Ha Long Bay

Greetings from one of the most beautiful, other-worldly places on earth.

Today we got up, ate breakfast and got on a 15 passenger bus. We traveled 170 very slow, very harrowing kilometers (which took about 3.5 hours) to a place called Ha Long Bay. If you don't know anything about this place, just go to images.google.com and type in the words, "ha long bay". You will see some amazing pictures or a calm bay on the Vietnamese coast of the South China Sea. In this bay are hundreds of rocky islands which jut heavenward out of the green water. It really is quite incredible.

We started off with a lunch at the hotel. It was probably the toughest meal so far in Vietnam. It was mostly seafood, with some time of whole fish and mussels. Most in the travel party are not seafood eaters. They also had some tofu. I tried the tofu, but even I (who can eat almost anything) couldn't pack down more than two bites of this. We asked our tour guide if he could ask the hotel to prepare us beef, pork, or chicken for supper. The kids keep eating bananas. At one point today I told Thomas that I was cutting him off of bananas because I was afraid that we would screw up his potassium level and send him into a heart arrhythmia.

After lunch we took the bus to the marina. The weather here was quite hazy (almost foggy), which is quite common for this time of year. Therefore, it wasn't as striking as it could have been, but it was great. We got on an old boat (called a junk), which was big enough for a few dozen people, but only our family and the other family that adopted at the same time as us were on the boat. The boat wasn't fancy, but it was kind of cool and quietly puttered its way around the bay.

We first stopped at one island that was fairly large and we visited a huge, incredibly beautiful cave that was only discovered in 1993. It was really neat. Thomas loved it and told me several times, "Dad, I don't need to remember much about this, because when I'm a grown-up I'm going to take my family here." After the cave we got on the boat and simply cruised around the bay for a couple of hours. It was beautiful, cool, and so relaxing. Many times during this trip I have to remind myself to enjoy the moment because this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me to get to spend this kind of time with my family. As I sat on the top deck of our boat taking in God's beauty with my daughter, Helen, on my lap, I didn't need to remind myself how blessed I am. I will never forget that afternoon. It was even better than the Wisconsin Dells.

We came back to the hotel for dinner. The kitchen had prepared pork, chicken, and beef for us. They made the kids' day by making french fries as well. The chicken and pork will a little different, but it was a much better evening meal. Tomorrow we will eat breakfast here, have some free time, eat lunch, and then travel back to Hanoi, where we hope to get word that Julia's visa preapproval is progressing.

Along those lines...we heard from our agency today that another family whose visa application was submitted the same day as ours was approved yesterday. This means that it is possible that the new government process can take much shorter than the 60 days that has been communicated. We are now hopeful that maybe our preapproval could some soon and we would be able to travel back to Minnesota with our new little US citizen on December 16 as originally scheduled. That would be fantastic, and that is our hope.

This is a great trip, and a great experience. When we got here 2+ weeks ago, after a very long flight and having our body clocks 180 degrees out of phase, this place on the other side of the world seemed very far away from Minnesota and very different from what we are used to. I suppose that it IS very different in many ways, but now it is not so unfamiliar. I am happy that we, as a family, have had the opportunity to become in a small way familiar with Julia Binh An's birth culture.

I'm sorry not to have been sending out pictures, but it is such a major hassle that I might not get around to sending out more until next week sometime. Thanks to all of you for following our story and posting comments and sending emails. Those mean a lot to all our family. Also, while I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy, thanks to Mike for snowblowing out our driveway (I owe you a beer), thanks to Steve and Kris for keeping an eye on our place and our fish (it's just one fish, not fish plural), thanks to John and Pat for the ride to the airport (John, could I stop by when I get back to pick up a beer for Mike?), thanks to Rich and Penny for receiving our mail (please let us know if you get anything from US Customs and Immigration, would you?), and thanks to my brother, the Goah, for taking care of our finances without robbing us blind (perhaps wishful thinking).

For those who might be thinking this already, I thought a few minutes about deleting the previous 2 paragraphs because they sounded a bit mushy. But maybe for my sake I should capture the good feelings on the blog so that when something difficult happens tomorrow, that I can remember how I felt right now.

Time for bed, but before I sleep I'm going to try the shower in our hotel room. It has about 27 shower heads in it in all directions. I'm not sure it works, but it looks really cool.

Take care,

Doug