 Halong Bay |
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| Few quick questions about Halong Bay | |||||||||||||||||||||
Dicko James Dickson Post Count: 6 Msg: #1 82 days ago, September 4th 2009 | Just a few questions too anyone that has visitited Halong Bay before. Is it fairly easy to find sumwhere to stay their as there appears to be very little advertised on the internet in the Bay and what is available is fairly pricey? Final question. Is halong a decent place to visit? | Thanks in advance  Rat on the Road Kris and Kate Post Count: 421 Msg: #2 82 days ago, September 5th 2009 | Hey Dicko | Halong Bay is lots of little islands, some of them tiny. Most people who visit Halong Bay do a tour on a junk boat. They stay overnight on the boat. The biggest island, Cat Ba, is also a tourist resort. There is a long street of hotels, bars and restaurants and 3 beaches. Off peak (i.e. non summer) there are hotels for $10 a night. You can't book these in advance though, as they don't take online bookings. During the week you will have apsolutely no problem getting a room though. It's abit busier with Vietnamese tourists at the weekend, but if you are going soon, in the winter, it will be quiet. The food and drink is, bizarrely, cheaper than the mainland. The centre of the island is jungle and is a National Park where you can go trekking. You can also go rock climbing if that is your bag. There are some small islands where you can stay too. Usually they are for private tour groups though. Ocean Tours have one. The tour from Hanoi backpackers use another one. I can't comment on the quality of either of these tours because I've never been on one. You can stay in Halong City, which is where the junks leave to tour the bay. It's not a nice city really though. Is that what you meant about staying in the Bay? In answer to your final question, Halong Bay is stunningly beautiful and well worth visiting. Halong City is not. You have a couple of options for visiting Halong Bay. Are you planning this as part of a tour of Vietnam? If so, you can arrange a tour from Hanoi. Most visitors do this. There are variations: you can just do an overnight on a junk boat in the Bay, or you can do one night on a boat and one night on Cat Ba. These tours vary in quality and price. You can book them from home. They will, of course, be more expensive if you do this. If you don't fancy an organised tour you can do it yourself. Take a bus from Hanoi to Haiphong City. From Haiphong you can take either a boat or a bus-boat combination over to Cat Ba. Stay in a hotel on Cat Ba. From Cat Ba you can arrange tours of the bay as well as tours of the National Park. You can stay as long as you want and then travel back to Hanoi the same way. Alternatively, from Haiphong you can travel to Hue, Nimh Binh..... You can find out more about Cat Ba/Haiphong on our blog. Hope this helps. Kate Thanhvu2012 Thanh Vu Post Count: 1 Msg: #3 81 days ago, September 5th 2009 | If you overnight on a boat, It will stop near Titop Island. You can swimming, jumping from the top of the boat, or you can see the sunset on halong bay. | I have finished Halong - Cat Ba Trip with <snip> Cheer! [Edited: 18:23 - Mell ] Dicko James Dickson Post Count: 6 Msg: #4 81 days ago, September 5th 2009 | Thanks very much Kate you answered all my questions in great detail thanks for taking the time out to reply. Yer we are arriving in Vietnam on the 16th October for a month so will be touring south to north and are just making up our minds about where we are starting and finishing the trip. | Thanks Number of Users: 3 | Number of Posts: 4 | ||||||||||||
