Day 3 (yesterday)

Yesterday was nuts. We went to Halong Bay, which is home to Viet Nam's pearl industry. Huge rocks dotted the bay (which feels like a huge, open lake), and apparently wild monkeys live in the trees that cover the landscape.

A tour guide took us directly from our hotel to the bay (about 3.5 hours away). Once we arrived, we got on a boat which unbeknownst to us we had purchased for the day! (We thought we would be on a boat with other tourists, but the boat was rented out exclusively for us.) We set sail heading across the bay, and within five minutes, a small boat with a family on it caught up to us, latched on to the side of the boat, and proceeded to try to sell us fruit. It felt like we were in Pirates of the Caribbean or something, with a boat latching on to us. The family must make their living selling on the bay to intrigued tourists. We did wind up buying mini-bananas.

We crossed the bay, wound around some rocks/cliffs, and came upon a floating village! Houses stayed afloat with the support of styrofoam and wood, and seemed peacefully nestled in the shade of the cliffs. I don't know how much of the community is set up conveniently for tourist purposes, but either way it is a very beautiful scene. We pulled up to one of the houses, docked, and looked at their stocks. Blue crabs, huge fish, and little lobster-looking things (enormous shrimp??) swam alive, trapped in the family's front porch.

We left, and immediately after boarding the boat the crew served us a feast. Shrimp, eel (i think??), clams, mini-crabs stuffed with a crab-meat mixture, rice, green beans, and an enormous fish filled the table. Half of the group got into a macho eating contest, winding up with one of the smallest girls in our group eating the fish's eyes.

After the feast we sailed to a huge rock that is home to an enormous cave. Once at the cave-place, we got off the boat and proceeded to climb up staircase after staircase, up the mountainside, until we got to the entrance of the cave. The inside was stunning. It looked like lava had elegantly seeped down from the ceiling and frozen. Colored LED lights lit up the cave at various points, which was interesting. It would have made the coolest bar or club on the planet!

The tour guide was hilarious without trying to be. He kept pointing at random rock formations and asking us what it looked like. We'd say what we thought, such as "horse" or "penguin" or "seal", and he would just say, "NO! dragon (or whatever else he thought was the 'correct' answer). see?" We started putting out ridiculous guesses just to amuse ourselves. At one point he told us that one rock formation looked like "a female chicken's genitals." Nobody in our group knew what those look like....
The tour was amazing, but stretched on and on and on. Everyone was drenched in sweat and bug spray. It was definitely worth it, but everyone was glad to be back on the boat towards home.

That was yesterday!