Halong Bay and Sapa

So, we have been doing some totally amazing touring in the past couple of days. We did an overnight trip in Halong Bay on a junk boat. Even though it was raining for part of the time and cloudy, the islands were still breathtaking, there are about 4000 or more of them. We were on a boat with a couple nice Australian groups, there were 15 people total. We went to a huge cave that went all the way through one of the islands. It was really cool, but sad that they had cemented the ceiling of it virtually killing the cave system. We also got to swim and kayak and got to see the fisherman villages that are essentially just floating shacks in some of the island bays.
Our next trip was to Sapa to see the local hill tribe people. We took an overnight train last night to get here which wasn't too bad actually. We got a minibus from the train station up to our hotel. The ride beautiful, we went high up into the mountains and had spectacular views of the landscape and terraced rice patties. Today we went on a half day trek to Cat Cat village and to see a waterfall. It is crazy here, as soon as we left the hotel we were surrounded by tribe people dressed in traditional attire, mostly kids who were very cute and friendly and walked with us for a long time chatting or just following quietly. Two of the kids made me a little horse doll out of grass. When we got to Cat Cat village, they stopped and asked us to buy stuff from them. I ended up buying something from each of the 3 kids that followed me because I felt bad leaving one out. It is all handcrafted and very nice.
Cat Cat village was neat to see, the people here believe in spirits and have a shaman who cures ailments with incence and pickled animals like snakes and lizards!
When we got to the waterfall, it started raining. The waterfall was big and beautiful and had water buffalo wading in the pool on top of it. The whole trek until now was downhill, so geting back was a bit of a challenge and was quite wet.
P.S. Father dearest, though the raincoat you gave me seemed like a good idea, it is in fact NOT waterproof, though it says it is and therefore will have it's final resting place in Vietnam.




Halong bay



Cave through the mountain



View of the mountains in Sapa