Vietnam: Halong Bay

  Halong Bay, Vietnam
Friday, February 16, 2007

When ya see pictures of Vietnam you are bound to see a few from this place. There was about 20 or so people on the boat cruise including another bloody bunch of Aussies from Perth who were staying in the hostel as well. 2 guys and 6 girls, they were a bit of a pain in the ass but I made a special effort to not hold that against them (big hello to any of them reading this) and we ended up having a great laugh.

01 Arriving at Ha-Long Bay

The trip started with a three hour bus trip from Hanoi to Halong Bay. When we got there we all boarded our boat for the trip, getting on the boat was nearly an adventure in itself as the place is so crowded you have to climb from one boat to another to get there. But getting the boat out to open water was another challenge. Again with the crowd of boats there the only way to get out to open water is to bash off other boats and push them out of the way. It did make me a bit weary of how safe these boats are if there hitting each other every day, but we survived so it wasn't too bad.

The day itself was pretty overcast but warm but we were still treated to some fabulous views round the area. With sheer rocks jutting out of the water and towering up into the air scattered everywhere.

17 More views on the way to the beach

As we would pass between one set of rocks around the corner was another. It was really beautiful.

We got a bite to eat on the boat and continued on our way eventually making our way to the Sung sot Cave (Cave of Surprise), where we wondered around for about 20 minutes or so.

11 Sung sot Cave 1

Its a relatively small cave in the sense it only takes a short time to get around but it has a very high ceiling. The whole pace is lit up with colour lighting which really adds to the effect. 

Again we hoped on our boat and after bashing our way out of the harbor again we headed to an island resort where we would spend the night. Unfortunately it was dark when we arrived so we weren't able to appreciate it fully until the next morning. The island itself is relatively small, we were able to kayak around it in thirty minutes or so the next morning. It has maybe ten wooden huts all along the beach front, each hut has two to three rooms in it. I had the pleasure of sharing with the two Aussie guys Gary and Dave.

We had enough time to clean up before dinner. Each of the rooms has sarongs and slippers so it was decided to have a sarong party and dress up a bit. Well the girls came up with the idea so we just joined in.

20 The whole gang dressed up

With nothing else to really do there we just had our dinner and drank for the night and just generally enjoyed ourselves. A few of the brave ones decided to go for a mid-night swim.

The next morning we were leaving at 8.45am so in order to do the kayaking and get breakfast in we had to be up at 6am. I hoped into the kayak with a Canadian lady and with the two guys in another kayak we powered our way around the island in double quick time.

The area around Halong Bay itself is an absolutely gorgeous place to look at. The only problem with the place is the amount of water pollution around.

28 More of the island

The whole place is filthy, part of this coming from the floating villages that are scattered around and the rest probably from the amount of passing traffic in the area.

That apart though it was well worth the visit to go see. At around 11 we had our breaky on the boat and it was at this point that it started to rain a bit. I wasn't too bothered as we had got plenty of nice pics in the early morning and the day before.

We landed back at Halong Bay around 1pm and after our final bit of boat bashing to get into port we hoped onto our bus again and made our three hour bus trip back to Hanoi to enjoy Tet.........