Day 18

Halong Bay

May 15 in Vietnam ⋅ 🌧 25 °C

Journey to Halong Bay started with a long tedious sleeper bus trip from SaPa got into Hanoi around 6.30pm & the bus stop was a little further away that we thought but not quite far enough for a taxi. Dodgey entrance to a really cool AirB&B. Had a nice easy meal & headed back for some beers on the balcony.
Another bus trip this time organised by cruise company & another couple of hours to get to Halong Bay & the
Hera Classic Boutique Boat for
2 nights. Places visited:
• Surprising Cave - Hang Sung Sot
• Titop Is - so bad we asked to leave after about 20 mins much to the surprise of the tour captain! It was no WA beach!
• Infrequently visited cave - Trai Cave great cave with very little added infrastructure although there was a seat & a partial path but lots of crouching down & potential head hitting - great cave!
• Deep ocean swim at Lan Ha Bay - brilliant! Got to jump off the top of boat but not as elegantly as Darcy & the professional cliff diver! Craig of course started it all & didn’t do too bad either!
• Kayaking at Dark & Bright - we were a small group of about 20 people from different cruise boats out together on a day boat which was great because everything we did was done in our own in a small group. This meant a very small group kayaked to a remote beach after walking through a cave.
• Pearl farm production/farm - this was very interesting as we’d never seen how pearl culturing happens and the history dating back to Mr Mikimoto in Japan in 1893.
• Kayaking at Luon Cave - well this was awful! So many people all trying to kayak, most having no idea what they were doing or how to control the kayak whilst navigating around the big row boats. Craig & I lasted about 5 minutes then got out! Darcy was partnered with a young English girl & ended up in a water fight with her mates so he had fun.
What all this taught me was you must do a 2 night cruise at Halong Bay because the best fun/activities happened around being on the longer option.
We then caught a bus to Ninh Binh. Well done to Darcy for negotiating the bus system!!Read more