Day 42 - Halong Arrival

We had a crazy adventure this morning to get to the ferry port on the other side of Cat Ba. We somehow missed the bus at our hotel and so the hotel owner quickly grabbed all of our luggage and us and threw us on the back of his and his son's motorbikes to chase down the bus. We caught up with the bus, flagged it down, and got on! Then we took the quick beautiful ferry ride to Halong.

We had planned to either hike Poem Mountain for beautiful panoramic views of the entire bay or to lie on the beach and swim all day, but we ended up having a much needed rest day.

After the taxi ride to our homestay, we took off for a walk along the water to find a place to eat breakfast/lunch. We stumbled onto a restaurant where no one spoke English so we didn't really order anything - they just brought us an order of seafood (shrimp and octopus) fried noodles. It was yummy!

Then we took a long nap and relaxed for awhile. After we woke up and got ready, we set off for another walk along the water. We found a really busy fancy restaurant right on the bay and had a fantastic dinner - appetizers of grilled oysters and pork rolls, entrees of a pound of steamed shrimp for me and an entire fresh grouper with plum sauce for Tim. Everything was delicious!!

Now, we are going to have a relaxing night - we have another boat tour tomorrow!Read more