Day 3

I am so hungry. It's 5am and I'm still only thinking about JoJo donuts on Tam Thuong and Hang Gai. They have flavors like shrimp, and beef noodle. But they also have flavors like kiwi, banana, creme and almond, coconut, sesame, chocolate. It's all I want plus a ca phe sua da. Try to sleep.

Ok now it's 7am. Get up, get ready and bound down the steps for a hot bowl of pho for bref....

"why you up so early???" "well I'm going to Ha Long Bay" "yes but bus not come till 8:30" "waaaaait a minute...what time is it?" "oh" "there is no daylight savings in Vietnam" "it is only 6:41 am" "i am still really hungry" So back to the room where I obsess over How Much I Want Food. And to be honest, in the last 96 hours I haven't eaten much at all. So I watch music videos and play count to 100 until it's 7:45 and go down and get bref. But I make a deal that the next place I see selling candy or skrimp chips, I'm buying it, no matter how much bad vietnamese I have to speak. bleh.

So the "taxi" comes to take us to the bus, which we could have walked to but vietnam is all about the hospitality industry that they are just learning. In a polluted smog filled tiny little area, any visitor to this country, at THIS point in time, WANTS to walk. But we graciously take the ride. And then get in the bus to Haiphong. The bus is pink. :) and old. But all the tour buses are there. It's a bumpy loud 3 hour ride but super duper interesting and the small towns are each very similar with increasingly beautiful landscape. We get to the ports of Ha Long Bay which are super crowded and crazy and full of people trying to sell you everything you can imagine and Hung, the sweetest ever, gets us onto to our boat that takes us to our boat. Do you see a theme here? You're never quite "there". Ok so it's pretty and interesting and nice to be on the water. We switch boats in a manner that would make OSHA inspectors all simultaneously die of coronaries (fingers crossed) and off we go into the mist-filled, tropical waters of the Gulf of Tonkin.

I get settled with Chia, my roomie and we lie down for a sec and veg with our feet up and girltalk. Unprintable :)

The first meal is amazing. It might be one of the best meals I ever have. Pumpkin soup, Spring rolls, beef, seafood veggie stuff, rice, something I'm forgetting, tons of fruit and drinks. But it's the oh so deliciousness of the food and light cooking and flavors that all stand out of vietnamese cooking thats so tasty. yummers.

Then we hit Surprising Cave. If you look at my pics, the red backlighting is kinda fun, but the whole place is truly amazing. And looks like Mars, and since I'm such an expert at Mars I can say that. But it's very peaceful and cool and dark and I just love it in there/up there. As I'm walking back to the boat along this REALLY cool boardwalk thing that just hovers over the ocean, jetlag hits. HARD. like nothing else. I crash into bed. It's a freight train delivering an anvil to the face and I'm down for the count. I miss walking the plank!!! (and into the sea) and kayaking!!! and swimming in the fucking South China Sea and I'm so pissed but I sort of don't care because, well, when you're this tired you just don't care.

I finally get up when everyone is already sitting for dinner and feel bad but NO ONE has come as far as I have and everyone else had also been in Vietnam longer than I and they understood. I should mention that everyone = 12 of us. Dinner isn't as ab fab as lunch but it's really good nonetheless. Same type of stuff minus spring rolls plus fish. More drinks. Then starts kareoke. What good is a trip to paradise on an old pirate boat if you can't have kareoke? It's completely stereotypical but totally fun and proves the theorum: Vietnam = Making Friends. We sing, we laugh (at others) and talk in every language everyone can and call it heaven. It was truly unforgettable. Oh! and we fished off the back of the boat and it was REALLY windy all night...