Halong Bay, Vietnam

Halong bay was quite fun, full of beautiful scenery and also a very "interesting" adventure. It was adventure in of itself just to get to our boat !! Having no real docks, boats just stack up near the shore and one just climbs aboard one boat to get to another boat. We ended up just wandering around until we found which boat we should actually BE on. It was funny. Its stuff like that that I love about Asia. Never in a million years would you find that in the USA. Too many lawyers to sop up that opportunity !!



We each had our own cabins onboard our junk (using the word "junk" very appropriately). We went to sleep comfortably (yet on the warm side) about 4 in the morning. I woke to find an enormous (2") cockroach crawling up my arm. Since I'm not a fan of sleeping with the bugs (especially ones with their own zip codes), I jumped out of my bed to survey the situation. There were two huge ones on the wall, and one RIGHT next to my pillow. My own little "family" to keep me company. It was at this point that I said to myself . . o.k. there is really no way for me to know for sure just HOW many roaches are in this room. Was the one on my arm part of this particular troupe of roaches? Or was he some other renegade roach taking a vacay from his original family in the galley? In other words, how many roaches am I going to have to kill in order to go back to bed. Knowing going back to sleep in this room simply wasn't in my foreseeable future, I scurried over to mom's cabin and knocked on her door. She finally opened her door to the sounds of me . . . squealing & pleading to come in. She had me crawl in with her and assured me she had NO roaches. My feelings at this point in my fatigue were "If I don't see em, they ain't here. That clearly wasn't the case next door in the roach motel. As I started to settle back down and get sleepy again, mom started into the snoring. I said to myself, "Well, its either snoreville or roachtown, i'll take the snoring any day." If you've ever heard my mom snore, you know I must have been really desperate !!

I wouldn't be hitting the highlights of Halong bay if I left out the Ancell girls. Little Georgia and Olivia Ancell, from New Zealand are just bundles of energy and became my little pals aboard my roach-infested junk. AHHHH, the joys of meeting cool people while traveling. We played cards by night, and lounged on the sundeck by day. At any given time I could hear one of them calling me somewhere from their spot on the boat "Jeeeesica, Jeeessica." Their little Kiwi accent was enough to make these two little high energy bundles welcome anytime !! I so enjoyed hanging out with them and their parents, John and Carolyn.



SO, quite a few adventures I had coming out of Halong bay. We are heading back to Hanoi and then back to Bangkok so I can finish up some business with manufacturers. I've enjoyed the time in Vietnam, but I'm looking forward to my Thai food. :)