Halong Bay

After returning to Hanoi from Sapa I had 24 hours to spend in the city before leaving for my trip to Halong Bay. So I passed most of the time just wandering around the old quarter of the city and getting my very dirty laundry done.

The trip for Halong Bay departed at 7:30 am and consisted of a 3 hour bus ride out to the boat dock in the bay. Once there we boarded one of thousands of old junks that sail the bay with tourists and departed for karst formations in the bay. After hearing about lots of bad experiences for people going with budget operators on Halong Bay I decided to spend a little more money. As soon as we had left the dock I decided that it was money well spent as the boat was well kept, the guides were great and the food was delicious. Upon boarding the boat we were all greeted with a huge lunch consisting of several courses of different sea food. Delicious.

In the afternoon the boat stopped sailing through the karst limestone formations and stopped at one of the largest caves in the area, along with every other tourist boat it seemed. After a quick walk through of the caves, which I didn't find too spectacular but I think that lots of the stalagmites and stalactites had been broken by tourists so it probably used to be quite something special. The one thing that it did have going for it was that it certainly was a big cave. After walking through the cave the boat sailed to a nearby island with a beach where we spent the next hour swimming in the water and walking up to the top of the island for a nice view of the surrounding area. That night was spent on the boat eating again some great sea food and just relaxing.

The next day we were transferred to a smaller boat to go further out into the bay to do some sea kayaking. This was definitely a highlight of the trip as we were able to paddle around the limestone islands and into areas that the bigger ship couldn't reach. We even paddled into a lagoon that was only accessible at low tide through a cave, at high tide the cave was sealed by water and no one can enter it. The day was passed paddling around the edge of Halong Bay and swimming in the ocean, a great day.

That night was spent on Cat Ba island at one of the nicest resorts on the island. Cat Ba is the only city, other than floating fishing villages, in Halong Bay. It is a nice little place but also very quiet. The final day we had free time to explore the island at our leisure or to just swim in the ocean and lounge on the beach before boarding the ferry that would take us back to mainland and from there a bus to Hanoi.

By the end of the trip I had decided that this was one of the highlights of my trip to Vietnam so far and very glad that I went. The weather was pretty good too, it was slightly misty all of the time but it was warm with no rain and no wind. I consider myself fairly lucky as other people I met were supposed to go at the same time as one of the typhoons passed over so had to cancel their trip.

Again I can't access my photos to upload any for now (see post below).