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Published: November 26th 2011
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Monday morning (November 21st), instead of a frustrating commute to Dublin from Kildare, I woke up on a boat in Halong Bay, one of the most amazing places in the world. The realisation fully set in that we're living the dream!
When we started planning this trip Halong Bay was the one place that I was most excited to see. And it didn’t disappoint. We booked a 3 day 2 night trip through our hostel for $109 each. There are so many companies selling trips that you have to just hope for the best that you get a good one. The first night was sleeping on Halong Bay and the second night in a "bungalow" (it was basically a small hut with a mattress) on Catba island.
The tour company picked us up at the hotel to bring us to Halong bay harbour and we were fairly packed into a small bus. It wasn’t too bad apart from the one loud yank, the type that gives all Americans a bad name abroad. We were hoping that she wouldn't be on our boat but no such luck.
Our boat was one of the nicest boats at the harbour. Including
us there was 11 guests on the trip, some of which were only doing the one night on the boat. There was a nice Danish couple, an Asian couple with no English, the yank from the bus and four American lads from Ithaca in upstate New York.
We had a seafood lunch on the boat which hit the spot. The conversation at lunch was dominated by our one yank, who was a person of the Jewish faith. According to her, "the Jews run the world" and 'the U.S. supports Israel and provides them with arms because the rich Jewish people in America would withdraw their monetary support to U.S. politicians otherwise'. Mel Gibson would have been an interesting lunch guest!
The best part of the boat trip was when we stopped off at a floating village to get our kayaks and then we kayaked around the massive rocks jutting out of the water. Although it was a bad start for Aoife and me; we had a slight difficulty turning the kayak in the right direction, much to the amusement of the Vietnamese lads. It was some experience to chill out in a kayak on Halong Bay, definitely one
of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
Dinner was a lot more seafood and we just drank away the rest of the evening on the boat. We drank with the Danish couple for most of the evening who were really nice people. When they went to bed we ended up playing a drinking game called Kings with the American lads which was good craic. The whole pack of cards is laid out on the table face down and you draw a card which has a different rule attached. When you draw the King, you get to make a rule which everyone must follow. I made the rule that everyone had to speak in different accents other than their own country's accent for one game which turned out to be hilarious. Every accent was attempted, the Irish accent was butchered but one of the lads doing an Indian accent was priceless. The beers definitely made it all funnier!
The head the next morning was not the maywest but waking up to breakfast on the boat the hangover quickly disappeared. We were then taken to Catba National park on Catba Island where we climbed to the top of the
mountain (about an hour climb). Aoife made it most the way but it just got too steep for her at the end with her fear of heights. The view from the top was class looking over the island’s mountains.
We were then driven to our bungalow on the beach. The beach was in a secluded spot on the island with about 10/12 bungalows. It was the closest thing to paradise that you could imagine. There were less than 10 people sharing the beach with us. The toilets and food were not great but when you're in such a beautiful place you have to be willing to put up with those things. After all, a paradise beach island in its most simple form would probably involve a hole in the ground as a toilet and fishing with a spear 😊.
After a few hours on the beach we walked toward Catba town and a Vietnamese lad driving by us offered to rent us his motorbike. After some negotiation on the price we took it off him and drove around the island. It was the first time I was on a bike since I rented mopeds on the Greek islands
ten years ago. All the near death experiences I had there came flooding back, so to say we didn’t go too fast is an understatement. Also, once I got comfortable on it and started to go above 40km/hr the speed gauge kicked in. By speed gauge I mean Aoife on the back shouting at me to slow down!
We were the only people who had food included in our deal so nobody else ate at the beach resort. The one guy working in the kitchen made us dinner, the same thing he cooked us for lunch, and once they had served us they just closed up everything and left us there. We didn't eat it and had to just leave it behind the counter, an enjoyable feast no doubt for the two cats freely roaming the kitchen/dining area. We walked into Catba town to get some food which turned out to be awful. Aoife's pizza took an hour to come out and it didn’t even have marinara sauce on it. While we were waiting a guy who I thought was working in the restaurant came up and shook my hand by way of introduction, which then turned into a
massage there in the restaurant. He cracked everything. At one point he stood down on my foot to crack the ankle joint. Strangest massage ever!
We went back to our hut and shared a bottle of wine watching episodes of Always Sunny in Philadelphia on my iPod. The mosquito net was up and I got a quality sleep with the sound of the waves crashing against the shore. Best sounds machine ever! On our trip back to the harbour on the boat I just sat up on the top deck listening to some tunes on my ipod, taking photos and soaking up my surroundings before we got back to the hectic pace of Hanoi city. Halong Bay in one word, Majestic!!!
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Lisa
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Wow
Looks amazing!! You guys are so lucky! Massage picture pretty funny, ha ha..