Unless there is something amazing out there that I have yet to hear about, Southeast Asia has exactly two attractions that should be considered for all of those Seven Wonders Of lists. The manmade one is the temples of Angkor Wat, near Siem Reap in Cambodia, which I’ve yet to visit as of this writing, and the natural one is Ha Long Bay (local spelling, sort of) near Hanoi in Vietnam. I’ve now been to Halong Bay and I’m pleased to report that it lives up to they hype.

In case you haven’t even heard of Halong Bay, it’s a bay that’s about 100km from Hanoi that is filled with almost 2,000 small islands, most of which are limestone. As you can see in the photos on this page, they are mostly tall and sticking out of the water in a pattern not seen many other places on earth. Also, the weather in the area seems to make the bay either misty or foggy nearly every day of the year, so most photos you’ll see have a slightly magical feeling, similar to the way that most photos of Machu Picchu in Peru show clouds below the city on the mountain’s peak.

My first stop on this early 2010 trip is Hanoi, Vietnam, and after spending 4 full days there I still am not sure what to make of the place. The wildcard is the upcoming Tet holiday – the lunar new year – which I’ve been told is like our New Year, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July all rolled into one. Evidently it’s a huge family holiday, but with plenty of superstitions and rituals mixed in, so in the days and weeks before the big day (which falls on February 14 this year) everyone is scrambling around at a fever pitch.

I hear they have to buy certain things, like new shoes for good luck in the new year, as well as various decorations and food items to prepare for the big holiday. And raising prices to try to accumulate more money for Tet is accepted and normal.

So I got to Hanoi about 10 days before Tet, and the city feels like a complete mad house to me, with people racing around in every direction at all hours of the day. The problem for me is that I don’t know if that’s close to normal or quite unusual. As I write this I’m in the mountain resort town of Sapa and it’s quite mellow here. When I get back to Hanoi on Friday morning it’ll be 2 days before Tet begins, and I’m told that by Saturday most everything closes down and the city becomes a ghost town for at least 3 or 4 days. I purposely timed it to leave this week and then see the place again during this “ghost town” phase, but once again I’ll have no idea what normal days are like.

After all the craziness I’ve seen, I feel like I owe it to myself to see the nearly empty version of it, even though I’ve been told it might be a minor struggle to find places to buy food and drinks, at least at normal prices.