Halong Bay

The obligatory two-day Halong Bay junk tour.  Our junk, thankfully, was free of rodents, but small roaches were plentiful.  Gorgeous scenery, particularly at the floating fishing villages, beautiful weather, and a refreshing swim off the side of the boat.  We stopped for the peek at the Thien Cung Grotto and in the late afternoon, the tour operator set us up with a one hour kayak ride. The water in the bay unfortunately, is not very clean.  Oil slicks, human waste, dead rats and plently of floating trash.  Jellyfish too.  Apart from that, the bay is a must-see and we had a great time.

Had a situation when we found ourselves locked out of our cabin.  Seems our key might have made its way to the bottom of the bay when I accidently left it in my pocket while jumping off the 30-foot roof of the junk.  The captain had a spare but it only worked on the outside keyhole, not on the inside.  It wouldn't have mattered except that our door could only be locked from the inside with the key and in fact had to be locked from the inside in order to even stay closed at all.  That meant having to unbolt the window, lock the door from the outside, run around to the opposite side and crawl back in through the window.