Vietnam: Halong Bay Tiptop Hike, Kayaking & Surprise Cave

Our first excursion on the bay was to Titop Island.  Titop is a super small island with a little hike that has a breathtaking view of the bay.  The only thing that was a little depressing was the crowds!  It seemed that every cruise ship brought their patrons here at the exact same time.  But we didn't let that get us down!

The hike is a million stairs with about three look-out points on the way up!  The first look out was about five minutes up the stairs.  It was amazing!

The next lookout point was about 3/4 of the way up the mountain.  At this point the stairs became very steep, so Corianne decided to hang out at this pavilion while Cristin and I went all the way to the top.

Cristin and I continued to the top and were rewarded with a spectacular view!

We had a 360 degree view of this beauty!  The only thing annoying was that the top of the mountain was a gigantic gazebo with a roof and rails.  It was hard to get a good picture without the rail in the way.  For me, if I am going to make a hike to the top of a mountain, I expect nature, not a bunch of man made structures.

We did figure out that if we stood on the second rail and straddled it between our calves, we could get a pretty natural pictures!  

After getting our fill of the glorious view, we headed back down the steep stair to join back up with Corianne.

We made our way down the mountain and still had about 10 minutes before the boat was loaded, so we decided to try to find a spot on the beach.  When we got out to the water, it was so dirty and brown and gross, that I opted to sit on the sand.  There wasn't much sand to sit in, so I was glad when it was time to go back to our boat.

Our next excursion was kayaking at a pearl farm!  Corianne can't swim, so she opted to stay on the cruise ship while Cristin and I took on the kayak.  All along the water were these huge black circle balls.  We found out that the balls were attached to cages/nets that held the clams for the pearls.  

We had about an hour to explore the area around the pearl farm.  We went into one of the coves and just paddled around and took in the glorious mountains all around us. 

Our last excursion on the cruise was the Surprise Cave, Hang Sung Sot.

The Surprise Cave was surprisingly gigantic!  I was not expecting to find such a large interior in the cave!

The cave had a lot of stalagmites.  There were so many rock formations that looked spot on like animals and other creatures. Our tour guide did an amazing job pointing out some of the different formations.

One of the neatest things about the cave was the ceiling!  The ceiling is said to have been formed by waves as the mountain were pushed up from the bottom of the bay.  It looked like a bunch of ice cream scoops.

We spent about an hour or so in the cave exploring all the nooks and formations.  It was beautiful and nice and cool in the cave.

The cave started low and by the time you made your way out of the cave, you found yourself high above the waters with a perfect picture view of the bay.  I know, I know- another bay picture?  But it was so pretty!  I never got sick of the view, and seriously, the pictures don't do any justice.  It was beyond cool!

Donggang Riverview Natural Recreation Forests: Girls Camp

Hola! This is Big Sis and I am going to tell you guys all about my amazing experience at the District Beehives Girls Camp this year! Since the Mia Maid's and Laurel's where at FSY in Japan, it was just the Beehives that went to Girls Camp this year. There are 4 different branches in South Korea, but only 3 branches showed up. Osan (my branch), Seoul English Branch, and the Camp Humphrey's Branch. Sadly, there where some leader issues with the Daegu Branch, so they never showed up. 

There where 10 girls all together that showed up at camp! Eayden, Evelyn, Amanda, Nichole, Faith, Sadie, Cali, Giselle, Arielle, and me of course! 

After all the Beehives had arrived we set to work on building our tents. There where two tents, one big blue tent, and one big green tent. The leaders got to stay in a couple of cabins, and the two elders had their own tent. I helped to make the blue tent since I kinda already knew how to set it up.

After we finished setting up both tents, we where separated into the two tents. It was nice to be in the same tent with my best friend, Evelyn. It was also nice to have 3 new people in the same tent. My tent partners where Amanda, Evelyn, Faith, and Cali. It was also sad that Sadie wasn't in the same tent, but she seemed like she was going to have a great time making friends with her tent partners (Arielle, Nichole, Giselle, and Eayden).

