Overnight Boat (Luke)

        For the past two days we have had no internet, no electronics, and almost no land. We were on a two three day boat ride in Halong Bay and Bitu Long Bay. It was one of the most beautiful places in the world. There are so many karsts which are huge pieces of limestone some a half kilometer high in the air. There are hundreds of them and the karsts look amazing with all the green on them compared to the blue and green waters of the bay.

The boat was also amazing. Our favorite part was either the 7 huge amazing dishes we got each meal or that the boat had a 3rd deck but we didn't get to use it much due to the fact that it was rainy almost always for the couple of days we were on it. We went kayaking the first day which was really cool. We got to kayak through a fishing village and waved to the little kids that we saw playing. The houses we noticed might have been 6 ft wide 8 ft long and 6 ft long but the view was worth a million dollars. There houses were on boats! We realized that there whole life was on the boat. We later socialized with the others on the boat followed by an amazing dinner.

      The first morning I woke up wondering " Where the heck am I?" as I looked out the window I realized we were in one of the most beautiful places in the world. We spent this day on the little White Dolphin (our boat's name) and first visited a beach. We immediately got the soccer ball and started playing soccer on the beach. We learned we had to take a short hike so we went up but only got a quarter way due to a cage of 8 monkeys. They would play a game with this bucket and one of them we called Dizzy because he would look dizzy all the time and kept dancing against the cage in front of us.

We later went back to the beach and it basically ended in Jacob and I roughhousing. We got back on the boat and ate a gigantic lunch and then went kayaking again. We went through a cave that led to a lake covered by karsts in all directions. We admired the karsts and took in the view.  While we were kayaking Daddy and Maggie spotted a tiny jellyfish that we followed around for the next couple of minutes until it was time to go back to the boat. I probably will always remember when we kayaked in Halong Bay. We got on the boat only to jump off it moments later from the 2nd deck which caused the idea of a jump shot. Unfortunately the jump shot of us didn't work out so we wrapped ourselves in towels and hopped in the hot shower. We soon returned back to the Big White Dolphin and rested.

 

      The next morning I woke up out of bed and opened the curtains. I stuck my head out the window and gazed at the beauty of this place. After filling ourselves up for the cave that ended the boat ride we got on a little boat and soon later arrived at the entrance to the cave. We had to wait in line for a good 30 minutes just to get started because apparently every other tour boat in Halong Bay was here too. The cave was beautiful with a lot of craters on the ceiling making it look like the moon. Like every other cave in the world it had it's fair share of stalactites and stalagmites. Our tour guide showed us how some of the rocks at a perspective look like an animal's head or a Buddha. Once we got out Mommy took out her camera and took plenty of pictures from 100 ft high looking out on this beautiful view before us. We soon left the cave and spent our last hour and a half on the boat loading ourselves on Brunch and doing card tricks with some Australians. We got off the boat and waited for what seemed forever to leave on a 3 hour car ride to our hotel again. We looked out the window and looked back one last time to one of the most beautiful places I will see in my life.