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!

Floating in the dead sea - a nice end to a long trip

The previous post in this series is here..

We were done with Wadi Rum. There were more flight changes for part of our group. So BIL and family had to stay in Amman for an extra day. The rest of us had rescheduled our return (which was originally through DC on United) to go through Doha on Qatar airlines with a 8 hour gap in Doha! 

At least we would all be together till we were done with the dead sea experience. It took us a good 3+ hours to drive to the dead sea from Wadi Rum. We drove along the Israel Jordan border and stopped at Aqaba to see Egypt, Palestines West Bank, Jordan and Israel from the freeway. You can see it in the video. No wonder the place is tense all the time! The population density around the red sea area was incredible!

Then we were driving alond the dead sea. It was desolate. We could see a lot of farming on the Israel side, but nothing on the Jordanian side. We were blessed by the camel gods again on the drive. . 

Zaid stopped us at a store to buy some beauty products made from the dead sea. We spent 30 minutes there. It was interesting to know so many dermatology clinics and skin care treatment centers sprout around this area based on the curative aspects of the salt and water.

From the store we went to the Crowne plaza where a lunch had been arranged. It was an amazing buffet with a lot of vegetarian options and we got to drink tea with fresh cow milk for the first time in 5 days! There was a cake cutting celebration! With our tummies full, we were apprehensive of going in salty water.. what if we swallow some and the lunch comes out?! 

It was too late to discuss. So off we went. There is a beautiful elevator that takes us down to the water level in the Crowne Plaza. They also gave us towels and pool access as part of the service. It was all pre-booked. There are a lot of villas and long term housing accomodations in the crowne plaza. We learned that medical tourism, especially for dermatology is famous here and folks do stay there for 3 months at a time to take daily dips in the dead sea!

The signs that said Beach access were a lie. There is no BEACH! it is a bunch of rocks you walk on and eventually float.

This is highly risky. Out of the 8 people in our group and 6 others on this so called beach 5 of us had cuts and bleeding injuries when we came out of the water. Happy that no one hit their head on the rocks! 

Yes, you do float in the water and if the salt gets to your eyes or mouth, it stings badly and you have to rush to the shower to clean it out. There is no sand and the rocks on the floor cut your feet! My thighs were all bruised and bleeding (realized it much later), San's back was all scratched.. 

Like my niece aptly noted "the dead sea will take away all your pain and then double your pain by the time you are done floating!"

It was an interesting experience though. You get smeared with oily black sand, let it dry on you for 5 minutes, then go wash it out, float a bit, then get hosed down with fresh water.. followed by selective sand washing again and a final salt scrubbing.

When the entire thing was done, my skin was very very smooth but extremely dry! The supposed super moisturization didn't work on my skin. Maybe the salt water dehyrated me a lot. We were asked to drink a lot of water after that dip. The dead sea has 6-8 times the salt of regular seas and is also oily!

We walked back the hotel area and hung out by the pool. Then said our byes. It was time for the four of us to leave for the airport.

It was an hour plus drive from the dead sea to Amman airport and we saw tires burning in different places. We were hoping that my BIL's family stay safe the next day they were on their own and made it to our flight on time.

At Doha we took a transit Visa for 20 USD each. Then we took a taxi (they are reliable and affordable) to the Central Inn (15 minutes from the airport) and crashed there for the night. We got 5 hours of sleep. We already had boarding passes on carry on luggage only. We were back at the airport in the morning just in time to clear immigration, security check and board our flight to SFO!

The long return flight was actually good and the Vegetarian meals was excellent. This is my first time flying Qatar Airways, and I have to say they did a great job!

A video highlight of the drive to the dead sea and the experience there.

For the first time, I have managed to finish blogging about a weeklong trip within a week of returning. My family knew I wanted to finish it this time and have let me keep at it...

Yet to blog about the anniversary trip from July. Hopefully will do that over the next few days!

Thanks for reading through this series! 

This traveling family wishes you all a wonderful 2025!!!! 

