Sunny Boat Days in Vietnam

We spent (un-) Thanskgiving weekend on a boat in Halong Bay. I guess the rain gods decided we'd seen enough typhoon action since being in Vietnam, because our days out there were absolutely gorgeous. We booked a 2 day, one night boat excursion with our hotel on Cat Ba Island (the only inhabited island in Halong Bay), got a shockingly good deal on the price, and were skeptical that the whole experience might be a complete sh*t show, but no! On the first day, we shared our boat with a Dutch couple, a French couple, and two Vietnamese, male crew members (the driver and the cook, but they both did everything around the boat and neither spoke any English). At the end of the day, of cruising around the Bay, and making stops to walk around in caves and go kayaking, we dropped off the other tourists and Joe and I spent that night and the next day in close quarters with our Vietnamese boat dudes. It was great! They ordered us around, (i.e. using sign language to tell us when to go swimming, when to go kayaking and where, to come inside and eat or have tea, etc) served us incredible seafood and otherwise, left us alone, on roof of the boat, where there were two comfortable couches, and incredible sunshine and gorgeous sea-green water and islands as far as we could see.
So many Vietnamese are water people. They live in floating houses, out there in Halong Bay, and in other bodies of water, throughout the country. These people get everywhere by boat. They fish. They have dogs and other pets at their floating houses. I feel bad that the animals don't get to run around much. Then again, dog is eaten for dinner here, sometimes, so maybe it's not so bad to be a water-bound dog, considering the alternatives. It got cold, at night, on Halong Bay. And the houses that people live in are made of thin wood and the wind whips through the karsts at night, and it felt like we were at the end of the earth! But there were tons of Vietnamese, living their lives out there on the water. The stars were amazingly bright in the incredibly dark sky. The sea water in the Bay had a very high level of salinity. Joe cut himself a few times, getting in and out of the boat, because his skin was so dry from the salt. But his cuts healed quickly, because the salt water scoured everything clean. And our hair stuck up like we had salty dread locks. Especially Joe's curls.
We also spent two nights on Cat Ba Island where we watched great sunsets from the balcony of our hotel and walked to the beach. Now, we are back in Hanoi, a city we really, really enjoy, especially now that it has stopped raining. It is a fun city to walk around in. Nice parks and outdoor cafes with numerous places to sit and watch the city life.
In two days, we take a monster-long bus ride to Laos. Our first stop is Vientiane, the capital. We have heard really good things about that city and country from other travelers. Colorful and calm and friendly and very Buddhist. We will spend a couple of weeks in Laos before returning to Bangkok to meet Janie, Joe's mom, who is flying in to spend Christmas with us. That is, if the airport is open again! The political situation in Thailand (mostly, just Bangkok) sounds pretty shaky, to say the least, right now.