May 29: Lan Ha Bay!

After a few hours in a cafe working on my blog, I started my boat tour of Lan Ha Bay and Ha Long Bay. I looooved being on the water! It was so gorgeous! And the breeze was so wonderful!

There were about 15 tourists on the boat, along with a crew of 3 and an English-speaking guide. One couple was American and the rest were European, representing Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK. They were all super friendly and it was fun getting to know them over the course of two days. Especially in such a beautiful setting with such fun activities!

a floating fishing village!

possibly the best room I've stayed in this entire trip?? also, my shower had a door that sealed the water in 🥹

incredible views

delicious vegetarian lunch!

We stopped at one point to swim around the boat, and then they drove us to this cove where we could swim to a secluded beach :)  

testing my waterproof phone case :) 

my phone took lots of artsy photos like this one as I was swimming back to the boat

Then we kayaked!

You can see where the layers of limestone formed and then were thrust upward by the tectonic plate movements!

me w/ cool rock

I got assigned to share a kayak with a woman from Italy named Claudia because we were the only people there without a partner 🙃 so it goes

we kayaked into caves!

...that led into other lagoons!

It was soooo beautiful

a hidden cave!

As we paddled, our guide (Hang) told us interesting facts about the geology and ecology. Like the bats living in these caves!

this lagoon had lots of (non-stinging) jellyfish!

my waterproof phone case made my phone think I wanted to zoom way in, for some reason 😆

one two gotcha!

incredible vegetarian dinner

After dinner, Hang entertained us with a plethora of magic tricks. Some people were determined to figure out his tricks, but I was happy to be amazed :) It was a really fun way to end the night.