Cruising Ha Long Bay

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Day 21 - half way through our adventure!

Today we are up early as we have booked to go on a 2 night cruise of the famous Ha Long Bay, the home to nearly 2,000 islands made of limestone which emerge majestically from the South China Sea (as seen on one of the James Bond movies - allegedly!). The bus arrives to pick us up at 8am, but we then spend the next hour picking up other passengers from their hotels around the city. At one point the bus is descended upon by several uniformed men - all of whom look a bit dishevelled, but all of whom are very “jobsworth” and the bus driver is issued with a ticket for parking his vehicle somewhere he shouldn’t. It then takes him another 30 minutes to pay the fine etc. But eventually we are on our way.

Well it is fair to say that we have encountered some crazy driving whilst we have been in SE Asia, and appears that today is to be no exception! Everyone on the road beeps their horns continually, there are no road markings or road signs, and vehicles overtake each other on blind corners and even when there are vehicles coming in the other direction. They literally play chicken with each other to see who will move over first. It was a nerve wracking 3 hour drive to Ha Long Bay, but we did arrive in one piece thank goodness.

The boat is lovely - quite luxurious really. Beautiful cabins with en-suite shower rooms. Great! Two days of lying around on the sundeck drinking pina coladas! Forget all that! Our guide Yap sits us down and then tells us about our itinerary for the next two days. Up at 6am for T’ai Chi on the deck, 7am breakfast, 7.45am off on the tender to see some of the beautiful islands and that was just the morning! This is not what I was expecting at all!

Day 22 - Monday 8th November

O.M.G. That was the hardest bed I have ever slept in! All the mattresses here in Vietnam have been hard, but this one is the hardest. Plus the fact that when I got up in the night to go to the loo there were 2 rather large coackroaches sitting on the wash basin! At this moment I want to go home! I woke up too late to join in with the T’ai C’hi class too!

We are ready for breakfast at 7am, and whilst we are eating the boat starts chugging around the bay. We have to be ready for 7.45am when a smaller boat is coming to fetch us to take us out for the day so that we can get closer to the islands. Our guide for the day is called “Long” and speaks very poor English so we struggle to understand him at all. In the end we just say “yes” and pretend that we understand. Our first stop is kayaking around a traditional working fishing village. This is the real thing - not a put on job - and there is a floating school, temple and lots of little colourful houses on rafts. Then we paddle on towards another island called Cat Ba. We kayak in through an inlet that is too small for the passenger boats, to find the most idyllic lagoons with caves that you can paddle through, and fish jumping out of the water. We are the only people there and it is stunning!

We paddle back to the boat for lunch which is quite nice although a little sparse (you can see why they are all so thin here!) and consisted of squid, mantis shrimps, rice and what looked like cooked seaweed! However the cook must also be sculpture as every course was accompanied by something carved out of vegetables - a boat, two doves, a snake and a turtle!

In the afternoon we are allowed to relax in the sun - the first time during our entire holiday! I find myself getting rather bored and I am itching to get going again. But after a couple of hours the engine starts and we chugg at the high speed of 4 knots to our next destination - a sandy beach! Well that’s all it is - just a dirty old beach with some steps behind it that don’t actually go anywhere!

So far I am not overly impressed with Ha Long Bay. The water is filthy and to be honest the overriding smell is diesel fumes from the boats! Although there are 1,969 islands, it appears that all the tourist boats park up in the same area and it is just like a huge, noisy, smelly car park! Oh well, we have another night on board so let’s see what tomorrow has to offer!

Day 23 - Tuesday 9th November

Oh bugger! I have missed T’ai Chi on the deck again! Oh well, I’m not too bothered. We get up for breakfast and decide not to go kayaking again, so we stay on board and lay in the sun. The weather has been fantastic! Blue skies and hot weather every day since we left Malaysia and hit Thailand. I don’t think that it will last though as we are heading south to Hoi An tomorrow and the weather has apparently been awful. There have been tremendous floods in central Vietnam and everything is a bit of a wash out!

We had lunch and then left the boat for another “hair raising” drive back to Hanoi. We had a different, but equally as bad a driver as the outward journey. This one didn’t seem to know how to change gear and the bus stuttered along, the engine complaining all the way. This time we also had to contend with numerous cows crossing the highway! It is good to be back in Hanoi though. It can honestly say that it is my favourite place so far. I feel a little bit sad to be leaving!

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