Magical Ha Long Bay

  Ha Long, Vietnam
Thursday, February 15, 2007

The Halong Bay tour that we took was the one 95% of the tourists get if they sign up for a 3 day tour. They have two levels to chose from - the $40 level and the $70 level. We went for the $70 because it is still dirt cheap for an all inclusive three day tour, plus why not splurge? We ended up on a fancy "junk" boat (old Chinese style) with a fun guide and delicious gourmet seafood meals. In our group we had three British girls, a Dutch couple, an Australian couple who immigrated from Vietnam as children and a Swiss and German guy. It was a fun group. There turned out to be four nurses between us which was an impressive coincidence, plus one of the British girls was a textile designer who had sold lots of designs to Old Navy. We were very impressed and she was surprised to learn how wildly popular Old Navy is in the States. They haven't come to UK yet. I even sang her some jingles "Old Navy, Old Navy, Old Navy performance fleece".

Halong Bay was quite stunning despite the overcast weather that we had the whole trip. While it means that the photos are less spectacular, it is still amazing to see in person. The boat seems to cruise forever and you never run out of limestone islands.

Islands of Ha Long Bay

While many of the islands are too steep and rocky to be inhabited, people have instead made communities of floating houses to live on. There always seemed to be an industrious woman paddling out from her house with a "7-11 boat" full of snacks, beer, soda and water that they knew were very overpriced on the boats (food was included but drinks were not).

We visited the Surprise Cave (You can view our photos to guess the "surprise") and after spending the night on the boat we road bikes around Cat Ba Island, visiting a small village and spending the night at the island's main town. The village was doing quite well with farming and the supplementation of tourist visits from selected groups. No one trying to sell us anything (that will come later at Sapa) but we had a nice walk around the village.

On a few islands we ran into an African guy and had to go over and introduce ourselves. To see a fellow African in the city is one thing, but on another Halong Bay tour? He turned out to be a businessman from Mali who had been working in China for the last few years for a company exporting clothes to Africa.

Eating Lunch on the Beach

As a rule, all expats try to get out of China for their new year so he headed to Vietnam. He thought he might find some clothing ideas to take back to China but discovered that the Vietnamese buy everything from China now too. With time on his hands, he decided to do some tours to see the country.

After the tour was ended we headed back to shore and took the nervewracking ride back to Hanoi. The guide and the driver got good sized tips from us. The fact that the driver didn't kill anyone impressed us greatly - motorcycles veer between cars and the cars have to do their best to avoid them. Driving here has to be terribly stressful. The only reason that more people aren't killed is that the mobs of motorbikes keep traffic at around 30 miles an hour.