Hanging in Ha Long Bay

Upon returning to Hanoi from Sapa on the overnight bus, Joc, Carl, Aaron, Ben, and I met up with Jennie and Katie..ok, more like busted into their hotel room at 7am demanding to use their shower...we were dirty, and I mean 30km of trekking sweat and dirt + deet + sunscreen + no shower for 3 days type dirty. can't really blame us right??

Cleaned up, we all hopped on an 8:30am bus to Ha Long Bay (a 3 hour ride from Hanoi) where we jumped on a junk boat. (We bid farewell to Ben who had to take a shorter tour so that he could get back in time to catch his flights out of the country that would ultimately land him in Israel. Miss you BJ!) We spent the next couple of days puttering around on the water taking swimming breaks, hiking through the largest cave in the bay (a little cheesy giving the colorful lighting on the walls), kayaking in and out of lagoons (beautiful scenery and great to be active), and plain lounging about on deck - boy was the sun powerful! Night one was spent on the boat - luckily no one got seasick! - and night two was spent on Cat Ba island, one of the larger islands found in the bay. I thought we'd left behind all the people wanting to sell us things at the ferry; I was wrong. People with row boats full of goods were constantly approaching our boat. Pretty amazing.