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Ha Long Bay
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Ha Long bay is a world heritage site featuring thousands of limestone karsts riddled with caves jutting out almost vertically from the sea. We spent 3 days traveling around the bay and Cat Ba Island, a national park.
Our bus arrived at the harbor at around 11 on the first day, and our group of 16 were herded straight onto one of about 600 boats exclusively used by the tourist trade. Our boat barged its way out of the crowded harbor, coming worryingly close to doing a Titanic as every other boat seemed to have the same idea at the same time. Once in open water we had a surprisingly good buffet style lunch and then chugged towards one of the islands where we visited an enormous cave. We then got to spend a rather aimless hour pottering about in a canoe, before heading out into the bay again to do some swimming and jumping off the boat.
The rest of the evening starts to get a bit hazy, as quite a lot of beer was drunk and we all got involved in some heavy drinking games. We were lucky to have a great group including a few Irish, a bunch of Argentians, a Canadian, an Australian and a Norwegian. A great night!
The next day, with many of us feeling a bit worse for wear, we motored to Cat Ba island. Some of us elected to do a 2 hour trek into the hills where the views over the bay were spectacular. The rest of the day was spent in a rather nice hotel and on the beach. Unfortunately, Flis was still feeling a bit under the weather so we spent the evening making the most of the hotel facilities, the cable TV was really appreciated!
The last day passed in a bit of a hurry, as we had to get up early and then got back on the boat to the mainland. Lunch and some shopping for pearls followed, then it was back on the bus to Hanoi, where we got a 2 hour breather before we jumped on another 12 hour bus to Hoi An on the south central coast...
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