John and Joanna on the boat in Halong Bay
The beauty and floating cities of Halong BayDay 8: Halong Bay.
All I can say is beautiful. We said goodbye to our contact at An Tours and hello to our Halong Bay tour guide: Hung (pronounced Hon), apparently it means Hero. So, we called him that too. After a late start and a four our drive to Halong Bay, we finally made it to our boat. Our group of five was on a pretty big boat with two other couples from Australia (actually one couple is working in China). The boat’s top floor had a place for hanging out on the boat deck with nice relaxing, wooden lawn chairs. Two large tables with chairs, a fridge, a very large cooler, and a bar occupied the inside. The first floor housed our cabins, which were small but comfortable. Of note was that toilet sink and shower were in one room. So, if you wanted to you could shower on the toilet. We were surprised at how well it worked. It’s still very hot in Halong Bay, so we were happy to see that there was an air conditioner in the room that kept it quite cool. We didn’t spend much time in the room though, because the views were so amazing. Halong Bay is full of large rocky formations that jut out of the water, probably up to 1000 feet (check the picture!). We started off with a great lunch of crab, shrimp, soup, squid and fish. It might be one of the best meals we’ve had. As our boat took us on a slow ride out to the first stop, we realized (through Lisa’s guidebook), that our boat is the best boat in the Bay. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we noticed actual fishing villages in the middle of water. There were clusters of about 15 or so boat houses. Our tour guide told us that the Vietnam government and the UK (actually aren’t sure if that’s right, he may have meant the UN), are providing additional funding and incentives for the children to go to school (which is out in the water as well).
We arrived at a massive cave that was only discovered in 2000 and then climbed up 436 steps to the top of one of the rock formations. I told my Ned and Ed joke to my friend Bob, who didn’t hear it when we climbed up the steps to the Great Wall a year ago. The view was so pretty nice. We had another awesome dinner of the same food mentioned above, cooked in different ways and spent the evening drinking beers and hanging out on the boat. Rough life!
All I can say is beautiful. We said goodbye to our contact at An Tours and hello to our Halong Bay tour guide: Hung (pronounced Hon), apparently it means Hero. So, we called him that too. After a late start and a four our drive to Halong Bay, we finally made it to our boat. Our group of five was on a pretty big boat with two other couples from Australia (actually one couple is working in China). The boat’s top floor had a place for hanging out on the boat deck with nice relaxing, wooden lawn chairs. Two large tables with chairs, a fridge, a very large cooler, and a bar occupied the inside. The first floor housed our cabins, which were small but comfortable. Of note was that toilet sink and shower were in one room. So, if you wanted to you could shower on the toilet. We were surprised at how well it worked. It’s still very hot in Halong Bay, so we were happy to see that there was an air conditioner in the room that kept it quite cool. We didn’t spend much time in the room though, because the views were so amazing. Halong Bay is full of large rocky formations that jut out of the water, probably up to 1000 feet (check the picture!). We started off with a great lunch of crab, shrimp, soup, squid and fish. It might be one of the best meals we’ve had. As our boat took us on a slow ride out to the first stop, we realized (through Lisa’s guidebook), that our boat is the best boat in the Bay. In addition to the beautiful scenery, we noticed actual fishing villages in the middle of water. There were clusters of about 15 or so boat houses. Our tour guide told us that the Vietnam government and the UK (actually aren’t sure if that’s right, he may have meant the UN), are providing additional funding and incentives for the children to go to school (which is out in the water as well).
We arrived at a massive cave that was only discovered in 2000 and then climbed up 436 steps to the top of one of the rock formations. I told my Ned and Ed joke to my friend Bob, who didn’t hear it when we climbed up the steps to the Great Wall a year ago. The view was so pretty nice. We had another awesome dinner of the same food mentioned above, cooked in different ways and spent the evening drinking beers and hanging out on the boat. Rough life!
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