Halong Bay
Wow! This place is beautiful! Blue/Green water surrounded by thousands of little islands and fishing boats and villages.
There’s nothing better than cruising on small boat 
with 6 cabins and a nice sun deck out amongst the rock formations in this bay. It reminds me a lot of Guilin, China or Phang Na Bay in Thailand. Fortunately for me, there was a Canadian guy, Chris, on the boat that taught me more about using my camera in a day than I’ve learned since I bought it after the flood that destroyed my last camera almost a year ago. We stopped at the biggest deepest cave I’ve ever seen. Armed with my new found knowledge about low light level photography, I was able to take this picture 
. I booked a two day cruise with 1 night out on the boat. I was hoping for a party boat, but most of the people were pretty laid back and were in bed by 9pm. That only left this crazy German guy I met and myself to drink out under the stars. I had my MP3 player and speakers out on the deck and of course, Cris chooses 2 of the 3 German songs that I have on my player by Rammstein (Heavy, Heavy Metal). I guess “99 Luft Balons” didn’t mix really well with “Du Hast”. We heard some people partying on another boat clearly playing drinking games, but unfortunately for me, I don’t know how to swim. So we decided to steal the kayak on board and paddle over there. Unfortunately, the Vietnamese boat crew were smart enough to hide the paddles from us which left us up the proverbial creek litterally without paddles. After searching the entire boat and a few more beers, we decided to kick it in and wake up in a few hours for the 5am sunrise.
After the sunrise we had breakfast on the boat and cruised to a village to go kayaking around the bay. That was a lot of fun! We stopped in a grotto to go “swimming” or more like floating around for me anyway. 
Unfortunately, after lunch we cruised back to the mainland and we had another 3 hour bus ride back to Hanoi. I definately should have booked a 3 day and maybe even longer to hike the trails on Cat Ba island.
Tags: Travel
Kane
Hi Ray! The trip was a lot of fun, but you are right, 3 days would have been about right.
-Chris
Hey Chris, I just looked at your pics from the trip very nice! I hope u don’t mind my leaving a link here for my bloggers. Check out a real photographers pics from our trip taken with a real camera. http://www.chrisnelson.ca/gallery/2006/05/11/