Halong Bay is a UNESCO world heritage site in Vietnam's northeast. It includes 1600 islands and islets, making it a sea maze of limestone pillars (called Karst). Thailand also has similar karst areas, but because of monsoon and our visa timeline, we hadn't gotten a chance to see them. Halong Bay is supposed to be one of the most beautiful places to visit in Vietnam.
We priced out doing it on our own versus going with the many popular two day, one night boat tours, and decided to go ahead and just book a tour. We booked with Golden Bay Cruises. There are many tours you can take, and we had been told you get what you pay for. We paid for the higher-end budget cruise. I know we get what we pay for but I thought a higher-end budget cruise would at least pick us up in a slightly more comfortable shuttle for our 5 hour drive up to Halong Bay.
We were 22 squished foreigners on the shuttle. No sooner did we get on the shuttle bus than I heard this American on the phone, saying "No, I just left it in the lobby while we went to breakfast and when I came back, it was gone. Please find whatever shuttle picked it up and took it to Halong Bay. I will give $50 to the person that finds my bag." He continues on and on and on for at least an hour into the squished up, cramped journey. After an hour, we met our Vietnamese tour guide who apologized for picking us up late. No apology from my countryman to the bus for making us late, since it was because of his bag that we all got late! We then had to do our introductions. We were all way too tired at 9:30 a.m. and too uncomfortable to really be that social and outgoing.
Finally, we made it to this crazy busy port filled with tourists. We board a small skip to take us towards our boat. It starts taking us to the one marked Golden Bay, until, suddenly, it turned. Wait! That's not Golden Bay. That's Halong Dragon Cruises. Yup. That's right. All of us booked with Golden Bay and got onboard Halong Dragon Cruises. Good thing it turned out alright.
We immediately segregated into our natural groups. We ended up with the slightly older Britishers & Kiwis that were the life of the party (in our heads). Then there were the college students, the Austrian game-playing loners, and the annoying Americans. The only time things went against the natural order was meal time, when all of the vegetarians had to sit segregated from the rest of us. Two Britishers from 'our group' ended up at that table (and one of them had faked being vegetarian just cause she was a bit afraid of getting sick from eating meat on the boat) and they got stuck with the annoying Americans. The annoying Americans ate nothing but fruit or something, so they told us. I'm so ashamed of my people!
The food was really good. It just kept coming and coming. Taro french fries, deep fried yummy Vietnamese chicken bites, spring rolls, tofu, fresh fish, fresh fruit, and more. Then came the keg of beer that we drank through in our attempt to keep up with the party boat. Seriously, there was a party cruise that was being sold for $100 per person. However, beer costs $0.30 here. How many beers would you have to drink to make up that cost difference? 300 is the amount we calculated. Not worth it.
We spent our keg of beer telling riddles and tongue twisters. We learned that East Londoners can't say the 'Betty Botter had some butter' tongue twister, as they can't pronounce their 't's properly.
The scenery really was beautiful. The boat slowly made it's way towards Cat Ba Island. As it carved it's path through the mist and the cloud, the karst scenery emerged like ghosts. We passed tons of small local fishing vessels and floating villages. It was absolutely beautiful.
The water was not! This area has had way too many tourists, in my opinion. There are at least 10 boats docked near Cat Ba island. That doesn't include the 6+ ferries per day, plus all of the other day trip cruises. We had a chance to get into the water and to go swimming. The water felt great. Nice and warm, but it was really mucky. We all just figured that it was just dirty water like you have in a lake. Pallavi had climbed out of the water to get her water camera, and when she came back in, she broke the news to us: there was black something all over my body when I got out of the water. That's right. Some sort of oil or dirt or whatever had covered our entire bodies. It was absolutely disgusting!
Once we finally cleaned up, disinfected our entire selves, we learned how to make spring rolls and came back in an even more crowded and cramped shuttle bus. We barely made it back to Hanoi in time for us to catch our overnight sleeper to Hue (pronounced hu-whey), but we finally made it!
