Ha Long Bay

The Ministry of Science and Technology arranged a vehicle for us to travel the 3 hours to Ha Long Bay. Ha Long sits on the Vietnamese/Chinese border. It was not too long ago when UNESCO was conducting a worldwide vote to determine what the new seven wonders of the world should be that Ha Long was on the list. I can see why after visiting. It is a beautiful - HUGE - bay that has 1,000's of islands rising up out of the sea like giant mountains. We boarded a private boat to tour around. Our first stop was at a docking area where we climbed what seemed like a million stairs to tour this incredible cave. The cave had amazing rock formations and lots of bats. Back to the boat for a short ride into a floating city and a stop at a floating fish market where the crew selected our lunch. Our lunch consisted of clams, crab, fish, shrimp, and other assorted local favorites. All very tasty. We continued touring around the islands and just relaxed. This is a very amazing experience and I think students would love this!!! Not far from where we were is the Bay of Tonkin which was a site for the war.
I think that we will need to have a professor come in to our group prior to departure to provide students with a foundation of the war and the historical perspective for their visit. I think that their journey here will have much more of an impact if they have that historical perspective and foundation.