This past weekend I went with some of my training to group to Halong Bay. We took a bus ride from Hanoi for about three hours to Halong. It was lucky that we got to go because there was a Typhoon that had just passed through that area the day before. There was a lot of flooding in the north but we were not effected by it except for some clouds and a little bit of rain on Saturday morning.
When we got off the bus we waited for our "tour guide" and then he took us to get our tickets. When we got our tickets we pushed through the crowd (which is normal in Asia) to our boat. Our boat was really pretty nice and better than what I was expecting. We took off from the dock into the most beautiful mountains jetting out of the water. There are 1969 mountain tops that are in Halong bay.
Our tour guide told us the story about how the Vietnamese think that halong bay was formed. He told us that there was a Dragon that formed the mountains when he came down from paradise and met a beautiful fairy. They had 100 children together. Those 100 children were the beginning of the Vietnamese people. Then the beautiful fairy went back up to the paradise and took 50 children with her and the Dragon stayed in Halong bay with their other 50 children. The Vietnamese say his fire is what created the mountains.
If this story makes no sense it is because our tour guide made very little sense to me, but I think that is the gist of what he was saying. I am still learning how to understand broken English. According to science the mountains were formed by volcanic limestone. You decide what you think is true.
Halong bay is an incredible place of natural beaty but it was sad to see all of the trash that was everywhere. By no means have I become a tree hugger but lets get real we have trash cans for a reason.
All in all I really had a wonderful weekend. Good people, no cars honking at me, wonderful cuisine, and I even got a little bit of a tan.
Meg
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