Halong Bay

I’d seen so many photos of the Bay over the years and it always looked simply stunning. Our 5 hour trip out in a Chinese style junk boat did not disappoint in the slightest. The weather was perhaps not amazing as it would have been lovely to have had a bright blue sky but I thanked my lucky stars that it was not actually raining. We could have had it way worse.

The bay is formed of a lot of limestone structures or mini islands I guess with trees and so on on the top but whilst cruising along I was confused that there did not seem to be as many birds as I had anticipated seeing and hearing. Not that I was here as a twitcher – they just were noticeably absent. The word Halong translates as ‘where the dragon descends to the sea’ and legend has is that this area was created by a giant dragon charged towards the coast with his tail gouging out the valleys and so on that now exist.

It was named a World Heritage site in 1994 with all of the mini islands, grottos or caves and beaches and is deemed to be the main tourist spot of Northern Vietnam. There are a number of grottos that are in the trusty Lonely Planet but I’m not sure that the one that we actually visited is in there.

It certainly puts the magic of Wookey Hole to shame I have to say. The natural formations inside the cave were simply unreal. The stalactites and stalagmites almost didn’t look natural in places and there were parts that looked like cauliflowers as well as draped blankets. Extraordinary sights to put it mildly.

We all talked about the idea of waking up on a boat out here on the ocean & what an amazing place it would be to have a night, of course we are restricted on this tour owing to the amount to do in such a short amount of time. I’m not sure that the comfort of the bed on the boat would really be all that appealing though thinking about it. And I’m also not entirely sure that I could cope with the seafood that would be breakfast!!

We ate off linen table cloths and the food seemed to just keep coming thankfully the peppers and the sea food/ shell fish allergies has been accommodated and we had been on the beers since 930 – oops – but we were on the boat pretty early in the morning and when in Rome right?!!

Next stop for us was back to Hanoi to recuperate (and as it worked out – have more beers) before boarding the overnight train to Hue.