Turnbull Family Pacific Tour 2015

Yesterday evening on the boat we had another excellent meal with a wide variety of seafood, including local oysters served in the half shell and warmed briefly with fried and dried onions and garlic on top. The prawns were interesting since they were served with shells, heads and tentacles intact. Catheleen is pretty good at removing the shells and everything else, but I find I'm not in the mood for shrimp once I've witnessed this carnage. When the tour guide asked us if we had any food restrictions, Elizabeth piped in that, while she is not allergic to seafood, she doesn't care for it. John only likes shrimp and tolerates fish, so after a few courses of seafood, while Elizabeth was getting substitute chicken and beef courses, John wished he had also made the same request as Elizabeth. At dinner we spoke to two Canadians named Cory and Luke, the only Canadians we've seen for quite a while. They were on a ten day trip to Vietnam, and had just returned from trekking to a ...

Today was day two of our cruise within Ha Long Bay. I started the day with Tai Chi on the deck. I can't say I did it any justice, but I followed the instructor's moves as best I could. It was good to start the day with a little light exercise. In the morning we took a day boat through the bay past some of the two thousand islands that cover the area. Our destination was Cat Ba Island for some biking and touring. On the island we took a newly built road five kilometres inland to a nearby village - the old lower road was still under water. There was a lot of rain and flooding in the area about two months ago that has yet to subside completely. The last time it happened was about 90 years ago, and it has really hurt the villages on the island, who are only now getting their houses and rice paddies back. We took three bikes out, with Elizabeth on the back of our guide's motorcycle on the way out and John on the way back. Riding on a motorcycle was again a highlight for the kid...

We took the overnight train from Sa Pa to Hanoi, and then travelled by bus to Ha Long Bay to start a two-night cruise. Our guide Nam was very friendly and informative, and tried to give us a sense of life in Vietnam in general and Hanoi in particular. He said people in Hanoi might wake at 4 or 5 AM and begin the day with some exercise. On our taxi ride from the train station in Hanoi around 4:30 AM we saw this first hand, with runners and cyclists dominating the street traffic before the sun rises. After exercise, people might have a noodle soup called Pho for breakfast. At the hotel this morning, while we waited for the bus to pick us up, I watched the scene across the street, where two ladies had set up shop on the sidewalk for the breakfast crowd. A mother arrived with her young child and ordered something that looked like porridge, and sat down on one of the ubiquitous small plastic stools that are everywhere. She fed herself and her child while a school age girl ordered the same...