3 Day Tour of Halong Bay, Vietnam

From Hanoi, we had an early morning start to catch the bus for our 3 day tour of Halong Bay. I am usually never much of a fan of organized tours in any country but sometimes it works out to be cheaper to join one since you split the cost with so many other people and its also nice sometimes when you don’t have to research and organize everything yourself in terms of how to get there, where to go, where to eat, etc.

About to board the boat

The tour we booked was a 2 night 3 day tour of Halong Bay and after having spoken with four different travel agencies in Hanoi, we found one that seemed trustworthy and a good deal for the money spent. The one we found only cost us $60 and included transportation to Halong Bay and back, all meals, one night on the boat, one night in a nice hotel and all activities during the tour. When we eventually arrived that morning by mini-bus into Halong Bay, we boarded our boat and set sail to our first stop, Sung Sot Cave. When we made the small hike up the mountain to get to the entrance of this cave, I expected the experience to be very similar to that which I had in Laos in the couple of caves I’d been to there. However, when I entered this cave, it was definitely like nothing else I’d ever seen.

The inside of Sung Sot Cave

At first glance, you’d of thought it was a Hollywood movie set the way the Vietnamese had used the various lighting to illuminate every inch of the cave. And at first, it was a very unnatural sight to see but after a while, it was kind of nice to visit a cave that was lit up like this because it allowed you to appreciate every bit of detail from the ground to the ceiling and it helped you get a different perspective than you would if you merely had a couple of flashlights. We spent about thirty minutes walking through the cave and later, hiked back down to board our boat.

Definitely an overcast day!

The boats in the harbor outside of Sung Sot Cave

From there, we took a slow cruise through Ha Long Bay, passing many small islands and tour boats along the way. Unfortunately, it was extremely foggy the day we spent on the boat but it was still nice cruising among the hundreds of islands. After eating lunch on the boat, our next stop was a small floating village on our way out to Cat Ba Island.

An entire fishing village lives on the water here in this bay…

The small house in the middle is actually the school house for the children

Kayaking for a bit in Ha Long Bay

It was amazing to see how these people lived and survived out on the water. They even had a floating school house for the children. Part of our tour included kayaking throughout this floating village as well as around the mountain caves nearby which we could kayak through. We spent about an hour here among the people before heading further on towards Cat Ba Island.

No matter where you are in Southeast Asia, you can always find a lady selling fruit…even out in the open waters of Ha Long Bay. Sure, I’ll take a banana.

The rock formation in the distance of Halong Bay pictured above is the same as what is printed on their 200,000 bill

By dinner time, we had arrived into the bay near Cat Ba Island after spending most of the afternoon on top of the boat. After eating together, one of our tour guides was trying to get all of us involved in some karaoke. I’m sure this would be fine for most of us ‘westerners’ but the fact was that most (if not all) of the music on board was Vietnamese. For our guide however, he probably wouldn’t have cared.  After he tried to have us sing first, we instead asked him if he wanted to sing and it seemed he was just waiting for us to ask as there wasn’t much convincing needed. He obviously wanted to flex the golden pipes for us but mysteriously he disappeared from the table shortly after. About ten minutes later, he showed up donning this outfit:

The official Karaoke outfit… Time to flex the golden pipes!

And if you think I’m going to leave you with just this one picture, think again. He started in on some of the funniest karaoke I’d ever heard and I later found out it was a very traditional song to sing in Vietnam. I took some video highlights and although this song carried on for what seemed to be ten minutes, below are two half minute video segments, with the first being his lead in.

http://youtu.be/eNoXQbArV7I

OK, the second video is actually a bit longer than a half minute so I don’t expect you to endure the entire length of the clip! You’ll see what I mean…

http://youtu.be/UqyDz5TFN0E

And if that weren’t enough to conclude tonight’s festivities, he had us all gather around for some crazy Vietnamese song and dance. Yes, it was awkward but it extremely funny as well and something I won’t soon forget years later. Unfortunately, he had left the following morning and we had a new guide (not quite as fun and exciting) that would be taking half of our group to the large Cat Ba Island as the other half in our group had only booked one night for their tour.

