Ha Long Bay Oct 25

We went to Ha Long Bay on the weekend of October 23. It was so amazing! Actually the most beautiful place I think I have ever been! And we did not have an academic agenda so it was just relaxing. We wend for a boat ride all around the bay on Saturday and went kayaking swimming. The boat had a second level, a deck to sit out in the sun, from which we jumped for swimming. It was so fun. I had never realized before that every other jump is less than a second so there is not time to think about it before it is over. The time to think made it scarier and much, much better.

We went "trekking" in the national forest (Mark likes to apply the term "trekking" to anything from a hike down a road to a visit a village to hiking Mt. Fancypants, thus the quotation marks). We met a couple of German guys on the trail and Eliza got to bust out her German to talk to them. This picture shows Eliza climbing on this big tower on top of the mountain. There were huge bees but also great views.

And we toured a cave which had been converted into a hospital during the American War. There was a natural cave but they had added a heavy metal door and formed rooms with concrete. There were doctor offices, operating rooms (really sketchy with single bare bulbs), patient rooms. They even had a movie theater for morale; this was on the roof of the artificial rooms, with the natural cave ceiling. It was really cool!