After Ninh Binh, we spent three days in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam. We’re not diving into that just yet though, because we’ll be back in Hanoi four different times. It’s basically our northern Vietnam home base. So we’ll save the Old Quarter chaos and traffic-dodging stories for later.
This one’s about our two-day cruise in Ha Long Bay, which is probably the most famous tourist spot in the country.
Ha Long Bay is known for its thousands of limestone karsts rising out of emerald water. And the best (only?) way to see it is by boat.
Our room on the cruise was honestly beautiful. Way nicer than what we had on our Alaska cruise and even the Galapagos one. Which we were not expecting.
Once we got on board, Mylène and Emma went kayaking between the karsts while Teddy and I stayed behind to supervise from the hot tub and play chess.
The first day of the cruise also happened to be Teddy’s 8th birthday. At dinner, the staff decorated our table and after we finished eating, they brought out a cake and had the whole dining room sing Happy Birthday. He was slightly mortified, which of course made it even better, but it was incredibly thoughtful.
And then… 11 p.m. hit.
He suddenly decided to throw up all over his bed. Then did it four more times. Mylène started feeling sick too. Our cabin turned into a very different kind of adventure. Not much sleep was had by Mylène and Teddy. I'm not going to post photos of the vomit in the blog.
The next morning, Emma and I went on the scheduled excursion while Mylène and Teddy stayed on the boat to recover.
Our expedition took us to Cat Ba Island. It was about a two-hour boat ride there and two hours back. Once we docked, we did a short bike ride to a small village. In the village, we stopped at a restaurant that proudly displayed snake wine. For those who don’t know, that’s rice wine with an actual dead snake marinating inside the bottle. I did not try it. I felt like our family had already met its vomiting quota for the trip.
In the village we also got to pet a puppy and try a fish massage, where you put your feet in the water and the fish give you a massage. It tickles like crazy. Emma and I were only able to keep our feet in for a few seconds at a time. Still a fun experience.
Overall, I’m glad we did the cruise. Ha Long Bay really is stunning. That said, this time of year in northern Vietnam comes with a lot of fog and smog, so visibility wasn’t amazing. Add in half of our family being sick for most of it, and it definitely wasn’t the dreamy postcard version we had imagined.
But when you’re travelling for months at a time, not everything is going to be perfect. You roll with it.
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