Hao Long Bay Cruise

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Today we started by hopping onto a minibus to travel from Hanoi to Hao Long to get aboard a junk on Hao Long bay. The trip on the bus was a bit rough as we were in the very back and the roads were quite bumpy so by the time we got there, Ted at least was ready to get out and never look back. After a bit of queuing in the parking lot things got sorted out and our guide 'Mike' led us to the tender for a ride to the junk. The harbor was absolutely crammed with junks. Supposedly according to the lonely planet guidebook there are 150 of them taking tourists around. Our book was published in 2003 though and now there is probably over 1000. At one stop that was not too crowded I counted 32 other boats around us and the harbor had a collection of anchored boats over a mile long and 5-10 boats deep the whole way.

The boat itself was great. It was one of the newer ones (3 years old) probably about 80 feet long and ~18 feet wide with 3 decks above water. All the woodwork was teak (I think) and it was clean and very pretty. There were 8 cabins aboard. We took two, and the other passengers included a Belgian family of 6, 2 aussi guys (Chris and Jacob) of about 30 years, a pair of elderly Norwegian women, a young dutch couple and a slightly older Japanese couple.

Jacob and CC spent quite a bit of time hanging out on the bridge and they had a chance to steer the boat.

Hao Long bay is a really beautiful sight. There are 2-3000 islands and they all sprout steeply from the water with cliffs from 20 to over 100 feet high. It reminds us all of the karst mountain formations we saw in Yangshuo China a few years back. Since there are a lot of corals in the sea, there are also plenty of fine sand beaches as well along with palm trees and monkeys to make it interesting.

The first stop was near the great cave (not sure of its real name) which was a huge, deep cave filled with stalagmites and stalactites. It was very, very beautiful and quite a site to see. From there we went over to a floating village. These villages are all built on rafts and have nets hanging down below where they farm catfish. They make a point that these are floating villages not fishing villages and in truth they are floating fish farmers not fishermen. There we took a pair of kayaks and paddled around for a while. From there we crossed over to a little beach but by then it was 5pm and with the sun going down it was not warm enough to swim. It is cooler up here, topping out in the mid 80's (F) during the day (HCMC was always mid 90s at least). Back to the junk again and we headed to an anchorage off of Cat Ba island for the night.

After dinner the kids fell asleep pretty quickly while the adults stayed up singing Karaoke in the lounge. Here out guide, Mike, showed himself a real showman and also demonstrated his deep knowledge of Michael Jackson's songs and dance moves to a small but enthusiastic crowd. Unfortunately. technical mishaps resulted in no video with either Carolyn or Ted surviving from the karaoke session.

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Comments

[liefelds]

Out of order
This entry should have been dated April 14th so it is out of order, it really came the day before Monkey Island - Ted

[David Wilson]

i have heard Ted sing
....but never in a Karaoke environment. Too bad about the technical difficulties (yeah right) because i would have paid good money to see/hear it. All the best from Toronto! Dave and Liz