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Published: July 17th 2008
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WARNING: During this blog post you may experience excessive description and hyperbole of epic proportions. That was an example just then. It's incredibly disconcerting swimming in the water at Ha Long Bay. It's very cloudy and incredibly deep. I innocently remarked to another passenger that it would be a great place to dump a body: no one would ever be able to find it. That got her a bit worried.
Still threats of murder aside all I could think during my two day tour of the bay was; "Surely there can't be anywhere else like this in the world." Ha Long Bay is fantastic and beautiful, better than even the guide book's description says it is. Huge spikes of stone puncture the sea and form, for want of a better word islands. And over the rock grow viridian shrubs. I don't imagine anything apart from birds and insects can live on the islands. When I departed from Ha Long City's port along with tens of other boats I thought that we'd all be headed for the same spot and it'd get crowded and the bay wouldn't feel remote at all as I shared it with hundreds of other tourists.
Not at all. It's vast and just swallows ships we sailed to a place where the entire horizon was dominated by mountainous crags.
On route to this place sourced directly out of Tolkein's imagination we stopped off at a cave system that similarly could have been pulled from Middle Earth. Nature clearly used Ha Long Bay as a warm up for the caves. I came close to dislocating my jaw as it dropped. They are huge. I cannot even estimate how long it took for this great hollow space to be created, let alone how many billion drops of water fell to form the stalagmites and stalagtites that were everywhere I looked. My one complaint, and don't I always have one, is that the people who maintain the the caves have lit them in the most terrible way. I mean alright, some light is needed or the entire experience would consist of 30 minutes of groping but I still can't imgaine what urge provoked someone to light one of the nature's greatest wonders like a school disco. I half expected a smoke machine and a disco ball. Anyway next to the huge cave system there's another smaller one that
has a much larger entrance and so should be less impressive but my inner snob prefers it because it's lit simply with yellow light letting the natural beauty be visible.
After visiting the caves we sailed to our rest spot for the afternoon and many floating barges converged on our junk offering us fruit. I didn't buy any but it was still very cool. We also had an incredible piece of luck because when we arrived the tide was extremely low and this meant some caves at the bottom of a few of the spikes were uncovered and were could sail into them in a motorboat. It was only VND40,000 (about £1.25) to bag a place on the boat and we were told we'd get to swim. One of best decisions I've made on my entire trip along with deciding to go to Ha Long Bay in the first place. The small wooden motorboat took about ten of us into a low cave where if I wasn't paying attention I could have received a concussion from a stalagtite. On the other side of cave was a crater. It turned out the spike was hollow with a pool of water
at the bottom as I looked around all I could see were 20 metre high walls surrounding me on all sides. It was the most bizarre and amazing place I've ever swam in and I honestly doubt anywhere else will ever top it. Of course I slightly ruined the moment of inner calm I achieved floating in the basin by making the most undignified re-entry onto the boat, scratching my knees and shins quite badly as the other people on the boat hauled me up.
In the dusk of evening we got to go kayaking in pairs. I teamed up with the girl to whom I insinuated murder: Lucy, who was great fun the entire trip. She'd never been kayaking before and the last time I went I got stuck in a bush. Matters weren't helped when about 150m from the boat one end of my paddle came off and promptly sunk with a satisfying plop. So I had to alternate from side to side with a single paddle and as a consequence our progress wasn't amazing.
This was no cruise ship so there was no evening entertainment to be had, anyway all the light on deck was
coming from the moon and stars so we didn't miss out much. Some people slept on deck for the night and were serenaded into slumber by the crew singing military karaoke songs. I kid you not.
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Debbie
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Hi Jamie, i have been following your Vietnam trip as I will be there for three weeks next month. I can't believe you are only 19 - your insight is wonderful and I really enjoy your narratives. I think you missed your calling - give up accounting (if that's what your are doing at PricewaterhouseCoopers), and go for journalism. Now the inevitable question - what tour company did you book with for the trip? and how much did you pay? (For Halong Bay I mean). I'm looking for up to the minute advice for this tour.I can't wait to get to Nha Trang so I can try the fart test in the mud bath! Travel safe Regards DB