I swear we must have fallen asleep as soon as the bus started moving. We are ready to be done with northern Vietnam. Next stop: Hue.
We priced out doing it on our own versus going with the many popular two day, one night boat tours, and decided to go ahead and just book a tour. We booked with Golden Bay Cruises. There are many tours you can take, and we had been told you get what you pay for. We paid for the higher-end budget cruise. I know we get what we pay for but I thought a higher-end budget cruise would at least pick us up in a slightly more comfortable shuttle for our 5 hour drive up to Halong Bay.
We were 22 squished foreigners on the shuttle. No sooner did we get on the shuttle bus than I heard this American on the phone, saying "No, I just left it in the lobby while we went to breakfast and when I came back, it was gone. Please find whatever shuttle picked it up and took it to Halong Bay. I will give $50 to the person that finds my bag." He continues on and on and on for at least an hour into the squished up, cramped journey. After an hour, we met our Vietnamese tour guide who apologized for picking us up late. No apology from my countryman to the bus for making us late, since it was because of his bag that we all got late! We then had to do our introductions. We were all way too tired at 9:30 a.m. and too uncomfortable to really be that social and outgoing.
Finally, we made it to this crazy busy port filled with tourists. We board a small skip to take us towards our boat. It starts taking us to the one marked Golden Bay, until, suddenly, it turned. Wait! That's not Golden Bay. That's Halong Dragon Cruises. Yup. That's right. All of us booked with Golden Bay and got onboard Halong Dragon Cruises. Good thing it turned out alright.
We immediately segregated into our natural groups. We ended up with the slightly older Britishers & Kiwis that were the life of the party (in our heads). Then there were the college students, the Austrian game-playing loners, and the annoying Americans. The only time things went against the natural order was meal time, when all of the vegetarians had to sit segregated from the rest of us. Two Britishers from 'our group' ended up at that table (and one of them had faked being vegetarian just cause she was a bit afraid of getting sick from eating meat on the boat) and they got stuck with the annoying Americans. The annoying Americans ate nothing but fruit or something, so they told us. I'm so ashamed of my people!
The food was really good. It just kept coming and coming. Taro french fries, deep fried yummy Vietnamese chicken bites, spring rolls, tofu, fresh fish, fresh fruit, and more. Then came the keg of beer that we drank through in our attempt to keep up with the party boat. Seriously, there was a party cruise that was being sold for $100 per person. However, beer costs $0.30 here. How many beers would you have to drink to make up that cost difference? 300 is the amount we calculated. Not worth it.
We spent our keg of beer telling riddles and tongue twisters. We learned that East Londoners can't say the 'Betty Botter had some butter' tongue twister, as they can't pronounce their 't's properly.
The scenery really was beautiful. The boat slowly made it's way towards Cat Ba Island. As it carved it's path through the mist and the cloud, the karst scenery emerged like ghosts. We passed tons of small local fishing vessels and floating villages. It was absolutely beautiful.
The water was not! This area has had way too many tourists, in my opinion. There are at least 10 boats docked near Cat Ba island. That doesn't include the 6+ ferries per day, plus all of the other day trip cruises. We had a chance to get into the water and to go swimming. The water felt great. Nice and warm, but it was really mucky. We all just figured that it was just dirty water like you have in a lake. Pallavi had climbed out of the water to get her water camera, and when she came back in, she broke the news to us: there was black something all over my body when I got out of the water. That's right. Some sort of oil or dirt or whatever had covered our entire bodies. It was absolutely disgusting!
Once we finally cleaned up, disinfected our entire selves, we learned how to make spring rolls and came back in an even more crowded and cramped shuttle bus. We barely made it back to Hanoi in time for us to catch our overnight sleeper to Hue (pronounced hu-whey), but we finally made it!
I swear we must have fallen asleep as soon as the bus started moving. We are ready to be done with northern Vietnam. Next stop: Hue.
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