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Yes, it is one of the places mentioned in the book, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, and for good reason. We had seen pictures in travel books and on the posters all over Vietnam, but (to sound a bit cliche), it’s not the same unless you go there.

We booked the tour from our hotel in Hanoi for $38/per person for a 2 day/1 night (on the boat) tour. Most everything went off without a hitch - great room on the boat, great scenery, great food, nice crew, and nice passengers. On the trip with us were a couple German guys, the Dutch women (Marja and Corry) who were on the train with us from Hue (and who speak English perfectly - of course - since they are Dutch!), a French family who taught us some new UNO rules (see below), and another lucky French guy who was lucky enough to travel around Vietnam with not one but three beautiful French girls (one was his girlfriend).

When the boat anchored for the night, our guide told me (jokingly, I think) that we could swim. I said “OK, you first”, and he laughed which I think confirmed the joke. However, that proverbial wild hair grew (you know where) and I changed into my shorts and remembered to grab our camera for Meghan before locking the room again. She took pictures of my idiocy (which ended up being shared with the eldest son of the French family). Man that was cold. I hereafter greeted my French buddy as “mon fou”. Going back to the room for a hot shower, I realized that when I grabbed the camera, I also should have also grabbed the room key before locking the door. Oops. The crew wasn’t too happy about this, but they brought up a shoebox full of keys and started trying every one. Remember I was standing there in my swim trunks, wet, cold, with nothing but a small wet travel towel on my upper body. About 5 tense minutes later the door opened, and I was very relieved.

Over Dinner, we discovered the French mother also spoke Spanish, so we engaged her in a Spanish conversation since she didn’t speak much English. The Dutch women could sort-of follow the Spanish conversation but they spoke French so occasionally they would engage the French mother in French (which I could follow somewhat but Meghan was lost). Also, occasionally, Corry and Maria would speak to each other in Dutch to fill in gaps from either English or Spanish so in total, it was a quad-lingual dinner conversation. I loved it. Dutch sounds a lot like German but the mechanics and sounds are much closer to English, so at times, I could even follow their Dutch.

OK, here are the new UNO rules (in addition to the usual ones):

• If a player plays a number 0 card, every player, passes their hand of cards to the next person (in agreement with the current direction of gameplay).
• If a Draw Two is played to you, you can sidestep the penalty by playing another Draw Two atop the first and it becomes a Draw Four to the next person.
• If at any time you see a card in play and you have that exact same card (same color and number), you can play it regardless of whose turn it is - thereby stealing the action and skipping those between you and the rightful current player and play resumes with the person after you. This last rule also has the interesting consequence that if you save two identical cards as the last two cards in your hand, you can go out in one turn (even out of order!) and not have to say, “UNO”.

It could be that all these rules are options listed in the manual, but who reads that? It’s UNO! Next game night we should knock the dust off the UNO deck and try with the French rules.

For a nice aerial photo of Halong Bay, click the “Map view” button below, then zoom out one notch.