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Overnight in Halong Bay
Sailing around 2,000 limestone islands and floating "willages"
It took about two hours to drive directly from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay, and it would have been a fine scenic drive except that we were running late. We had to make it onto our ship, The Emeraude, before it left the marina. So even though we'd just had a huge breakfast and copious amounts of coffee, we were told there would be no stopping for bathroom breaks. Not that there were bathrooms to stop at per se, but you get the idea.
"Don't even let yourself think about it! I mean, don't let the thought even occur to you," said my well-traveled colleague. Okay, mind over bladder.
There were certainly plenty of distractions out the window. West Hanoi was a strange marvel: a planned suburb of gated communities, concrete high-rises, and shopping malls, built in advance to accommodate the anticipated affluent middle class and influx of foreigners. Why does new money always look like Southern California?
Right at the outskirts of Hanoi, the rice patties began, many of them adjacent to the highway (Why does my rice taste like exhaust?). This hundreds-of-years-old lifestyle of growing your own food is endangered now by the encroaching city limits.
After speeding along, playing chicken with numerous tour buses, and driving in the mythical third lane (the center aisle that reckless drivers like ours create between the opposing lanes), we made it to Ha Long Bay. For the first time, I felt like a tourist in Vietnam. Bland hotels that looked like they were built in the '60s lined up along the sandy shore — I had a flashback of old Daytona Beach. And there were dozens of cruise ships, some the typical white, tennis-shoe-looking monstrosities, and some quaint dark teak ones that at least attempted to look like oversized versions of traditional Vietnamese boats. Apparently, both for Vietnamese and foreigners, sailing the calm turquoise waters of this UNESCO World Heritage Site is not to be missed.
"Don't even let yourself think about it! I mean, don't let the thought even occur to you," said my well-traveled colleague. Okay, mind over bladder.
There were certainly plenty of distractions out the window. West Hanoi was a strange marvel: a planned suburb of gated communities, concrete high-rises, and shopping malls, built in advance to accommodate the anticipated affluent middle class and influx of foreigners. Why does new money always look like Southern California?
Right at the outskirts of Hanoi, the rice patties began, many of them adjacent to the highway (Why does my rice taste like exhaust?). This hundreds-of-years-old lifestyle of growing your own food is endangered now by the encroaching city limits.
After speeding along, playing chicken with numerous tour buses, and driving in the mythical third lane (the center aisle that reckless drivers like ours create between the opposing lanes), we made it to Ha Long Bay. For the first time, I felt like a tourist in Vietnam. Bland hotels that looked like they were built in the '60s lined up along the sandy shore — I had a flashback of old Daytona Beach. And there were dozens of cruise ships, some the typical white, tennis-shoe-looking monstrosities, and some quaint dark teak ones that at least attempted to look like oversized versions of traditional Vietnamese boats. Apparently, both for Vietnamese and foreigners, sailing the calm turquoise waters of this UNESCO World Heritage Site is not to be missed.
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