Halong Bay, Vietnam

Jolie and Owain leave for a vacation in Vietnam and Laos tomorrow. www.joliejam.blogspot.com will, no doubt, have some super pictures posted on their return. Here is some of what they will see.
Halong Bay, above, is a three hour insane drive north of Hanoi where, if you are fortunate enough to survive the drive, you will see not only the rice workers in the rice fields - about $14 a month for their labor - you will see motor scooters with as many as 3 hogs on the way to market, the driver and a passenger aboard. You will see dogs that may or may not be someone's dinner. We were told that tiny dogs were kept for pets but pity the poor mid sized to large dogs that stand very good chances in the rural areas of Vietnam of being stir fried with rice. You will see one town whose main street seemed to be nothing but dentist offices. You will see military cars or cars with special licences speeding straight towards you on a 2 lane road. Your driver will move over with the calm of experience and you will breath again in about 100 yards.

When you arrive at Halong Bay you will see a far prettier site than the picture above because you will not arrive on an overcast day as we did. Our day cleared eventually too. You will, though, see many, many boats like the above where people live and make their livelihood by fishing. We went out on a boat for hire that took us to some magnificent caves and then made a slow and dreamy return to the boat dock. Halong Bay is a beautiful place with calm waters and those magnificent and odd rock formations and islands.