Advertisement
Published: January 11th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Hang Hanh
The view overlooking a portion of the bay before you enter Surprise caves depths 8am ticked round indicating the "Lucky Group’s" departure for the "two days and three days tour", the latter of which applied to us meaning a day and a night aboard a Junk boat, a half day treck up to Ngu Lam Peak in Cat Bar National Park followed by an afternoon on Monkey Island and a night on Cat Bar Island before heading back to Hanoi and all this chaperoned by the most awesome tour guide, AKA No-Worries-Mate-Lucky.
Halong Bay is one of those must go places, a proclaimed UNESCO site where wooden Junks rule the waters and sailing amid magnificent lime stone cliffs, floating fishing villages and water vendors. It's a jewel of a spot and admittedly we just presumed that the weather would match the scenery. With this hopeful presumption the previous evenings packing discussion went something along the lines of "Should I be taking one or two bikini’s along for the trip?" and with that two small backpacks were filled with shorts, cozies and slops because we had every intention of spending our days in Halong basking in the sun on the upper deck of our Junk boat followed by more basking on Cat Bar beach.
Hang Hanh
The view overlooking a portion of the bay before you enter Surprise caves depths As Murphy would have it the following morning, departure day, the temperature in Hanoi was far from toasty suggesting that the outlook for Halong Bay was likely to match, not an ideal situation but hey if you are a sun chaser you harbor an unrelenting optimism that the weather will turn in your favour. Lucky also assured us that he'd put in a good weather request after having done a little sunny weather dance, just for good measure and with that type of assurance there was no way we were reconsider the contents of our backpacks.
The three hour bus ride passed surprisingly quickly and big smiles filled our faces when we reached the harbor and saw the hundreds of wooden junks moored, patiently awaiting the onslaught of eager passengers. A quick passport check and 15 excited 20 something’s boarded the Christina for what would be a brilliant, albeit chilly trip.
Having dumped our bags in our cabins we immediately sat down to some tasty Halong seafood morsels combined with some introductory banta with three of the fifteen Lucky tour members and once lunch was devoured we cruised the bay taking in its absolute beauty before docking to
Hang Hanh
The view overlooking a portion of the bay before you enter Surprise caves depths check out Hang Hanh, more commonly known as the Surprise Cave. Our exploration of Surprise cave turned out of be a highly amusing exploration leaving us in good spirits as we headed out and back onto the Christina to be taken to the kayak site. I have to admit I was most concerned that my good friend Kenny was going to be cursing me for capsizing her on our Kayak adventure since I severely lack any form of paddling ability. We actually made a good paddling team and our hour of paddling the green-blue bay waters was not only brilliant fun but surprisingly capsize free.
Thankfully there was a general consensus that the weather wasn’t going to stop the Lucky Group from testing the Halong waters so once we'd completed our kayak fun the lot of us boarded the decks of Christina once again so that she could sail us to a slightly less busy part of the bay and while she prepared to moor for the evening we changed into our cozies, headed for the top deck only to plunge into the awesomely warm Halong water some meters below. Sadly we couldn't stay in the water all evening
given that the ambient temperature above water couldn't have been more than 11 degrees with a wind chill factor so we all hopped back on board Christina to indulge in her warm shower facilities. Once warmed up we got down to getting properly acquainted with our fellow tour mates and needless to say an absolutely awesome night was had by the lot of us, Kenny and I ensuring that the South African fun flag was flying at full mast!
Admittedly after all the fun we’d had the previous night none of us were precisely enamored with the 7:30am breakfast call but we managed to pry ourselves out of bed to enjoy a scrummy breckie before heading back into our cabin to get our things together for the 8:30 check out. It may seem random that I'm mentioning the above but it turned out we were in for a little morning amusement while getting our things ready for disembarkation. Kenny had done a wonderful job of bringing a couple of South African treats along for our trip, some Cadbury Top Deck chocies to be specific. That morning I noticed what looked like a square of chocolate on the floor and
Halong Port
Wooden Junks eagerly awaiting our presence since I didn't have any recollection of any late night chocolate snacking I naturally quizzed Kenny to see if she knew anything about the miscellaneous nibbled top deck square that now lay on our cabin floor. Also not knowing anything about the miscellaneous delicacy, Kenny turned to her handbag where the morsel had originated from to see if it would turn up any clues: wallet, check; passport, check; iPod, check; iPod earphones times two parts, check....Turned out we had had a rodent burglary the previous evening and Kenny was down half a top deck chocolate and her iPod head phones had been remodeled for her in two separate pieces, quite classic. After a good deal of hysterical laughter while conducting a thorough inspection of Kenny’s bag to ensure that the offender hadn't nestled itself deep in the purple lining in hopes of a free ride to Cat Bar or beyond, we collected ourselves together, said farewell to half our group who were only on the "two days tour", disembarked and boarded a bus which wound its way around the scenic Cat Bar highlands and depositing us at the base of Cat Bar National Park.
Turned out that along with
Halong Port
Wooden Junks rule the waters unsuitable clothing we were also not really equipped with quite the right footwear for the rather steep gradient and slippery slopes of Ngu Lang but hey there is nothing you can do other than to embrace the challenging trail in your slops and be rewarded with the most magnificent view 225meters above from the Ngu Lang Peak. We even braved the very very scary summit of the rusty old watch tower to really add the cherry to the top of our treck!
Once we'd descended (only narrowly escaping incidence after Shaun miraculously steadied himself after slipping at the top flight of treacherously steep rusty watch tower steps moments after joking with me that he'd be ahead of me to break my fall if need be) we got back on the bus headed to Cat Bar port to check into our hotel and catch a bite to eat before departing for Monkey Island.
Admittedly Monkey Island wasn't really that great. coupled with the freezing late afternoon air the island had little to offer and it was over run by highly obnoxious and aggressive monkeys and while watching a monkey drink out of a Coca Cola can like a human
Halong Port
Wooden Junks eagerly awaiting our presence is rather amusing it does totally go against my beliefs where the feeding of wild animals is concerned and I was quite happy to be back on rout to Cat bar after the freezing hour or so on the Island.
The rest of our stay on Cat bar was spent eating, sampling Vietnamese rice wine, enjoying the Blue Note happy hour, raiding the hotel mini bars after being chased out of Blue Note at closing hour all while making some awesome friends!
Two late nights in a row adjacent to three super early wake up calls were showing in our energy levels the following morning but nothing was going to stop us from enjoying our last morning back on the Christina, not even the freezing cold weather that was punishing the silly South Africans in their skimpy sun dresses would chill our experience. Once 11:30 rolled around the group of freezing travelers hit terra firma, waved goodbye to Halong Bay and headed back to the buzz of Hanoi to repack our bags before boarding the night train for Sapa.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 10; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0332s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb