6- Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Saturday, January 29th-Sunday, January 30th

• Ha Long Bay is recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and therefore I had very high expectations for what I was going to see.  It is an incredible bay full of about 3,000 limestone rock caves.  It is absolutely stunning.  The only way to explore Ha Long Bay is to do an organized tour.  There are numerous tour companies, but they all basically offer the same thing at three different levels of pay: cheap, moderate, and expensive.  Quinn and I opted for a moderately cost two day, one night trip with the tour company through our hostel in which you sleep on a boat for a night.  There are many horror stories about Ha Long Bay trips not being what they were advertised as, but we had heard good things about this trip and decided to try it.  Luckily, my expectations were fulfilled.
• Quinn and I woke up very early on Saturday morning and we were put in a van for a three and half hour drive from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay.
• After a long drive, we arrived at the main port to find hundreds of "junks" waiting for tourists to arrive.  A "junk" is the term that the tour companies have coined for the boats that are used to give tours.  The port is very busy as there are many tourists with some people ending their trips and others just arriving.  Fortunately, our tour group was only 10 people so it was very easy to navigate to our boat.

A typical "junk".

• We found our "junk" and were very happy with it.  The boat is made primarily of wood, has a bottom floor of bedrooms, a main floor that functions as dining room/living room, and a top viewing deck with lounge chairs.
• The boat set off and cruised for about an hour before stopping at "Surprise Cave".  The cave wasn't much of a surprise, it looked like a cave, and the tour guides had come up with names for the various shapes that are inside the cave.  For example, the guide would say, "To the left, we have a turtle".  The poor guy would try to show me over and over again and all I would still see is rock, oh well.

At the top of Surprise Cave (inside of cave pics just never work too well).

• After the cave, we got some sunshine!  This was really exciting because we did this tour during the cold season and it felt very nice to have some sun.  We then got a chance to go kayaking around the limestone caves.  It was amazing to get up close to the rock and just be in the bay in general.  Around the islands, people are living on their house boats and surviving through tourism and fishing, pretty incredible.  My favorite are the women on row boats who are the "corner store" on the water selling soda, candy, and other items to tourist boats.

Expert kayakers :)

A corner store lady.

• After kayaking, we relaxed on the boat, got to watch an amazing sunset, and then settled down for dinner.  Overall, I was very impressed with the food selection.  For example, for dinner we had whole fish, fried chicken, squid and veggies, beef and veggies, rice, and desert.

Sunset from the top deck.

Sunset from the bedroom window.

• After dinner, things got really funny.  The crew was celebrating the Lunar New Year and decided to share some of the fun with us.  They gave each of us a taste of what they called "Happy Water" aka really, really strong Vietnamese liquor.  The crew then performed karaoke for us, while we played some card games with the rest of the tourists on board.  It turned out to be a great night.

Oh yeah, karaoke in Vietnamese!

• The next morning, we were up early and headed back to the main port.  The two-day trip really feels like a one day trip, but for me it was plenty.  If the weather had been hot, I would have enjoyed the three day, two night trip where you get to stay on an island in the bay.  But due to the weather, I felt that one night on the boat was sufficient.

Ha Long Bay was a great part of the trip.  I think because I had seen so many photos and heard so much about Ha Long Bay already that nothing surprised me.  Do not get me wrong, Ha Long Bay is incredibly beautiful and I highly recommend people to go.  It is spectacular when the sun is setting and all you can see is island after island and blue water around you.  If I were to go again, I would go when the weather was hot.  But, overall it was a great experience.