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Published: February 1st 2010
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Tour Group
On the shuttle bus to the bay! Standing, is our tour guide. Along with another couple from the USA, there were British, Scottish, Canadian, Spanish, and Germans with us. This morning started with another failed wakeup call (good thing our alarm worked, once again) and a quick checkout of our hostel. We didn't have time to have the provided breakfast, as we needed to be at Kangaroo Cafe for the start of our tour just around 7:30. We got there, dropped off one of our bigger bags, got 2 iced coffees for take-away and quickly boarded a mini-bus with 10 other people, a driver and a tour guide. We all did the obligatory introductions as our bus started to drive away from Hanoi, and found out everyone was the following: 2 female coworker/friends from Canada, a couple from Spain, a couple from Germany, a couple from Britain and a couple from California.
After close to 4 hours of driving, we arrived at our destination: Halong Bay Harbor. We grabbed our luggage, got on a small boat and got driven out to our larger 'junk' boat- and by that we don't mean a TRASHY boat...😊 That's what it's called, see the pics. It was beautiful! We each had a private double bedroom/bathroom and then there was a big dining/bar area upstairs with a TV in addition to of course just
First Impressions
As soon as we got on the boat, this was our view from the tables and chairs....AMAZING. lots of open deck space to enjoy the gorgeous views we would see for the next 2 days. We checked into our room and then went back upstairs to enjoy a lunch the crew had prepared for everyone. It was great, as they totally catered to vegetarians and any other kind of food preference. There was one other girl on the boat who was vegetarian (one of the ones from Canada), so we sat across from each other every meal so that it was easiest to put our different food in front of us.
Bellies full, we stopped at a cave called Sung Sot Cave. We had to climb up quite a few stairs but were rewarded with more beautiful views of the bay and then some interesting sights/facts inside the cave. We were only there for about 30 minutes and then boarded the boat once more, this time making a stop off to drop off any passengers that wanted to rent kayaks for one hour. Martin and I opted out, having never kayaked before. The guide said the tide was pretty low which makes it not as fun. Instead, the boat anchored in the middle of the bay
Cute Bay
Halong Bay is super cute right? Oh yeah, so is Staci. for the hour and 4 of us ended up swimming. Well, ONE of us ended up actually swimming. The other 3 (the British couple and Martin) just dove off the front of the boat, screamed about how cold it was and immediately got out. I made my way tentatively down the ladder, got laughed at a bunch for not just jumping in, and then ended up staying in longer than anyone. So, HA! 😊 The few others on the boat were too worried about the quality of the water to get in- something that we clearly no longer think much of after living in China.
The rest of tonight has been spent relaxing on the boat and taking tons of pictures. We had another delicious meal for dinner with everyone, and then we splurged and purchased a bottle of white Chilean wine to split. Wine is hard to come by in China, especially for a decent price. We sat on the roof of our boat with the 2 Canadian girls (turns out they are TV newscasters in Winnepeg, ooh, we kind of know famous people, right?😊) and chatted the night away with our wine, going to bed before 10.
Boat Bed
Our room on the boat. Private, and lovely. An excellent evening!
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Mom/MD
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the entire trip sounds just lovely!