After booking our accommodation in Hue for a cruise around Halong Bay – 1 of the 7 natural wonders of the world, we waited patiently in our hotel lobby for the bus. It didn’t come. Thankfully the hotel owner spoke perfect English and he sorted it all out for us.
So, Halong Bay… If you haven’t heard of it or haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. The place is amazing both naturally in how it looks and what the local people do there. It’s essentially huge rock formations that stick out of the water everywhere, all of varying size.
Overtime, they have eroded and now have their own characteristics to them. Whether that be a beach, cave, a gap to canoe through or similar. Almost all have small trees and shrubs growing straight off the rock.
We booked about the last 2 night package available as it’s the busiest time for the region due to the celebrations on May 1st. Our bus picked us up, without the ability for us to take our luggage due to no space, so a quick pack of an overnight bag and we were away, hoping our luggage will be at the hotel when we’re back.
Halong Bay is about a 3.5hr drive from Hanoi. From there, you board a small boat which takes you to the big boat, an imitation Chinese Junk that’s anchored in the bay.
Due to our last minute booking, we could only purchase the supreme accommodation – what a shame! After we got settled, we had a delicious lunch as we started to cruise the bay and explore in and around the hundreds of rock formations.
Our first adventure was to check out some relatively recently discovered caves, well around 1992. Off the boat we got, hike up a large number of steps on this island and we enter the cave. We were expecting to crawl around a bit – we were wrong. Very wrong. The cave is simply enormous. Think basketball stadium size but higher in some parts. They’ve lit it up in various colours to show off the stalagmites and stalactites and after 20mins of exploring, we exited via another opening, amazed at what we’d seen.
We went down along and then up another path to the opening of another cave. This was more traditional in that it had a huge mouth and had a large concave back to it. This one is very visible from the water and has been used for a long time for celebrations etc.
From there, back on the small boat and off to a full-time floating village complete with general store, a dozen houses or so and a school! We proceeded to kayak around the area, exploring the community and going under the huge rock formations to find an oasis – a bay within a bay. Was great fun & astounding at how some people are able to live… Apparently some of the people never put foot on land in their lifetime!
There are a number of floating villages around Halong Bay of varying sizes. An incredible way to live and I guess kind of sadly, they’re becoming more reliant on tourism to survive.
Our final adventure for the day was back on the Junk… Swimming. And jumping. This was bloody good fun. The junk has 3 levels, bottom floor, main floor including the premium accommodation plus eating area and then a rooftop area. This is where some of us jumped from into the salty green water below. We estimated the drop was about 9m and felt it. Me (Glen) was the only one stupid (def. not brave) enough to go from the top whilst the others had a go from the bottom level. Much fun was had!
The final “entertainment” for the day was karaoke after dinner. Who knew Asians were so into it? 😉 the crew were into it in a massive way, mainly singing Vietnamese songs with a few western ones thrown in for good measure. It was hard to get them off it!
The girls did a good job of representing Australia and belted out quite a few numbers. The boys tried a Dire Straights song but the words were totally wrong, not just slow, so the system matched our voices.
We slept in our cabins and was a pretty good experience. The junks all moor together since the accident and the Government took around 50 Junks off the water due to poor safety. Let’s just say they must have been bad. All in all, I counted around 60 junks that anchored around us for the night. How did the Government choose where boats would stop for the evening? This part of the bay is shallow, so if the boats do sink, they will still be above water! Now that’s safety for ya!
That’s just day 1! Day 2 & 3 to come soon.