This was where we anchored that night in the middle of the bay. Definitely a dark, gloomy night!

That morning, after leaving the boat, we took a bus into Cat Ba Island. It is actually the largest island  and a common stop for a 3 day tour in Halong Bay Half of it is comprised of a national park. After driving for about thirty minutes, they dropped us off midway into the island to hike to one of the island’s peaks that took about two hours to hike up and back. The hike itself was grueling. It was very muddy in the flat areas and very slick on the rocks you had to climb on the ascent to the top. A lot of people, including myself were hiking in flip flops and a few people also took some nasty spills in the mud on the way up. And because it was foggy and rainy that day, when we finally made it to the top, visibility was so poor that it didn’t really seem to make the hike worth it since there was a lot of rock climbing involved as the trail itself was fairly poor. I guess it was good exercise anyway….

This was definitely not the view we were hoping for when we reached the top! Even on a clear day, I don’t think it would have been too spectacular after almost an hour of hiking and climbing.

When we all got back down the mountain and after washing our shoes for twenty minutes, we hopped back into the bus and headed into the small town of Cat Ba that sits right on the water.

Cat Ba Island

The fishing boats of Cat Ba Island

It was a really nice town to spend some time in and as a foreigner, if you just walk a bit out off the main street, people are very friendly and curious about you as they seemed to rarely see foreigners. We spent some time over by the fishing boats and also in the local market. We even spent some time with this lady pictured below.

It started with just grabbing a beer and when she asked us to sit down, it turned into an hour and half session of discussion although she knew absolutely no English and we knew absolutely no Vietnamese

It was fun and I think she appreciated the company (and our business). Since the beer she had was warm, she insisted we drink from a glass with ice cubes in it which you can see in the picture. Normally this would definitely be a no no to put ice into your beer but hey, I’m in a small fishing village in Vietnam and sometimes you just have to make exceptions for special circumstances!

It was a sea of red Vietnamese flags in the bay

Local fisherman in Cat Ba Island

Teaching the local fisherman the thumb’s up! Most of them got it…

Later that night we headed out to see the town and found a random area along the water where the locals were hanging out drinking and eating at small tables with some extremely small chairs. While we were here, we noticed that sunflower seeds are a big hit here but unlike back home where the seeds are flavored, they sell them plain and unsalted. OK, so we grabbed a bag and started eating them but again, unlike home, the locals were extremely confused when I took a large handful and threw them all into my mouth at one time. You should have seen the lady’s face as she thought I was going to either choke on the sunflower seeds or chew up the shells whole. It was fun to show them how we eat them down south! She was yelling at all her Vietnamese friends to come over to check things out and suddenly I was surrounded by locals…

Cat Ba at night along the water’s edge

The following morning we were headed back to Halong City where we would then have to catch another mini-bus back to Hanoi. However, this time, when we had to get back on the boat, they first had us board a smaller ‘open air’ boat that would take us to the larger one in the bay. And of course, not only was it foggy again this morning but there was a storm brewing in the mountains beyond. After fifteen minutes of standing on the pier, the wind picked up and looking to my left, I was left with this image…

It was looking a bit ominous considering it was around 11AM!

Well, just as soon as I noticed these clouds moving in, the small boat we were to board finally docked. We had to wait for the others to get off the boat before we could board but it was too late. The sky opened up and we were all quickly drenched within about twenty seconds. There was a roof over this small boat but it was open on all sides and the winds were throwing in the rain sideways. Of course we didn’t have any rain jackets on but the only thing I really cared about was my computer and camera getting drenched in my bag. Below is a link to a short video of the crazy time we had in this storm with this extremely small boat we were on. And sorry for the shaky video but we were getting tossed around quite a bit!

http://youtu.be/W4BDzNNW7bI

It was a fifteen minute ride in this storm before we finally docked up next to the larger boat that we took back to Halong City. Even though the weather didn’t cooperate with us much during this tour, it was still a lot of fun and definitely worth the money. We concluded our 3 day tour of Halong Bay that evening and were headed straight for the train station as our next stop was Sapa, Vietnam.

Getting ready to dock…