ha long bay

This image made me laugh so hard I cried when i saw it. The grotto is in the shape of kissing chickens, so Kat and I decided to continue our routine of going to romantic and cool places together instead of significant others.

Tien took this photo of the fruit boats. The colors are stunning. We bought grapefruit and dragon fruit for dessert.

We did a day excursion to Ha Long Bay. We actually planned on being in Ha Long City so we brought all of our bags, but at the last minute, we decided to return to Hanoi since it was more lively at night.

We booked a tour at Ha Long, which you shouldn't do because you are likely to pay more. However, we got the most amazing boat with some very interesting guests on board. Since we did our own tour, there were less people on the boat; we had a total of 7 people touring, and the crew. We ran through the whole boat taking pictures on the top deck, and then went to chill in the bottom deck.

They offered to take us to the floating island to buy seafood and they would cook it for us, which is awesome, but they didn't tell us that the prices would be insane. We ended up picking a fish, some crab, and two mussels to cook. It was the most expensive meal ever, but my god, was it good. The minute it came out, we knew this was going to be an amazing meal. Our other guests shared some of the meal with us, and it was all so incredibly tasty. The fish was the freshest I've ever tasted (they killed it in front of me), the crab was so meaty, and the veggies were all cooked while the seafood was boiling.

We then arrived at the grottos, and went to explore. The grottos are lit with different colors, and everything was amazing on the inside. It was incredibly humid inside the grottos, but we managed to get some pretty fun pictures. Walking up and down the steps is like the best stairmaster ever. I think my calves grew an inch since I've been here. It forces us to be insanely fit and I am very happy about that...even when Im huffing and puffing my way up!!

oh! and get this! on the boat, there was a famous Vietnamese singer!! Well, we don't know how famous he actually is, but a DVD was put in and suddenly I realized that the person on the screen was the same person sitting across from us. His name is Dang Vu, and he sings love ballads. He was dressed to the nines, in a shiny shirt and long toed shoes. He and his wife were actually really sweet and they shared their grapefruit with us. We then shared our million dollar fish and tons of shrimp with them.