Halong Bay- Vietnam

While researching Vietnam and the awesome things to do and see we found Halong Bay. 

Halong Bay is on the new wonders of the world list or something so Rhett had to go.

The only problem was that when we booked the tour we didn't realize it was quite so far away from Hanoi. They came and picked us up from our hotel at 7:00 in the morning. 

Then, we drove the 4 long hours to Halong Bay. We went with a tour group so we were in a big van with about 8 other people. 

The tour guide was nice and spoke great English, but the driver was freaking CRAZY. I thought for sure we were going to die. He would seriously drive on the wrong side o the road until a car would be coming right for us. I felt like we were playing "chicken" the entire ride. I thought Rhett was going to die. lol. He is such a backseat driver. I finally gave him some headphones and told him to sleep. 

After about 2 hours, we stopped for a potty break at this amazing "Sweat Shop." Well, they claimed it was a school for handicap, but I know better. They take all the people that have any sort of hadicap whether physical or mental and let them live at this school. At this school, they got to wake up and work on handicrafts from 7:00-7:00. Sounds sort of like a sweat shop to me. Then, all the tour groups take their potty breaks here and let the tourists shop for 30 minutes before boarding and continuing on their tour.

Halong Bay has become so famous it is on their 200000 bill.

Here is one of their very talented students "threading." It is a lot like cross stitch. It would take me so long to make of of these pictures. They really have made some amazing pieces of art work.

Just checking out the beautiful work.

After we arrived at Halong Bay, we got aboard our ship and were served an amazing lunch of seafood, chicken dishes, and tons of amazing side dishes.

They had all these other boats that would pull up beside our boat and try to sell us stuff.

I thought this one was cute. Their poor little guy was asleep.

But, his mama was determined. She jumped right to our window and asked Rhett to buy some fruit. 

After lunch, we were free to roam around the boat. Rhett and I went outside and took some pictures.  There are 1969 small islands located within Halong Bay. Wow, that's a lot.

They had this cute little fishing village located within the bay. It was populated by mostly fisherman and their families. They made their living fishing and selling stuff to the tourists. They also made money by allowing kayaking tours. We totally took advantage of this one.

This island is one of their most famous being featured on the dollar bill. We actually were able to kayak right through the bottom of it. :)

Getting ready to kayak along Halong Bay.

Heading through this cave. The water was pretty low, but when you get onto the other side it was awesome. Tons of mud from the bottom of the water and sheer rocky cliffs on every side of you. If you got stuck there while the water came up you wouldn't be able to get out until it came back down. Super cool!

We decided to get out of out kayaks and play around. It was so muddy. Sort of like quick sand. lol. You took a step and the mud would suck your leg up. Rhett actually lost a shoe and was lucky to get it back.

After we went kayaking we all got back on our boat and headed over to an amazing cave. It was actually fairly recently found. It was discovered in the 1970's by a few men who were exploring on of the islands. They saw a monkey and decided to follow him up the mountain. All the sudden he just disappeared. After looking a little harder they were able to discover a cavern. They turned it over to the government and they fixed it up and made it open to the public. It really is a cool little cave. 

This was obviously Rhett's favorite. 

After the cave tour we headed back to the bus for the LONG 4 hour ride home complete with a potty break at the sweat shop. Halong Bay was absolutely AMAZING. It was such a long day though. 9 hours in a van was brutal. 

We didn't want to miss out on anything though so when we had a chance to hit up the night market in Vietnam we did. It was so much fun. I bought some little toys for the kids. It was so BUSY.

It was really fun though and much needed. I really had to stretch my legs after the long ride. Plus, I love shopping so it was AWESOME. I bought some fresh fruit and a nice cold drink, but stayed away from the kabobs of meat. After seeing the dog it sort of made me sick. Rhett had no problem with it. He did keep saying, "This is chicken or pork?" To which they would reply.... "Yes, chicken." hahaha I'm sure he tried dog.

Just to show you how busy it was I took this picture of the road we were trying to cross. Yikes! Add this many vehicles and NO traffic rules and it's down right dangerous.