Nico and Jo’s Excellent Adventure

Today we took a one day trip to Halong Bay. The bay is a freshwater bay with many, many underwater and over water caves. We had lunch on a ‘junk’ (large, wooden boat) and sailed around the bay. We stopped at a fishing villiage halfway.

Before visions of huts on a riverbank come to your heads, the fishing villiage was ON the water. As in floating. There was even a school and a pub! We stopped at a fish ‘store’ where we could PICK OUT WHAT WE WANTED FOR LUNCH! Like all sorts of catfish, shrimp, clams and crabs. There were all in the water, coralled and separated with various cages and nets. The owner would then catch what you wanted and hand it to the cook on our boat. I was facinated by these HUUUUUGE black and white fish — longer than my arm and really really fiesty! They practically jumped out of the water with their red mouths gaping! (I guess they saw too many of their friends become lunch, eh? ;)] Nico and I ended up eating vegetarian that day.

We are leaving Hanoi for Danang on Thursday. Danang is located on the central coast of Vietnam. From Danag we are taking a bus to Hoi An, a beach town not far from Danang. Hoi An is rumored to be amazing and beautiful with a charm all its own. I’m looking forward to some sea kayaking and snorkeling.

But in our remaining days in Hanoi, we plan to see a couple more sites as well as enjoying the beer. Plus, as I mentioned before, tomorrow we are going to a snake farm/restaurant. There, Nico and Ryan are going to pick out their dinner…from various snakes they have at the farm. Our guide is the son of the owner of a bar we have been frequenting. I’m sure to take lots and lots of pictures. 🙂

We’re still amazed at all the new things we are seeing and are becoming more and more brazen with trying new things. (For example, who knew I’d love lotus root salad so much!) We’re also loving cold winter melon tea, which tastes like cold liquid caramel…yummmm.

And yes, it’s REALLY REALLY hot here. Nico’s getting really tan and I’m…well, I’m the color of about five minutes to midnight. At least I’ll still be tan for New Year’s Eve!!!

We love and miss you. We’re trying to get postcards out as much as possible to those who we have addresses for. If we don’t have yours, please send and we’ll send you a postcard from our next destination.

Hugs,
Nico and Jo

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2005 at 6:09 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.