Sailing through the descending dragon on an old junk

11/29 Joined a three day tour to the famous world heritage halong bay, which means dragon descending into the ocean. We first drove to halong city where we boarded an old (chinese?) junk. It was quite fancy and luxurious really. We spent the first day sailing around halong bay. Spectacular! Halong bay is a bay in the gulf of Tonkin where giant limestone karsts jut out of water producing huge sheer cliffs that rise straight from the water up to the top of the mtn. In the afternoon we explored a very intricate cave on one of the islands and then kayaked around some of the islands and watched the sunset. At night we had a nice dinner and then sat up on the deck of the junk and watched the stars.

The next day we did more touring of the gorgeous bay before stopping on one of the bigger islands to do some biking through nice scenery to a small village. After the biking we continued on the junk through halong bay where we stopped for lunch at a beach and did some more kayaking. After that we reboarded the junk to sail onto cat ba town on cat ba island. On the way we passed lots of cool floating fishing villages. When we checked into the hotel, most of the people went to take naps, but I hiked up a hill just outside of town to get a nice view of the bay and the sunset over the bay. On top of the hill there were some old ruins, that definitely looked like some old fort b/c the windows had the narrow slit design used to protect from arrows or bullets or whatever. Not sure how old they were.

The next day we made our way back to halong city, of course going through amazing scenery. We arrived back to hanoi in the late afternoon, so I got to explore hanoi a bit for the first time in daylight. I continued to really like this alive city. Walked to some lake with some temples in the middle and to an old cathedral and just enjoyed walking around looking at all the goings on of the city. At night I sat down for some pho and bia hoi and watched my last full moon in asia =(

12/2 I had a motorbike tour booked to leave today, so I got up really early to continue my walking around hanoi in daylight hours. Of course the city was quite active even at 6am. My favorite was walking around the same lake with the temples. Lots and lots of people were running around it, but the best were huge groups all around doing yoga, tai chi, and dancing to music. People of all ages out there doing exercises and dancing. Pretty funny and entertaining. And on one side there were even whole free weight sets where guys were working out. I hadn't experienced anywhere else in asia yet where there was such an exercise conscious society.