A drive on Ice field Parkway

On day 2 of the Banff trip, we were booked on a bus tour to see the Athabasca Glacier. Will write a separate post on the Glacier itself. This post is about the what we saw on the almost all day drive to the place. 

The previous post on this trip is here..

We started at 8AM. We did not know they had a pickup point right outside our hotel. We could have got more sleep! Instead we parked downtown and paid dearly for it. The bus had 23 people plus the driver in it. By the end of the day we were all introduced to everyone and we all got to talk at the various stops. It was an international crowd, folks from BC Canada, Brazil, Australia, UK, Belgium and the two of us representing the US!

The driver was a local 20 year old kid, doing this as a summer job. Hindsight being 20/20, we realized at the glacier that we could have just driven to the Glacier ride point in our rental car in an hour and 15 minutes with stops on the way and saved a good 2 hours to do something else. While it is true that there is only one company that is allowed to ride the monster trucks on the Glacier (Columbia IceField), you don't have to go in a bus from Banff to that place!! You can directly go there and get tickets. 

That said, we still enjoyed being passengers, interacting with strangers and stopping at all these points that the kid stopped the bus at, which we would not have otherwise seen. (he took us to vista points that were not the main parking lots.. which helped get great shots with no crowd in the background!). So from that point, it was a big plus. The only time we could have saved was for waiting for 23 people getting in and out of the bus at every stop instead of just the two of us. The kid did a great job of entertaining us during the drive! 

There was a much bigger plus. He stopped when he saw a car slow down in front of us (I would not have) and we got to see a bear walk by us, up  close and personal.. that was the highlight of the drive.

We also had lunch at a nice quiet picnic spot next to the river. 

This drive on Ice field parkway is very scenic. We go all along the bow river all the way from Banff to Jasper National park. The drive in the car would have taken 2 1/2 hours, but we started at 8 and reached at 12:30 including all the photo stops. 

The spots we could not stop at on the way up, we did on the way down. 

First stop: The Lake Louise Village visitor center. This place had a bunch of places to get breakfast and coffee and it was the first rest stop after an hour plus of driving. Every place had a long line. We were lucky to get some breakfast in the Trailhead Cafe, where the line was at least moving! San had a Vegan Samosa which she rated highly!

We started all smiles.. a good sign. This was in the parking lot waiting for the bus. Did I mention we were early? This is also a "warmup selfie" !

Next stop: Herbert lake

We walked through spruce and aspen tree lined trails to the lake (this was our first of many such lake shore visits over the next 48 hours!)

the path ends and voila... the shades of green and blue and the transparent water hits you!

Next stop.. lunch at Coleman creek..

Next stop (more like slow down..) BEAR!! Unfortunately we could not open the windows in the bus.. this is the best I could get with the SLR from the other side of the bus through a tinted window.. it was an exciting thing for us to see this bear walk along the freeway!

at this point I would like to mention that we were expecting to see a lot of animals on the drive.. but the only other non human creature we saw during that day was this ground squirrel at the lunch stop near the river. 

Last but one stop was a waterfalls across the mountains.. there was a family of four from Belgium. The couple and their two daughters exactly 3 years older than our two girls. Their girls helped us take a lot of photos. This was a good shot of us.. no falls, but I love this picture .. so it goes in the blog!

A video that captures all these stops including the "bear sighting". 

If you want to do things fast, just go by yourself from Banff to Jasper. (then again, you might save an hour tops.. given you have to get a pass .. the bus already had a pass and was waved in).  If you want to just sit back, relax and meet folks and go at a slow pace (if you have more than two days to cover the place), then take the bus tour from Banff. It is actually a decent experience.  They also give you a packed lunch, water bottles etc. (Veggie option included, which again was rated highly by San). 

We enjoyed the drive and the group of people we ended up with!

Now that I am able to sit at a laptop and write longer posts, going to get back to the routine! The next post on the actual Glacier walk tomorrow..