Ha Long Bay

After a few days in Hanoi, Cindy and I took a bus out to Ha Long Bay for a 3 day boat tour. This was our last destination together and it blew away our expectations. Ha Long Bay is an enormous body of water containing over 1,900 islands. These islands shoot straight out of the water, barely any with beaches or walkable access, and no land inhabitants. The beauty is on a different scale than most places I've been - it reminded me of seeing the enormous glaciers in Alaska.




Thanks to a recommendation from Steve McAdoo, we found ourselves on a great boat, with only about 6 other passengers, and wonderful tour guides, food, and cabins. This is a huge business in Vietnam - the harbor where we took off must of had over 50 "junks" for touring the bay.



We didn't know what the actual tour was going to be like and pictured just cruising around among the islands for a couple of days and getting shown floating gift shops or something. The first day out, we spent a few hours chugging out to what turned out to be the main tourist area of the bay. First stop was an enormous cave, complete with theme-colored lighting, that was truly spectacular (it didn't hurt that this was also our first encounter with Oreos on the trip).




Across the harbor from the cave is one of the few islands that you could actually walk on, with a man-made beach and a pagoda on top that you could climb to. The views from the top were I think the highlight of the trip for me - 360 degrees of gorgeous. Of course where there are tourists, there are hawkers, and here they followed us around in rowboats (we started calling them the "Oreo Ladies"). We dropped anchor at a nearby cove for the night, ate a fantastic dinner and turned in early (after trying some squid fishing off the back of the boat).





The next day was completely different. We went a couple more hours into the bay, leaving the other tour boats behind, and took of on kayaks for a few hours. Nearby was the largest floating village in the bay, and a number of aquatic caves. The caves ranges from simple passageways to one called the "scary cave" that was something straight out of Scooby Doo - long, windy and at points almost a low as the kayak. I was getting to the limits of how much I could scruntch my body down towards the end of that cave. On the other side of the caves were often completely enclosed lagoons - it was so amazing to be inside of them, usually the only people there, with no sounds of the outside world.




The last day we went for one last kayak to another lagoon, and then cruised slowly back to the harbor. Feeling completely satisfied with our Ha Long experience, we headed back to Hanoi for one last night before Cindy headed back to Bangkok, and I went on to Laos. We had one of the best meals that night at this Hanoi institution called Cha Ca La Vong. This place only serves one meal and has been doing it for almost 100 years. It's fish fried in oil at your table with basil, scallions, chilies and peanuts. Served over noodles with a stinky fish sauce. The whole thing together is unbelievably tasty! (I had to go back for seconds the next day for lunch before I flew out.) Cindy and I said good bye, sad to see her go after so many adventures of the past few weeks!