Ahh Ha Long Bay – I think this was our favourite place of the trip!
It wasn’t quite what I expected in terms of the number of boats out on the water and number of tourists but it is incredibly pretty! One of those places you really need to see to believe!
We have gotten one of our panoramic photo’s from Ha Long Bay printed on a canvas to remind us of our trip and add a little something extra to one of our walls in our apartment.
I had never stayed the night on a boat before so was a little apprehensive about that, which I shouldn’t have been as we both had a really good sleep both nights on the boat, and one of those nights was new years eve!
On our first afternoon out in the bay we went to visit a floating fishing village, where all the houses are on rafts floating in the water! Such an amazing but different way of life, it was cool to see but at the same time it felt a little bit like we were prying into their lives by being there. Although I guess the tourists coming does bring some income in for them as they were selling things like Pringles, Coke and Water.
The next day we transfered to a smaller boat and got taken further in to the bay (I’m going to be honest it does all look the same, there are over 2000 little islands and they are ridiculously pretty!) where we hopped off that boat and into kayaks to explore the bay.
I must admit that getting into a kayak that is sitting in the middle of the bay from a boat which is moving slightly was quite nerve racking, especially when you want to take photo’s from the kayak so risk taking your camera with you!
After kayaking around the bay and through caves we got back on to our boat for lunch (all the food on this trip was seriously amazing – with the exception of breakfast which was possibly the worst breakfast we had our whole trip, cold toast and cold fried eggs (shudder) – there was a heavy seafood focus on the boats though, which given we were on the sea it’s not overly surprising!).
You would think that being out in a bay in the middle of nowhere you would have a lot of peace and quiet – which you did – however you CAN NOT escape the people trying to sell you stuff! This lady and kid seriously rowed up to our boat (I have no idea where they came from, we couldn’t see any floating houses!) trying to sell tacky nick nacks and the standard pringles, coke and water – non-perishables.
No Vietnamese meal is complete until you have received your ‘salad’ – salad over there is always cucumber and tomato, if you strike it lucky you may have one other vegetable with it but generally that is all you get. I don’t eat tomato and am not a huge fan of cucumber but I had quite a bit on this trip! The flowers they can make out of the vegetables are pretty amazing though! We got shown how to make them on the boat, as well as how to make spring rolls and I could almost guarantee you If I tried to repeat it, it would end up looking like one of those Pinterest Fail Memes!
On our last day we were taken too a cave which overlooked the bay (another amazing view!), the cave was huge but there were no many tourists and to be honest it was proberly a little big. It was pretty amazing though!
The rest of the day really consisted of us getting back to the dock and into the minivan back to Hanoi – just a word of warning the roads from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay are terrible, if you get even a little bit of motion sickness make sure your sitting near the front of the bus or van and have a sick bag handy – one girl on our Van didn’t and didn’t quiet make it to our stop unfortunately. Fortunately we had literally just pulled up so we (and she!) didn’t have to sit in the van for too long.
Next up we head to Hue…
If you want to read more about our Vietnam Adventure please see these posts:
Hey Amanda,
Quick question, what company did you use for staying on the boat? I am doing some research at the moment and there are quite a few companies…
Also I am sure you would have made the salad exactly like the one in your photos 🙂
We ended up going on the Canary Cruise and I booked it through Tonkintravel.com 🙂 Hope that helps, it wasn’t a super flash boat but it was good enough and the food was awesome with the exception of the gross cold toast for breakfast.