We decided we would take a kayak trip in Ha Long Bay. Some day.

We kept putting the trip off, and over the years it grew. If we were going to Ha Long Bay, we might as well see the rest of Vietnam, right? And if you're going to go to Vietnam, you have to see China. And Thailand, too. And why not throw in the Olympics in Australia, since it's over there in the same half of the world.

The trip got bigger and bigger, but it started with Ha Long Bay so we were excited to finally see it.

Getting to Ha Long Bay from Hanoi required some logistical coordination that we didn't feel like doing on our own, so we booked a tour through Kim's Cafe. For $25 they would bus us to Ha Long Bay (4 hours east of Hanoi), boat us to Cat Ba Island, feed us all our meals, put us up in a hotel 2 nights, and arrange a guide for a trek through Cat Ba National Park.

Travel in Vietnam presents an interesting conundrum. China's infrastructure has developed just enough to allow the independent traveler to go pretty much anywhere they'd like on local transport. It may not always be comfortable, but with a little effort you can travel efficiently on the same boats, buses, trains, and planes that the Chinese people do. However, here in Vietnam that isn't the case. There is only one major train line and it runs from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City (if "runs" is the right verb to describe its crawling pace). And the bad roads and ancient buses make local buses and even worse option.

As a result, a parrallel infrastructure has developed specificially to serve travelers. Private buses and minivans owned by chains of traveler's cafes have become the primary means of transport for foreigners. These clean, comfortable, air-condidtioned buses will whisk you off to any corner of Vietnam, at very reasonable rates. For example, $27 buys you an open bus ticket all the way from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City with as many stopovers as you'd like to make along the way. The downside -- of course -- is that you are on a bus with only foreigners, and as I've written before, Sarah and I have had some of our most memorable experiences on buses in which we were the only Westerners. This choice of bad local transport or comfortable efficient private transport is one we will face again and again as we continue through the heavily touristed areas of Vietnam and Thailand.

The drive to the bay was relatively uneventful. I felt tinges of guilt every time our luxury 45-seat coach cruised past a beat up local bus, but I must say it was a smooth ride. We had the mandatory "bathroom break" at a gift shop. At this particular stop they actually locked us into the gift shop compound, so we didn't even have the option of sneaking away! A few hours later we reached Ha Long City, where after a good lunch we boarded a boat for the 4 hour cruise to Cat Ba Island.

The first thing Sarah and I noticed was the weather. We had always pictured a cold drizzle, something like Puget Sound in the winter. Instead it was steaming hot. The sea was flat, and although the sky was deep blue the air was thick with humidity and the distant islands shimmered in a fog you couldn't quite see. We lay on the roof of the boat, happily sweating in the sun.

Within an hour we had crossed a wide section of open water and drew closer to the islands. It was easy to see why they were uninhabited. Most were ringed with sheer cliffs dropping straight into the sea, and any land that was even close to horizontal was covered in dense foliage. We saw dark caves dotting the cliffs and small beaches tucked here and there along the water.

Soon we passed our first floating village. Unable to live on the islands, the people have taken to living and working on the bay itself. Clusters of covered boats, rafts, and small huts were tied together in sheltered coves. Traditionally these were fishing villages (with awfully short commutes to work) but now many of the locals make a living by paddling their woven bamboo boats up to tour boats like ours and selling soda, beer, cigarettes, and snacks.

Our boat stopped at an island, where a steep staircase up the cliff brought us to a large, 3-roomed cave. The third cavern was absolutely immense and would have been spectacular had it not been for the graffiti covering the walls and the stumps of stalactites that had been cut off as souviniers.

Here, as in China, the villagers have named all the natural formations. I remember our guide in Yangshou pointing to a mountain saying "Chicken Flying Kite! Chicken Flying Kite! So beautiful!" I certainly didn't see a chicken flying a kite. Maybe if they had called it "Weathered Hill" I could see the resemblance. But here, in the cavern in Ha Long Bay, there was a formation called "Buddha" that I could actually see resembled the Buddha! Perhaps this is a sign that I've been on the road too long.

Next, our boat anchored in a quiet bay for a quick swim. This was real tropical vacation type stuff: diving off the roof of the boat, floating in the warm emerald water. Sun-drenched and salt-caked we puttered on, reaching Cat Ba City just after sunset.

Cat Ba is by far the largest island in Ha Long Bay, and it is the only one with any sizeable human population. Until recently it was a sleepy fishing village, but with the creation of Cat Ba National Park in 1986 the tourists have arrived, and following close behind were new hotels, restaurants, and karaoke machines. Our hotel was nice enough. It was clean, had hot water and a private bath, and the electricity even worked some of the time.