The Leaders took us to our first girls camp activity, kayaking! We were all assigned a partner, mine was Faith. It was nice to be a partner with her since I already knew her pretty will from a previous youth activity.

We had a guide to teach us how to us the paddles correctly, and also how to turn, the paddling pattern for the water, and how to get back into the kayak if we ever fell out.

Me and my partner were lucky to be in a double rider kayak , rather then a triple rider kayak . After everyone got settled into their kayaks, we set off kayaking in the beautiful lake.

When I lived in San Antonio, me and my family went kayaking all the time, so I had a pretty good idea of how to kayak. It was so much fun to race against the leaders, splash everyone with water, and have fun.

We kayaked for about an hour and a half until it started to drizzle. After docking the kayaks and drying off, we started to head home.

When we got back, we all took turns taking showers and then getting ready for our second project of the day, tie-dye shirts! It was so much fun making my very first, and my very own, tie-dye shirt! We all decided to make a swirled tie-dye shirt. I colored my shirt green, blue, purple, and a hint of pink. It was so much fun to do this project.

After putting our tide shirts in bags to dry, we made fluffy slime. Me, Evelyn, and Cali shared a batch of slime that was baby blue, it was super fun to make the slime!

After our activities where done, we started to make our dinner, hot dogs wrapped in a cresent roll dough toasted over a fire. Dessert was a cinnamon roll (in dough version) also toasted over a fire. They where both a little under baked, but it was still pretty good!

For a theme project, we had to make a memo of what we though the theme meant to us. My partner and I made ours and had so much fun making it to. The theme was "Warriors of Peace".

When we where done it was time to get ready for bed. I had so much fun my first day and was looking forward to the next day.

The next morning, we made breakfast burritos for breakfast. It was nice to be the one working close to the flame because it was super cold in the morning, so it was nice to be toasty and warm while making breakfast.

The main activity for that day was a very difficult hike up a mountain. The good part was that it was a beautiful mountain, but the bad part was that we had to hike to the peak and the hike was at a 40 degree angle upwards all the way up! :(

One thing that I have learned from past hikes that my family has done was to never complain, and I was not about to start to complain in front of 9 other girls, 6 leaders, and 2 elders, so I kept to myself and encourage other to keep going instead.

The hike was very long (4 miles), very hot, very steep, and very hard, but about an hour into our hike we hit the marker that said 1 Km 'till the top. We decided to take a trial mix, and water break (Here comes the good part). One of the elders that went to scout ahead said that he saw the peak about 30 feet away. That's what got everyones attention. When we heard this, we all stuffed our snacks back into our backpacks, and ran all the way to the peak. We all cheered and took a nice long break. It was windy at the the top, and that was a really nice feeling.

The view was so pretty that I didn't want to leave the peak. I could see the river, other mountains, and nature in general. It felt so good to reach the very top of a mountain, how many people usually do that, huh?

Since the hike was up all the way there, that meant that it was down all the way back, and we were back down to the bottom of the mountain in 37 minutes. We drove back to the campsite and took a break to do our friendship bracelets. When we were done, we started our nail art project. The nail art was in the shape of a dove carrying an olive branch. It was so much fun to do this project. You should try it to sometime too you know!

We ate dinner and started our theme project. The project was to cover our partner with foil around their feet, chest, head, shield, and sword. Each team took a turn to see who could do it the quickest. Our time won, and that was really surprising! We had so much fun doing this project. It was even more fun to do it in the dark. After we were done cleaning up the crinkled up foil on the floor, we got ready for bed, socialized, and then went to bed.

The next day, we went white water rafting. We left, drove to the shop, rented our rafts, drove to the river, got into the rafts, and set off down the river.

Each boat had two guides and ten rowers. There wasn't many sections with white water, which was sad, but it was still super fun to be rafting with everyone.

It was so much fun splashing each other with water, going swimming in the river when we had a break, rowing the raft, and being with my friends. We were on the river for about two and a half hours.

When we were done, we got dressed in our Peace In Christ shirts and ate ramen for lunch. It was a very good lunch. When we all ate, and were filled, we headed back and had lots of fun for the rest of the day.

