Halong Bay Tour

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7/17-7/19

After much debate we all decided to go on an organized tour of Halong Bay containing almost 2000 beautiful islands. We were told that many locals also vacation here and that it shouldn't be missed. Although we wouldn't give our tour company 5 stars we would absolutely recommend visiting Halong Bay. Two other guys, Emmit from Ireland and Andrew from England, had the pleasure of joining our little group and the 7 of us spent the first day driving down from Hanoi and then taking a boat to zig zag through the islands. We stopped to explore an enormous cave where a sport has been made out of discovering the formations of rock that look like people or animals (to be explained visually in attached picture). After that we hopped back on the boat and tried to find a place to dock for the night and have a swim. Unfortunately our classy yacht, commonly referred to as a junk boat was not as sea worthy as one might expect. Each time we hit rough waters, they turned the boat thus allowing us to circle the same few islands until we learned of its minute details. They also didn't have an actual radio on the boat so we circled until we found a signal on the crews cellphones so they could call and find out about the waters ahead. After we found a spot, we all jumped in the water for some sunset swimming. It took much peer pressure to get me to jump but a good time was had by all.

The next morning we set out for Cat Ba island to check into a hotel. We were all exhausted from being woken up early by the crew so we skipped exploring any more caves and just walked around the Cat Ba which has a small town. We resumed the tour in the afternoon with a trip to Monkey Island. The island is aptly named and we got to see a few monkeys without much searching. One of the male monkeys started charging toward me and I was told that he doesn't like women. That was enough for me to chill out on the beach and allow Andrew and Alex to go look in the jungle (unfortunately a shift in the tides forced us to swim from the boat to the shore, so we were unable to take any monkey photos). Aside from the minor brush with death, I still find monkeys to be exceptionally cute and hope to meet some more friendly ones soon. We spent the night in Cat Ba celebrating our guide becoming an uncle that day. And we had many laughs with the Irish and English gents.

When we arrived back in Hanoi, Andrew (the Brit), Roy and Jill, decided to voice a few complaints/feedback about the tour. The operator at the Kangaroo cafe appeared to have emotional issues, and while Roy and Andrew tried to respectfully voice a few very minor grievances, the tour operator began to escalate the issue. Before long he was threatening to assault Andrew (who is about 5'6") and offered to meet after 10pm when his bar closed to settle their dispute. The whole event was rather laughable (felt like we were in High School "meet you at 3:30pm on the baseball diamond). We grabbed our belongs and left the bar, but would strongly encourage any travelers to be weary of using the Kangaroo Cafe in Hanoi.

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Photos

All of us on the Boat
Young Andrew (front left) is whom the Kangaroo Cafe operator felt most threatened by, and offered to settle their dispute in the streets.

Magic Eye
If you look really closely, the rocks form the silhouette of a man and woman in the center.

Fishing Farms
Throughout Halong Bay, several huts with fish farms existed. Not sure if people actually lived in these, but it wouldn't be that surprising.