We met our group for a dinner of fresh seafood, and then Sarah and I returned to our room. I turned on the news and stared at it, hoping to somehow will myself into understanding Vietnamese so that I could find out who won the US presidential election. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to learn anything. Vietnamese newscasts are about as snazzily produced as those grainy POW films they made of our downed airmen saying how well they were being treated, so all I saw was a stone-faced guy reading from a sheet of white paper. Even now, four days after the election as I write this on the boat back to the mainland, we have no idea who won.

The next morning we rose early and caught a bus north towards the center of the island. Our bus stopped at a hillside just below what looked like a small cave. This turned out to be one of the most interesting things we have seen on our whole trip.

Cat Ba island lies in one of the most heavily bombed areas of Vietnam. Haiphong, the major port just west of here, attracted a lot of attention by the American bombers, so the entire area was under constant attack. The local inhabitants -- military and civilian alike -- took to living in the caves that acted as natural bomb shelters.

But this cave, here on Cat Ba, was unique. With the help of the Chinese, they built a huge 3-story concrete hospital inside the existing cave. Just inside the natural entrance and hidden from view were giant metal doors. Inside was a labyrinth of operating rooms, living quarters, and meeting rooms. There was an exercise area that doubled as a cinema, and even a small swimming pool. It was miserably humid, as all caves are, and I couldn't imagine living there in the dark with 600 other people, its peak occupancy during the bombings.

We exited out a second doorway on the other side of the mountain. Same series of metal doors and guard rooms.

From there, it was a short drive farther north to Cat Ba National Park. We were now dead center of the island. Our task for the day was to hike to the eastern shore, where a boat would ferry us back to our hotel. Between us and the coast was 18 km of steep, jungly terrain.

All of this sounds very adventurous, but the fact is we were hiking in a tour group with 25 our Westerners and we were following a guide. It was more like a grade-school field trip to the zoo, but without the animals since our big group scared them all away.

Still, it was a pleasant hike. Most of it was either up or down the rugged limestone hills. The canopy was so thick we didn't get many views, but we enjoyed seeing the oversized Alice In Wonderland vegetation. I'm not sure how our Vietnamese guide made it over the tangle of sharp boulders in his little plastic flip-flops, nor how the deeply hungover Englishmen in our group kept up with the rapid pace.

About an hour of the trip was a complete blur after I made the mistake of asking Drew, a new Aussie friend, a fairly innocuous question about British soccer. I was rewarded with a complete rundown not only of the english Premiere League's complex rules and regulations, but also its relationship to UEFA, the Champions League, its superiority over Italy's Seria A, and various other ownership and salary issues. I was spared the usual foray into the Rugby League versus Rugby Union debate when Drew launched into a very well laid out argument as to why Aussie Rules football is the world's one and only truly perfect sport. He began with a historical section on Aussie football's roots in Gaelic football, then moved into a physical and psychological profile of the stresses it places on both athletes and fans, supported his argument with references to sports as diverse as crickett and the NBA, threw in some hard scientific data, and wrapped the whole thing up with quotes from The Origin of Species and The Bible.

I'm not sure about that last part. I was thinking about lunch.

Yesterday our tour group headed back to Hanoi, but Sarah and I elected to stay an extra day and explore the island on our own. We intended to fulfill our original mission of kayaking Ha Long Bay, but despite combing the waterfront we were unable to find a single kayak for rent. Instead, we rented a motorcycle.

I call it a motorcycle to maintain some aura of masculinity, but in fact it was a little clutchless thing called a "Honda Dream" that probably falls within the "Scooter" taxonomy. The friendly restaurant owner who rented it to me have me a 1-minute lesson and I spent another 20 minutes driving around town learning how to shift, brake, steer, and avoid oncoming dump-trucks. Finally, I deemed myself certified and went to pick up Sarah at the hotel. I felt like a young Brando rumbling down Main Street on my hog, but the sissy buzz of The Dream and my general lack of sex appeal kind of shattered the illusion.

There is only one road on Cat Ba, so navigation is easy. We headed north, past the hospital cave and the National Park. The road wound through narrow valleys. A few farms were scattered about, but the steep hillside rendered most of the land inaccessable. Eventually we reached the end of the road in a small village about 1 km from the north shore of the island. People materialized out of the fields and buildinds. One wanted to sell us soda, another offered to watch The Dream while we hiked, and someone else wanted to be our guide. We explored the area for a while, hiked to the north short to see more of the bay, and then headed back for an afternoon on the empty beaches near Cat Ba City.

Today we are retracing our steps from four days ago. First a boat back to mainland, then a bus to Hanoi.