Ha Long: Day 2

I woke up on Saturday morning extra early, 5:30, in order to see the sun rise from our eighth floor balcony. I took pictures every couple of minutes in between packing a small bag for the day and putting on my bathing suit and 50 SPF sunscreen. At 6:00 I spotted some people from my group, Mike, Monica, Natalie, Tica, and Cathy down across the street and went down to meet them. We went to the beach across the street and took pictures of the sunrise from there (see colorful pictures above). I found a random slab of concrete on which someone had broken many colorful tiles and put them together like a puzzle, which entertained me until 6:30, when I went back to my hotel room to finish packing and then read on the balcony.

At 7:00 I went down to the hotel restaurant and had the usual bread and eggs with some iced coffee. Then Jill and I walked around for 20 minutes and tried to find some cumquats, but to no avail. The whole group was on the bus at 8:15 and we drove down the street to the same pier and boarded the same boat. I set out my towel on the top deck and read my book while listening to some Pat Metheny. It was nice and relaxing!

They stopped the boat for us to jump off the top deck and swim around for an hour. Towards the end, they had to move the boat a bit so as not to go too far into the cove and Graham brought Mike and me an orange tube to hang onto, since the current was picking up and we were already tired. We tried to hang onto the tube and move towards the boat, which just allowed us to stay in the same place. After about 20 minutes, the boat came and got us.

Jill braided my hair and we all threw on some clothes before we reached a giant cave in one of the mountains that protrude from the clear water (all because of tectonic plates or something). We went up some stairs and into the cave before getting back on the boat, eating a lunch of steamed crab, fish balls, clams, fried rice, fish, and Coke. Right before and then during lunch, our professor had a very loud and public verbal fight with one of our more headstrong students. It concerned drinking beer on the trip, since last time some of the students in my group got drunk and puked all over the night train on the way back from Sapa. Ohhhh boy everybody seemed to be getting on each other's nerves and then acting immature.

I finished lunch, ignored the yelling, and headed back to the sunny spot to read on my towel. Then they stopped the boat again and I went to this small beach to swim and look for shells with Meggie and Jill. By 3:00 pm we were all back on the boat and I was again reading while ignoring some tension between our professor and some of my friends. I read, changed out of my bathing suit, and watched in horror as our boat side-swiped a tiny boat on our way to Cat Be Island. Both boats were fine, but it was kind of scary.

We arrived on Cat Ba Island at 4:00 pm and took a 10 minute bus ride to the Princes Hotel, where Jill and I stayed in room 513. I showered, watched some soccer, had my ear cleaned again, wrote in my journal, and got my hair braided.

I had dinner at 6:00 with DiDi, Bryan, Tony, Dale, and Oliver and ate my xao bo (beef, yellow ramen noodles, and greens) and Coke. DiDi and I left early, rented a tandem bike again, and drove around looking for more food. We found a huge grapfruit, some oranges, and a pear and ate them on the lit pier and talked. We then drove around and asked where we could find some duck fetus (hard boiled and still in the egg) and finally found it. It was weird because you could see the head and feathers just before you crunched down on its barely formed skull. Halfway through chowing down on the duck fetuses, we spied some dried bird and got one of those too. I like the dried bird better than the duck fetus, but both were pretty tasty. :)

We got back onto the bike, returned it and paid for the hours, and then ran into Bryan, Sarah, and Monica. We sat and had some iced coffee and talked for quite a while and then we headed to Bia Hoi down the street. There, DiDi and I found the professor and his wife, Dale, Oliver, Tony, and Mike. We chilled there and talked until about 10:00 pm, when I went back to the pier to talk with DiDi for half an hour. I was on my way up to my room when I was flagged down by an American standing outside our hotel. He was a 24 year-old from New Hampshire and wanted to know a bit about Viet Nam and my travels and study. I talked to him for a bit before going back to my room, reading, writing in my class journal, and falling asleep by 11:30 pm.