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Published: August 8th 2007
The weather had turned from hot to hot and wet in our last two days in Hanoi and so we were rightly worried about whether our decision to do a two day tour of Halong Bay with a night staying on a Chinese junk boat was such a good idea. We had spent two days looking for a reputable and non-fake tour company in Hanoi to book the trip with and found one which didn't have one hundred alias' or duplicate 'branches' which would do the tour for $45 each.
The tour didn't start off well, with our pick up minibus driver turning up at our hotel 45 minutes late and we were beginning to think this was another one of our spectacularly bad decisions with tours where everything goes very wrong. But in no time at all (4 hours in fact) after driving past an amazing number of Vietnamese and Western factories and industrial estates, we arrived at Halong Bay. Luckily our tour group was very small, with just 8 of us and so we had the whole junk to ourselves. Not only that but the junk was a very nice junk (not that we have ever seen one
before!), our room had air conditioning and an en suite bathroom. There was also a galley restaurant, a sun deck with loungers, a captain, a cook, a waiter and Dang our guide (who spoke exceptional English). The weather had also taken a turn for the better with sun and cloudy skies and after having a three-course lunch our surly captain had sailed us to an island with a pagoda lookout at the top of it. The view was magnificent and the whole area was a little reminiscent of the Phang Nga and Krabi areas of Thailand, except there were far fewer tourists, the water was crystal clear and the scenery more spectacular, we suppose this is why Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site.
We then sailed to a cave which we didn't even know was on the itinerary. Dang our guide said this cave was called Surprising Cave and it certainly was surprising. This was because Dang paid our entrance fee and the cave was absolutely ginormous and inside looked like something from a sci-fi film. We don't think the pictures do it justice so we took a video as well! Surprisingly Dang was one of those
Our captain singing
We named him either Captain Jack Or Captain Sparrow. He said nothing the whole trip until he was handed the mic then he became semi-naked Elvis for the evening!guides who was genuine, helpful, courteous and knowledgeable, although when he talked about 'a large proportion of Vietnam being confusion' we think he meant confusionist, but he would have been right either way! We sailed off to another part of the bay where we could kayak ourselves into the hongs of the limestone karsts...we spent a good hour and a half kayaking (and nosing into other peoples junks to compare standards!). We anchored up in a really scenic area at sunset and swam in the South China sea whilst vendors paddled up to us in their boats offering beer, wine, food etc. We would advise not drinking beer whilst trying to tread water, as it gives the beer a really bad salty flavour!
After a five-course meal we were told karaoke would follow and we thought that this was Vietnamese humour because we thought the large speakers and amplifier would be for a disco. In no time at all Dang was singing Vietnamese versions of Sha-la-la-la-la, 500 miles and La Cucharacha. From spending a long time now in Asia, we should have realised that Asians do not joke about karaoke and if you are handed the microphone you must
sing a song (tip, NEVER accept the microphone!) so when Neil grabbed hold of the mic thinking it was an ice cream he immediately found himself having to sing 'Like a Virgin'. About 30 minutes later, Donna noticed how the lights from the other junks surrounding ours had suddenly disappeared and this was no doubt due to the loudness of the karaoke rather than the bad singing (Vietnamese don't seem to mind out of tune voices), nevertheless this was our cue to escape up to the top deck and drink the contraband vodka we had smuggled on board past Captain Jack's steely glare.
At 6am the next morning we were woken up by the sound of the junk engines and the smell of diesel fuel in our cabin and whilst having breakfast we sailed to a secluded cove where we could swim and jump off the top deck of the boat. Neil and the two kids on board took great delight in jumping off the top of the boat, but when his swimwear ended up around his neck (ouch!) he wasn't quite so delighted.
Our trip ended with a stop at a tour group restaurant for lunch. We
Hard hat technician preparing us for launch
We weren't sure what he was expecting to land on his head but 'Safety first' and all that! call it this because we have been to these eateries before where large buses full of tourists pull up, are placed onto tables and served sub standard food and shipped out in record time. Our tour to Halong Bay had been a great success and incredibly magical, drinking on the top of a Chinese junk under the stars was one of the best experiences of our journey so far. We know that we were lucky because other tourists we spoke to had not had half as good an experience as we had, this mainly comes down to who you choose as a tour operator.
Arriving back into Hanoi we had just enough time to have a couple of 2000 dong beer Hoi's and a meal before catching the Reunification Express sleeper train to Hue, a few hundred kilometres and 12 hours south of Hanoi.
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