Ha Long Bay
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
5
19
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Halong Bay,
Vietnam
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
We get up bright and early, have breakfast at the hotel and leave for our trip at 8.30 am. The bus comes to pick us up, there's a few Vietnamese + Thai people, an Aussie/NZ couple and two Irish girls. We drive up to Ha Long City (3,5 hours) with one stop at (of course) a souvenir shop and we get to Ha Long around noon. We wait for a bit for the boat and then have to climb on a whole bunch of other boats first to get to ours - there are so many boats! It's one of those Chinese looking type of junks and it's really quite nice. There's only 13 of us so we have lots of space (on some tours there's 40 people on one boat!). We get our own little cabins to sleep in and there's a sundeck on top of the boat. We leave and sail towards the Bay to marvel at all the rock formation that Ha Long Bay is famous for, while lounging on the sundeck.
Our fellow tour members having lunch
Eventually we get to a cave which we enter and look around in a bit. It's pretty impressive, but the best bit is the view from the cave into the Bay.
Afterwards we sail a bit more until we get to a beach where we have a refreshing (though a bit salty) swim. After we get back on the boat the sun starts to set and it's a really beautiful sight.
We have dinner on the boat (lots of different types of dishes, mainly seafood), and have a few drinks while lounging on the sundeck - even though it's completely dark by now. Eventually we go back to our cabins for an early night.
Day 9: Cat Ba Island - Vietnam
We wake up and have breakfast on the boat and enjoy the scenery in the morning light, lounging on the sundeck again. At around 9 am we arrive at Cat Ba Island (an island in the Bay) and get picked up by a bus that drives us to Cat Ba National Park. There we go for a hike to the top of one of the hills, which sounds like a good idea at first, but quickly turns out to be a rather stupid endeavour as it's really hot and humid and it's a pretty steep climb
Garbage boat in the harbour
. Unfortunately I am too stubborn to give up and not make it to the top once I've started (it hurts my pride). I was about to turn back at some point, but then a whole bunch of other tour groups were coming back down saying it wasn't that far anymore, so I pushed on and eventually made it to the top, only to read on the sign posted there it was only 225 meters high, which I thought was pretty disappointing considering the effort that went into reaching the top! The view was quite stunning from the top though and I was quite proud I made it, even though I was completely unable to do anything for about an hour after we got off the hill and I drank about two liters of water. :D After the trekking we went back to Cat Ba town and checked into a hotel for the night (included with the tour) and had a well-deserved shower and a rest before we had another lovely big lunch.
After lunch we set off for another activity (me rather reluctantly, I must admit) - this time kayaking. We get kayaks in couples and a guide and set off. It's great fun, actually, we don't kayak very far and stop off at a piece of rock that we have to climb over to reach a lake where we swam around for quite a while, which was really nice (never mind that the actual climbing part was pretty tricky and I cut my foot on some shells which bled like a pig, but thankfully didn't really hurt)
Selmer on top of the boat
. After a while we get back into the kayaks and head back, going past lots of houses on the water. Quite a few people live on the water here and it looks pretty cool. The houses float and they all have fishnets and little docks for their boats and some people even have dogs. :D (Selmer says it looks like "Waterworld", though I can't tell 'cause I've never seen that movie) The kids wave at us while we peddle by them. :D
After the kayaking we get back to the hotel for another shower and a moment's rest, to be followed by dinner. We meet some Canadian guys who have just arrived in Cat Ba and everyone goes out for a few beers after dinner, except for me. I choose to just stay in the room and read my book and I can't really be bothered to join in with all the usual traveller's talk of where you've been and what was cheapest - which just bores me, even if I'm not tired. Selmer does go and gets pretty drunk and apparently does a mean rendition of Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" at the karaoke place. I must admit I'm a bit bummed I missed that. :D