The next was our last day at Girls Camp, that was also the day that we got to wear our tie-dye shirts for the first time. Our project for that day was a very big service project. The service project was at a farm. The goal was to weed a very decent sized field that was being infested with weeds! It was a very hot day, and very hard work. It took us about 2 hours to weed the whole entire section, and we had 14 very big sized piles of pulled weeds (the pile in the picture was our biggest one)!

After we finished our service project, we went back to the campsite for the last time, broke down the tents and everything in them, and packed up the cars. We also had little awards given to us for what we achieved the greatest during camp. There were awards such as the funniest person, or the joyfullest person. I got the award of never complaining on the hike. I thought it was pretty funny to be honest. We were given tote bags that we could all sign as a souvenir for this years girls camp.

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After we were all done with everything, we all went our ways. The Humphreys branch went home and so did the Seoul English Branch, but we went on another hike. It was also pretty hard, but equally as beautiful.

At the top, there was a temple. This temple was being refurbished, so we couldn't go in, but we did see the other little buildings that were around it.

There were so many beautiful flowers and buildings there. It was super fun to do this hike because we went with Evelyn's family and the Fillmore's. I have had such a great adventure going to Girls Camp and doing this hike with my friends. I can't wait to go to Girls Camp next year.

Hawaii Day 5: Kayaking to the Mokes

Our neighbor in Korea came from Hawaii, and she highly recommended renting some kayaks, and kayaking to the Mokes. The Mokes are the Na Mokulua Islets off Lanikai Beach.  We packed our bag full of water and our lunches, and went off to find a kayaking rental company.  The company is a few hundred yards from the ocean, so they give you the kayaks on these little trailers and you pull the kayaks over to the ocean.  Kevin did the honors of tugging the kayak, we opts to do a double kayak, just to make it easier to stay together.

Once we got to the ocean, we had to figure out how to get the kayak into the ocean between the waves.  We have gone kayaking many times before.  We actually owned kayaks while living in Texas, so we considered ourselves pretty experiences kayakers, however the waves coming straight at use while trying to get out into the ocean, definitely humbled us.  It only took us a few tries, but we got out without flipping the kayak or getting too wet.

The kayak rental company said it would take more then an hour and half to get to the Mokes, but we made it in about an hour.  There were full waves, currents and rocks on our little adventure.  At one point you are directly above some monstrous coral reefs, and I felt we would smash into them at any second.  The ocean was crystal clear and absolutely mysteriously beautiful!

We made it to the Mokes and docked our kayak on the first try.  There isn't much that you can see on the Isle, because it is a bird sanctuary, the island is fenced off except for a little beach area.  We took about a 45 min rest as we ate lunch, relaxed and enjoyed the sun, waves, and each other.

As we were getting ready to launch back into the ocean, a seal came up on the the island to sunbathe! We were able to enjoy the seal from afar for a few minutes until we went back into the ocean.  The tide was in our favor, so the trip back we made extremely good time!  Directly in front of our docking beach was a second island, called the flat island.  We had plenty of time, so we made a second stop at the flat island.  This island is exactly as named, it is just a long flat strip of land in the middle of the ocean.  This island is also a bird sanctuary, was was fenced off except for the perimeter of the island.  We didn't see any birds, go figure.

We got back in our kayak, now feeling like professionals at launching in and out of the ocean!  We made it back to the beach in less than 15 minutes because Kevin and I would time our rowing just right so we would ride the waves.  It only took about three waves to make it back.  It was a thrill to paddle as fast as we could to keep up with the waves, then paddle as we kept at the very top of the wave, feeling our speed increase and the kayak rocking on top of the waves!

This was another great day in Hawaii!  We are both very much outdoor enthusiast, so we loved our day in the ocean and on the different islands!

Since our arms were pretty shot from kayaking all afternoon, we decided to relax next to the beach the rest of the evening.

We both enjoyed resting and reading next to the ocean until the sun went down.  It was a pretty good sunset to an amazing day!