Halong Bay & Hanoi

The day after arriving in Vietnam we took a trip to Halong Bay – a bay full of tall limestone rocks (karsts) jutting out of the sea. We were surprised when we arrived at the tour office that they had us booked in for the following day and we were further surprised when we realised that the tour they had us on wasn’t actually the one we booked but – with our new laissez faire traveller attitudes – we just grabbed the experience with two (very hot and sweaty) hands and went with it.

Halong Bay was beautiful and we seem to be in Vietnam out of the main tourist season (can thoroughly recommend it if you can handle 75% humidity and 38C as well as we can... ;-S ) so it was also blissfully quiet. We’d heard stories of armies of tourist boats thronging the waters but we only saw a couple of other boats the whole time we were there.

The trip we ended up on was 3 days – the first on a junk (boat) cruising the waters of the bay, interspersed with LOTS of eating (the food was beautiful and there never seemed to be less than about 6 courses - even at lunch!), some kayaking through caves and some sundowner beers on deck. We then spent that night and the next day in  beach huts on our own little island.

The 2^nd day was very chilled – some lazing on the beach, an assault course of rocks and jellyfish to try and get into the sea for a swim (we only attempted this once and still have the scars!) and then a kayak to the other side of the island to ‘Sunset Beach’ to – you guessed it – see the sunset (also with sundowners obviously).

The 3^rd day was more of the same and then another boat trip back to the mainland. Strangely, everyone else on the boat with us on the first day seemed to have managed to sign up for all sorts of activities on the 2^nd and 3^rd days – hiking up a peak for a view of the bay, cycling across Cat Ba island etc. While we obviously pretended to be very distressed about missing out on fitness activities (gotta maintain our action images), we were secretly very pleased cos we got to sit about and drink beer and didn’t get dirty and sweaty. Hehehehe. It was also nice to get through a good portion of Anna Karenina – it’s only my 2^nd full book on this whole trip and I’m still only 2/3 of the way through.

The evening we got back to Hanoi we hit the night market which was really rather fun. I bought a new yellow dress and Natalie and I both bought fans to attempt to fend off the heat. HOT. M