Halong Bay

On Saturday, August 7, I took a 1-day trip to Halong Bay. I've been hearing all about Halong Bay since I came to Hanoi. Everyone told me how beautiful it is. It did not disappoint me. The preferred way would have been to do a two-day trip, spending the night on a boat.





Almost every hotel and travel agency in Hanoi offers tours to this place. It's about a 3 1/2 hour bus ride from Hanoi to Halong Bay. When we got there around noon, the place was packed with tourists. Everyone was waiting to get on the boats and cruise out to the bay.

I don't know how to describe the place other than if you have been to Monument Valley in Arizona, you see the rocks or mountains really, coming out of the desert. Here you see these mountains coming out of the water. I guess they were formed through some geological event that caused those limestone karsts. You can read more about it in wikipedia.

My one-day tour costs about US$35. I think the 2-day tours costs around US$70 to more, depending on how nice a boat you sleep on. I will try to do an overnight trip later to experience what it's like to sleep on one of those boats.

We also visited a cave in the area. It was nicely done, like any caves in the US.


I also had a chance to do some kayaking in the bay.

There are also fish farms in the bay. I don't know what kind of fish they raise but they seem pretty big. They also raise shrimps and some shell fish as well.

One of the pictures here show a boat selling fruits to vegetables. There were quite a few of those around.

It was a long ride back to Hanoi. We got back around 8:30 pm and had dinner at a restaurant called Little Hanoi. One of the people I had dinner with is a remarkable woman called Olga. Olga is from Sasketchawan, Canada. She's probably in her 60s' and travelling pretty much alone. She is with a group of 3 but on this trip she was by herself.

I said Olga is remarkable because most Americans or Canadians her age would not want to go to a place like Vietnam. They'd prefer to go to some place cozy like Europe. Vietnam is not an easy place to travel because of the language, culture, chaos, traffic, everything you can name to make an American tourist uneasy. Olga just took it in stride and enjoyed everything with a great spirit.

We had an excellent inexpensive dinner at Little Hanoi in the Old Quarter. I think this restaurant is popular with tourists because it was written in the Lonely Planet book on Vietnam.
By the way, I bought a Vietnamese Phrasebook at one of the rest stops. It costs 50,000 dongs, or about $2.50. I've been looking for this book. So now I can practice my Vietnamese on the street.