HaLong Bay

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Today was a wonderful day spent at Halong Bay, to the east of Hanoi on the coast. Getting there was a little hairy to say the least! As we come to the end of our travels, money is our greatest obstacle and consequently means we try to do everything in the cheapest possible way. There are plenty of packaged tours advertised around Hanoi, but we opted for the local bus and arranging a boat tour around the bay at the "Tourist Wharf". The bus would have taken a good hour had another bus not crashed in to the side of us! That sounds rather dramatic; it actually wasn’t that bad and only took off the wing mirror. What was a bit mental was that our bus driver chased the culprit bus for about half an hour and when he finally caught him up, he under cut him and boxed him in, in the middle of the highway!! We waited whilst they sorted things out, craning to get a look at the brawl. We were then transferred to a different bus to continue our journey.

Having left so early, we were lucky to have made a boat that set sail at midday. Ours was a small boat with a Japanese family and a group of trendy young Vietnamese. These guys befriended us and we had a great time sitting on the deck together watching the spectacular scenery. Halong Bay is notorious for its beautiful limestone peaks surrounding sparkling blue water. The views we had really lived up to its descriptions. We stopped at two enormous caves, which we walked through. They were so big they had to be lit up by artificial lighting. The disco colours of the biggest one stole some of its magnificence, but it was difficult not to be impressed.

We then stopped at a fishing village made up of little mobile homes floating on rafts. It was similar to a fish farm in the way that live fish were kept in nets to be caught fresh for the buyer. Our new friends, who were clearly very wealthy, bought a whole stack of large prawns and crabs. They then had them barbecued on the boat. When two huge plates of sea food were brought out, they invited us over saying that they’d bought them for us! So appreciating their generosity, we sat down and ate a delicious feast together. Feeling happy and full, we sat out on the deck again and just enjoyed the stunning beauty of Halong Bay.

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