How long to Ha Long

Ha Long (how long) bay is a great trip. Anyone planning a visit has to go to this destination.
It is about a three hour trip from Ha Noi, and should be done as an overnight. With the issues we had lately, we were not sure if that was a good idea. Hien was pretty sad Friday, so we kept it to one day rather than have a loud (really great lunges) fussy toddler on a small boat with other tourists. She is adorable, so I am certain only Dad and Mom would have had to walk the plank.
The drive to Ha Long was interesting, through residential, commercial, agricultural, and industrial locations. There was a potty break at a shop/factory for souvenir art. There was a room of people creating stitch-work pictures based on post cards. The pics were for sale for $100-300 USD, unframed. They also had marble work that was incredible, but we saved our dong (Vietnamese currency) for later.
Please try to keep a straight face.
The roads would be classified as state roads back in the US, but with highway traffic. We were in a Sprinter bus, and were either passing or being passed most of the time. Since it is all 2 lane highway, it was pretty exciting at times. I tried to think how to describe it to anyone from the States, but can't. It is chaos, but here it just works fine.
I did see a coal steam electric plant and grabbed a quick picture. It looks pretty much like the ones in PA, except that it was in the middle of a crowded residential area. We saw one of the workers going home on his scooter. He was wearing a yellow hard hat, shorts, sandals, and about 5 pounds of coal dust, head to toe. OSHA who?
We finally arrived at Ha Long. The docks were the same as the road. Functional chaos. A lot of euro tourists on the docks, which seemed to make it more exciting. The VN won't line up well, but many Mediterranean Europeans aggressively move to the front of any line that is forming, whether they belong there or not.
The boat took a few minutes to get through the crowd of other boats but finally we were aboard and off. It was our family, the couple from the Netherlands and a crew of 5. Our guide (Tomas)provided some information, and we had some amazing crab, shrimp, squid, and spring rolls. As we ate, we cruised out to some of the islands that make Ha Long so amazing. See the pics is in my next post is all I can say. The floating village is pretty great, and the suspended island is pretty awesome. (I am running out of superlatives)
We stopped at one island and toured some limestone caverns. The rock formations were awesome, and our guide did a great job with descriptions. Dad did 90% of the carrying, and built up a lot of lean muscle in the process. Tomas looked like he wanted us to knock off half way through so he would not have to do paperwork for the prostrated tourists, but we pressed on.
We returned to the boat and took a quick ride back. Dad recovered with a beer on the top deck.
This seems like a long post, so to keep it short, I'll say the ride back to Ha Noi was like the ride out, except that many cars, scooters and all the bikes had no headlights, so it was, well, indescribable. And incredibly memorable as the rest of the day had been.