After ending our cruise back at the Ha Long City port, we continued our trip back to Hanoi on a minivan ride similar to the one that took us from Hanoi before the cruise. The guests from our boat were split to separate minivans given our destinations in Hanoi. So we said goodbye to the other guests whom we came to know during the trip.

The drive back to Hanoi took about almost four hours. That included a stop in the middle at a souvenir shop / rest area. Since all of the minivans carrying the guests back to Hanoi left around the same time, we ended up seeing each other again at the rest stop.

During this trip back, I made an interesting observation on the economic development in the area between Hanoi and Ha Long City. When we left Ha Long City, we passed a toll gate that seemed to be part of a way to fund the development of the highway between the two cities. The road between the two cities was still a non-divided highway for most of it, but I could see the need to either to widen the road or make it a divided road.

It looked like there were increase in traffic to accomodate the growth in both tourism and manufacturing industry in the area. As we got closer to Hanoi, we could see a visible sign of economic growth in Vietnam as there were manufacturing facilities of multi-national companies like Canon that lined up on the side of the highway. There were also new residential and commercial construction coming up. I wonder if it would look very different if I come back again to the same place in a few years.

The photo below was taken somewhere in the middle of the trip. You can see new buildings being built in an empty lot. I thought it’s interesting that the buildings were built in the style of buildings in big city like Hanoi (on a narrow lot but deep and tall). It’s as if they’re anticipating it to be a high density development.

As we walked further inside the cave, the lighting for the path changed from electric-powered lights on the ground to a series of candles. It looked like the crew had spent some time to prepare this, given that it must have been more than a hundred of these candles needed to light the remaining path until we reached a large chamber inside the cave. This must have been where the previous inhabitant of the cave lived; it’s quite a sizeable space, and I could tell it’s a good place deep enough into the cave to protect from the elements during inclement weather.

The crew of the Dragon’s Pearl apparently had spent the rest of the afternoon while we were resting on the boat to prepare an elaborate candlelight dinner for us. Similar to the previous meals we had during this trip, it was a nice multi-course dinner. For this particular dinner, the dishes were all prepared on a grill somewhere on the island (or possibly inside the cave somewhere with some ventilation). We had grilled prawns, meat and vegetables in skewers, and some fried rice. Each dish was presented with beautiful food carving to decorate it, culminating with a model of the Dragon’s Pearl carved from a pumpkin.

I remembered the food was enjoyable, but what’s special for this particular meal was the setting and the company we had in enjoying the experience. You can see on the photo below the setting of the dining table inside the cave chamber, with the dimmed lighting around it.

The idea of taking gap year is pretty common in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and is getting more popular in the United States and other countries as well. Gap year refers to one taking time off between life stages to get more life experience through traveling, volunteering, or working abroad (or perhaps all three). Traditionally this is done after one finishes either high school or college/university, though today you see more people doing the gap year experience post retirement, before starting a family, or even in the middle of a career as a break from the hectic life. The length also varies from few weeks to even indefinite.

During our trip in Vietnam we met someone who had done this in earlier part of his life. Dave, the gentleman from Australia whom we met in Sapa traveling with his wife Anna, had done such traveling for few months in several Asian countries. You could tell the experience impacted his ‘style’ of traveling — more independent, open minded, resourceful, and efficient. Anna mentioned how Dave limited their travel gear to only things they could carry on a backpack each. And while they had general plans on where they would go during their few weeks in Vietnam, the plan was somewhat fluid and they relied on what they learned along the way from the locals and other travelers they met to plan their next steps.

In Ha Long Bay, we me a couple of other travelers who had just started their gap year experience. Hannah and Sophie are a couple of friends from Canberra, Australia, who had just recently graduated from college, and were in the beginning part of their trip in Vietnam. They were traveling for a few weeks (it was summertime in Australia) before they continued on with the next stage in their lives.

I took the photo below as we left the Cong Dam village on the way back to our junk boat. Here is Sophie trying out rowing in place of the lady who was the rower of their boat. I think this is the kind of attitude that would make such experience enriching — being willing to try out things and interacting with the locals where they are.