Hạ Long Bay

Vietnam's famous Halong Bay is only a little over 100 km from Hanoi, but the poor roads in the region make for a 3 1/2 hour drive by bus from the city. That's fine though, because you don't want to miss the scenery outside your window that doesn't seem to have changed in hundreds of years.

a rice farmer - this is exactly how I imagined Vietnam

I arranged a day trip to Halong Bay through my hotel. Everything I had read suggested that in this case a tour was really the only practical way to go. The hotel took care of everything. I was picked up at 8:00 in the morning, and I was in Halong City by noon.

Halong Bay tourist dock

If you've ever seen the Top Gear Vietnam Special, the episode ends with the guys finishing their road trip in Halong Bay where they convert their motorbikes into very inefficient boats. Halong Bay is one of Vietnam's most famous sites and is even featured on the reverse of the D200,000 note. 

Known as the "Bay of the Descending Dragon" in Vietnamese, the legend says that Halong Bay was formed when a great dragon crashed into a mountain upon descending from heaven. The impact formed nearly three thousand limestone karst islands in the bay.

It was cold and windy at Halong

I was on a small group tour that included me and one other American guy. There were a few Chinese tourists, a Hungarian couple, a Japanese lady, and some Australian women from Brisbane. We were a seriously eclectic group. We were served a seafood lunch while cruising around the bay. It was cold, windy, and a little foggy, but at least it had stopped raining for the first day since I landed in Vietnam.

cruising around the islands

Surprisingly, despite it being a major tourist attraction, people still live fairly traditional lives in Halong Bay. There is a floating fishing village where the people literally live the majority of their lives on the water, away from the mainland in these little floating houses. The yellow building with the orange roof in the photo below is the floating school. Students kayak in every morning from their houseboats. Tho, our guide, told us that most students only attend primary school for a few years and then go on to become fishermen unless their parents can afford to send them to school on the mainland.

the Halong Bay floating village - the yellow building is the school

I got the chance to kayak around myself, and we visited the village where a lady tried to sell me some bananas from her boat, but I only have two hands and I needed them to paddle! We decided to explore some nearby caves. Although the water near the caves was too shallow to go in, it was still an awesome sight. I didn't have my camera with me because I didn't want it to get wet, but our guide took some pictures for me.

kayaking around the village

A few of the karst formations are hollow, but the most famous one has an impressive cave that's big enough to walk around. You enter the cave from a dock on one side of the island, and walk through to the other side where your boat picks you up. 

inside the caves

Halong Bay was an awesome experience, and it's definitely not something to miss in Vietnam. If I had had more time (and the money) I could have done an overnight cruise on a junk boat. Maybe I'll save that for next time! The ride back to Hanoi took longer in the dark, but I was back at my hotel by half-past nine, just in time for a hot bowl of pho ga soup.

Halong Bay