Home » Vietnam » LZ - Halong Bay - April 7th 2005

These are entries from my travel journal from www.travelbog.org.
They are descriptions/stories of my trip from Hanoi, Vietnam to Phi Phi Island, Thailand from April 2005 to May 2005.

LZ - Halong Bay - April 7th 2005

Lt.col.lewin
2006-01-02 03:38:42

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this boat, I thought. Then again, it was early and the sleep did a great job in erasing the Stella virus from my memory. Ok, I'm getting some breakfast, some coffee and some enjoyment out of this trip I thought to myself. Dragonfruit!!! Troi oi! My favorite of all favorites was sitting on a plate on the patio deck. After gorging myself on several pieces of
heaven, I finished it off with a café, hoping it would be weasel coffee, but to no avail. My cue to move on was when my Aussie friends came on up to have breakfast. Up to the sundeck I went to enjoy the morning views of Halong Bay. It was the morning that afforded the most picturesque scenes. Thankful that I had found some spare batteries, I began clicking off some photos of the surrounding area. Low and behold, along side our boat came those floating village people. One old lacy had the nerve of bringing along her baby grandson and pointing to him in an effort to get some donations. Great way to treat your grandkid, lady...using him as bait for the tourists. By any means necessary, I guess.

After a brief visit to a tremendous cave and a quick jaunt up 171 huge steps to a pagoda that sat on top of one of these limestone rocks, we were on our way home. I had another chance to lean Stella into oblivion while at the top of the highest pagoda in Vietnam, but I put my money on nature to take care of this as I knew that the way down these steps was far more dangerous, especially to the little legs of a 7 year old. Sure enough, sweet justice came just before we reached the bottom of the stairway. A little slip on a crooked step and tumbling on down the last 10 steps went dad and Stella. Although the torture to the ears of her crying was going to be tough to bare for the next few hours, something inside me felt some satisfaction. Of course, there were no injury's, but I think good ole dad took a few more kicks to the shin from his sweet daughter.

I fail to mention some great things on this trip, but felt writing about my 7 year old friend might make a more interesting story. I have not had a chance to write lately because I've been on the move a lot. After Halong Bay I took a night train to Sapa and spent the weekend there. I will have another story about that area shortly. I have moved south to middle Vietnam and I am currently in Hue, loving a slower lifestyle and the girls dressed in ao dai. "Ao dai em di do mai voi?" are the words I yell at them as they gracefully float by on their bicycles and motorbikes. Ah, angels on earth.

Stay tuned for future episodes...
LZ - Sapa
LZ - Hanoi (Part 2)
LZ - Hue

(LZ means Landing Zone in case you were wondering)

Xin chao!

Mark T. Lewin
MTL Enterprises - Ao Dai Division