Tet and Halong Bay

Holy crap – they’re attacking! Oh wait, never mind, they’re just celebrating. Tet in Hanoi was sheer madness. The crowd was as dense as I would imagine Times Square is on New Years and just as crazy. Various acrobatic performances, dragon costume shows, concerts, dudes smoking weed, women selling mice (for the Year of the Rat), kids running amok and tossing M-80s at each other… all quite exciting. The fireworks show was one of the best I’ve seen just because of its massive scale. No messing around with choreography or cutesy little shapes (although I think I saw one that looked like a cowboy hat). The entire show was essentially a huge 20 minute finale – throwing it all up as fast and furious as possible in several locations around the city. And to make it even better, there was significant crowd participation. Not “oohhhs” and “aahhs,” but additional firecrackers, screamers, fire balloons, and mortars. Totally sweet. The year of the Rat has begun.Tet builds up until midnight on Tet Eve and then everyone shuts their doors and closes their businesses for a few days of family time. Some tourist services were still up and running, however, so I hopped over to Halong Bay to boat around. The rock formations in this area are absolutely fantastic. I didn’t know anything this awesome existed, let alone right here in North-East Vietnam. There are just under 2000 limestone islands and a few dozen are inhabited. We stayed over night on Cat Ba Island and it looked to be straight out of JurassicPark – we kept expecting to see Pterodactyls flying around between the peaks. Now off to Sapa, which will be the last stop before crossing the border into Laos.