Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

The previous post in this series is here..

After our vegetarian lunch in Hanoi, we started off towards Ha Long Bay. It was a long drive and our attempts at telling our driver to keep his eyes on the road failed miserably. So we just braced ourselves for a potential accident and tried to look outside the window as much as possible to the side! Apparently the norm here per driver given the traffic. We even called the guy who ran the service and that person said we were with the safest driver in his fleet!

This was a local Electric Vehicle which had some ADAS. So that gave us some consolation even though I didn’t trust the ADAS in this type of traffic. Enough of the car stories..

On the way we saw the west lake and the Pagoda in it. There was no time to visit this Pagoda but we had spent a lot of time in the morning at another temple with the turtles. We prayed en route to the higher powers in that Pagoda to make it to Ha Long.

We made it to Halong bay in 2 hours. The place was empty. No tourists on the waterfront. Apparently the boats had all left for the all day tour of the rock formations and would return around sunset. So we had the place to ourselves. Walked around, took pictures, saw the Dolphin palace which was impressive and we decided to go to the beach side. It was a 20 minute ride and we spent a good 45 minutes in the beach taking pictures and just enjoying the relatively empty beach.

Ha Long bay is really beautiful with the unique rock formations. The views were the same from most places though. We were reasonably sure that our decision to see this from the shore instead of an all day boat ride was a good one given our time constraints. Here are the pics.. yoga first..

At this point we decided not to wait for the sunset. It would take us a lot more than 2 hours in evening traffic to get back. We had not even checked in to our hotel and we wanted to see the night market and old quarter by night. So we told our driver that we can start back with no breaks. He was also happy as we had started early that morning from the airport and it was a long day for him as well. More photos..

it was a good call. We drove past a glorious sunset towards Hanoi and were dropped off at hour hotel a little close to 6:30 PM. We had made it back in exactly 2 hours.

A video highlight of our visit to Ha Long bay

We checked into our room and ventured out towards the market.. that in the next post!

Sorrento piers and Sunset

The previous post in this series is here..

After going back to the hotel, the kids decided we had to go to the “beach”. There was NO beach. Just sea access points. We stayed at Hotel Angelina in Sorrento for the two nights. Strongly recommend it for the quiet location, access to the sea, walkable to the city center and public bus stop, and most importantly cute rooms and a very friendly staff. They helped me park the car everytime in the garage!

Our hotel manager told us that there is a public access point to the ocean where locals rent just umbrellas and chairs for 10 or 15 Euro instead of the 50-100 through the hotel elevators that take you down. We had to walk through a tunnel. So off we went. It was a good walk and nice experience. San and the little one stayed in the chairs and relaxed while Jr. and me decided to spend 2 hours in the water.

Then we went back up. It was tricky walking with wet chappals in the tunnels. We dressed up nice again and went back to the city center for dinner. Found a nice place which had a few vegetarian options and small wait time (turns out it was a chain restaurant which is not fancy by local standards.. we found out the next day). Still the food was good and we walked to a local supermarket. Everyone was giving up on sunset and I was being lectured on being sunset crazy. Pushed everyone to walk fast towards the sea and they reluctantly came.

Have to hand it to Jr. She believed in me and told everyone not to give up. When we went to the end of the road we got to see a glorious sunset. After this it was a longer walk back to the hotel and I used Apple maps to go through some deserted lanes. That made them all worry.. but it ended up okay and we were back at the hotel.

Here are the few pictures I have from this afternoon and evening.

A short highly edited video highlights reel..

On a side note, that purplish shirt that gives off different hues under sunlight was my dads. In the last few years we would get him shirts for events which he would wear for a few hours, then shirt will be washed and put in a bureau. When he passed my mom just gave me 15 of these once worn shirts, most of which I had got him as we are the same size. Used those shirts on this trip. There was a constant reminder to see things in a different context.

If you think I am pushing Ramarajan colors, my dad used to do this 50 years ago. He got shirts stitched with the hands and pocket in a different color with the local tailor. In a drab world he got style. Guess I have to thank him for that.

Back to Sorrento.. The next day was going to be packed. We had plans in the morning and had to be back in time for the postponed Kayak trip…

Dew magic - Gray whale cove trail, Pacifica

We have hiked Gray whale cove trail once before. We were inexperienced hikers then, confusing bike paths with hiking trails and taking on steep slippery slopes without hiking shoes.

Decided to revisit the trail this weekend with some friends who are not part of our usual hiking group. There were no views. The place was completely foggy once we hit the cloud line. The skies cleared up only when we almost came down. Definitely recommend this as an afternoon hike if scenery is your thing.

That said, our hikes are all about the joking, giggling ladies, taking pictures of whatever comes our way and Chaifies when we reach the summit. This time we had Chai, cookies, pakoras… they all taste divine after hiking a few hours , standing in condensed dew and sweat on a windy summit. There were many bench photos..

The dew and condensed mist made magic. The flowers, the webs, buds.. I was just taking macro shots everytime we stopped. Here are the pictures..

A few other shots..

a short video clip of the foggy experience

Blogging can be fast if you keep at it.. editing photos and videos, uploading them and doing a write up used to be so fast for me.. after a three month gap, takes me longer.. like my yoga teachers say “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Glad to be writing again.

This hike is tricky at places but strongly recommend with good hiking shoes, having all trails (still two members missed a cut off and kept walking) and taking the safer options. The two folks who kept talking and walked almost a mile ahead and turned back were made to stand up on the bench and do thoppikaranam for ummachchi. The offenders faces have been blocked out like in Indian news media so the blog audience cannot know who they are..

Now I have to be more careful on the trails and not get lost. As the person who is most likely to get lost, this new protocol might actually be bad for me!

Go try this hike! We have. never gone down the beach on the other side of the freeway yet. On our next attempt definitely plan to do that.