ha long bay: magical islands and no electricity

so i'm in cat ba, ha long bay right now with johnny, linn, ib and mini (ireland). i apologize if this post isnt completely coherent cause im a little lethargic right now after eating an apple pancake and pringles for dinner....the first day we got here we rented what apparently are 'huts' which were more like little platforms raised on stilts with a straw roof over it and then you set up tents in them. however, me and linn soon pussied out and got a hotel room for the 2 of us since it was only $5us for the room. but anyway the huts were really cute, right on cat co 2 which is just a little beach that you get to by walking this long sketchy wooden....walkway i suppose it was suspended halfway up the cliffs of the island with rusty bars keeping you from falling off the side. anyway, the first day here was chill and me and linn got a mini girls nite in our little hotel room.

the next day we went on our own private boat which i believe john christened "suckysucky boomboom". the boat was a little sketch aka had a squat toilet that you flushed using sea water you drag up yourself with a bucket on a string and as it turned out, zero electricity, but i have no complaints cause i went out to go check it out and i ok'd it. in all honesty, me and ib went all over town trying to pick a tour since most people book their tours back in hanoi but since were ghetto fabulous, we just have to do things the absolute cheapest way, and basically i fell in love with the woman who was touting this particular tour. she was just so cute and seemingly trustworthy! anyway, i actually i quite loved our boat, it so adorable! (oh and i still cant post pictures im afraid. first off my camera screens still fucked so i dont even know if any of the pictures i took turned out, plus i dont have my USB cable which is back in hanoi. hopefully soon though, bear with me. hey but in the meantime, i have more time for actual written content so really, y'all should still be pleased cause it means i have to be all creative and using my brain and shit. ok, ive sidetracked enough...) AAAAANNNYYYYWAAAAYYYY...

the boat's adorable, just this wooden boat with a squat, an indoor cabin and a roof with tiny railings around it that you can sit on. our crew was fantastic as well, a 4 person family and the mother cooked the best food for us. all on a tiny little griddle or something in the back of the boat. so basically we cruised all around ha long bay which is just tons and tons of crazy looking tall mountainy islands all over the place. our captain told me theres 1,700 of these islands. some are massive, some just like rocks, but they all just protrude out of the water and i cant even describe it but it looks incredible (im ashamed cause i thought i was fantastic with imagery but i have failed myself and all of you). john says "ha long means rising dragon or sinking dragon or farting dragon... i forget. But all the mini islands look like giant rocky chicken mcnuggets" (ok he actually typed that. thats his first contribution to my blog, and thats all he has to say. he tells me to just put up pictures later.) anyway, its truly beautiful, go fucking google that shit if you cant wait!

so on the first day we just cruised around, anchored at a small little beach where the boys tried their hand at fishing with long sticks and john actually caught a little one. the beaches are fantastic, beige sand and little pieces of coral and shells piled up all along the shore. also there were a few mini caves we could crawl into. we also got to go into this really great big ass cave where we wandered around with a couple of candles. such caves were used as hospitals during the war. the stalagmites in the cave looked like "stony icicles of death" (john) and "crystal-y" (mini).

then as the sun was setting i think at like 6 pm, we realized, well fuck, we have no electricity! perhaps my heart skipped a beat, its hard to recall. but i did slip into a momentary phase of panic cause fuck, im an city girl! no electricity, who does that?! (ok, a lot of people, thats who.) so i got over it, we had some candles lit up and that was that. mini has little speakers so we plugged our ipods in and hung out on the roof with the 2 young guys in our crew. for sleep, we had a tarp draped over us and futons set all on top of the roof, how cozy. it was probably my earliest nite sleeping ever since how late can you really stay up in the dark with just a single candle. however, disaster strikes! super intense rainstorm at like 5 am, got all our shit wet and we had to run in from the roof in the dark and i end up curled up in a ball sleeping on 2 benches shoved together. luckily, all our electronic shit is still intact however my pants and hoodie are still wet so just now i had to buy $4 mens shorts which im currently rocking out in.

but we didnt let the rain get us down and today we got in our little wicker row boat and went through some underwater caves into a little lagoon with the good ol' captain. we also went to monkey island, home to 40 monkeys, where we got to meet and feed bananas to 3 monkeys and one of them, the big super fat rabid monkey, had a failed murder attempt on mini. when asked in an interview, mini says the monkey scared the shit out of him. i still thought they were kinda cute, despite big signs that say the monkeys might bite you. we climbed up these sharp jagged rocks up the mountain to check out the view and coming back down, i felt quite confident that i would fall to a rather dramatic death. however, i did not as you can tell by my uber long-winded post that ive got going on here right now.

i just want to note, that i had never been dirtier in my life, than on this boat. we had no fresh water other than a couple of bottles of water, no shower obviously, and we were just sticky with sea water and sea air. so now were back on cat ba island, freshly showered and i think we have a date with the 2 boys from our boat crew cause they wanna take us to the disco after seeing our mad dance moves up on the roof last nite. i mean, my mad dance moves.