Trip to Halong Bay

It was a 3 and a half hour trip in a mini bus (14 people in the group) to Halong Bay. The Bay is a World Heritage site and on of Vietnam’s most popular tourist destinations. Ha Long Bay, in the Gulf of Tonkin, includes some 1,600 islands and islets, forming a spectacular seascape of limestone pillars.

Upon arrival at the harbor our tour guide collected our tickets and we walked through crowds of people along the wharf where there were hundreds of Colorful Vietnamese Junks moored, some nicer than others...hoping our boat isn't a piece of "junk" (pardon the pun).

We had to walk along the edge of another boat to get to ours (Marc really concentrating not to bail into the water with our bag on his one shoulder) - As demonstrated by the guy in the picture

The inside of our junk where we had a lovely meals laid out (lunch, dinner, breakfast).

Our 10 m2 cabin with AC (thankfully) and a bathroom with a shower (well, if you can call it that)...more like a hand sprayer next to the toilet. All good though, it's part of the experience.

The deck of the junk. We couldn’t really spend much time up there during the day...to damn HOT!!!!

Luckily we didn't have to sit in the boat the whole day. In the afternoon on Saturday, we visited a cave and took a little climb up to a point with a spectacular view of the bay.

Inside the Sung Sot Cave (Amazing cave), which was truly amazing. Neither of us has ever seen anything like it before. It was spectacular. It almost looked fake to me, as it was so large. We thought they could probably shoot a movie, Star wars or something like that in there.

After our cave visits we had a swim off the boat and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.

We dosed dozed off on a lounger on the deck and woke up to a beautiful sunset.
We woke up early Sunday morning and admired the view from the deck.

After breakfast we kayaked around the bay, WOW!!!! We really enjoyed the kayaking bit. I don't think I did to badly for my fist time.

After the boat trip we went for lunch at a very nice lodge with ones again, an amazing view of the bay and Halong City in the background.

Instead of going back to Hanoi with the group we took a private car to Hai Phong to catch our flight back to Ho Chi Minh. Which we thought was a good idea as it was only about 90min drive and we couldn't take the chance of missing our flight had we flown from Hanoi. Anyway, when we got to the airport, if you can believe this...we were the only people there. The airport only opens at 16H00 and our flight was at 18H25. Needless to say, Marc and I sat in very uncomfortable chairs in which felt like a sauna for almost two hours before they turned on the air conditioners.