on bicycles riding almost 40 kilometers down the mountain.

The “sag wagon” for our bicycle trip was an ancient Russian jeep! Fran rode the entire distance with no major calamities, kept smiling all day! [That was Bob's sentence. Actually, I fell off my bike onto a puddle of mud and that smile was really a grimace! Nothing was broken and , in truth, the ride really was all DOWNHILL. - Fran]

The chain on our guide's bike broke, so he had it repaired












Doesn't everyone run into water buffalo as they ride down a mountain?












A 20 year old jeep from Russia was our support vehicle

Market at Bac Ha (continued)

At the Market at Bac Ha you can buy clothing, food or Vegetables, have your tools sharpened or repaired by a silversmith, buy a water buffalo or buy a pony for your grandchild (only kidding, sort of).

Vietnam: Market at Bac Ha

On Sundays, the village of Bac Ha in Northern Vietnam has a market where you can buy just about anything! This is where the beautiful and colorful Flower Hmong people live.

Vietnam: The Road to Lo Cai and Sapa

Friday night we took an overnight train to Lao Cai, on the Chinese border.

Fran has always wanted to take a long trip on a luxury train. She has now decided that 2 nights is enough to last her a lifetime!

Vietnam 3 - Hanoi

Our Metropole Hotel is old French, and exquisite. Very formal and elegant. Tables in the spacious dining room are 15-20 feet apart, piano and violin music take you back to the 1940s. Fran felt underdressed without shoulder pads in her dress!

Vietnam 2

The Hanoi Hilton prison where John McCain spent five years is a horrendous place. Every square inch is concrete; inside tiny cells prisoners had one leg shackled in iron, immobilized, 24/7. One day in any cell would meet anybody’s definition of torture.





















The Vietnames are such a social people that solitary confinement is considered a particularly cruel form of punishment
A guillotine at the Hanoi Hilton - an idea borrowed from the French.