Ha Long Bay

From Hue we took an overnight bus to Hanoi and got started right away on our only mission for this 1-night stay in Hanoi – booking a trip to Ha Long Bay (also spelled Halong Bay). You've heard of Ha Long Bay, right? I'm sure you've seen pictures of it, even if you might not know the name. I'm told parts of James Bond Tomorrow Never Dies were famously filmed there. It is truly spectacular and easily makes my list Adam’s 7 Natural Wonders of the World, if that means anything to anybody. Getting there wasn't so easy. I may have mentioned already that in Vietnam, like many poorer countries, it’s often nearly impossible to find a budget travel company I would describe as “reputable.” Most tourism-based companies, from hotels to bus companies, will take any booking they can get and if they end up over-sold, they’ll just move you to another company. Same same but different. Ha Long Bay is notorious from this, with hundreds of negative reviews online of people being “upgraded” to a different boat than they booked. First, we figured our hotel travel desk would be best suited to guarantee us a good trip, since their reputation is at stake as well. So, our hotel tried to sell us on a couple different boats that we thought looked nice, but when I looked online, prices were surprisingly cheaper. Being the good people that we are, we went back to the hotel to see if they can match the price and thus get the commission for themselves instead of some overseas website. I honestly think the guy thought he was helping us out, but when he called the cruise boat operator to see if they could lower the price, they told him the online price was a “mistake” and proceeded to go online and raise the price! Our guy seemed pleased with himself that the online price was now “fixed” and only about $50 more than we would have paid had we just booked it ourselves. Frustrated by that experience, we did hour after hour of exhausting research (there are hundreds of boats cruising around Ha Long Bay) and eventually booked a three day/two night trip on the Royal Palace Cruise boat. They had great reviews online, plus that just sounds fancy.

Not our boat, but similar

I guess you can call it paranoia, but we never were convinced that we were actually going to end up on Royal Palace. It didn’t help much that the bus we were put on the next morning was run by some operator we had never heard of, Opentours Vietnam. Our tour guide would never actually say the name of the boat we were going on, and just kept saying “our boat.” Then we see a bus roll past us with “Royal Palace Cruise” plastered on the side. This is not good. At this point I’m about 95% convinced that we were going to get the “upgrade” treatment. I asked our guide and she said we were going on Royal Palace, but she hesitated. Why did you hesitate? It wasn’t until we actually set foot on Royal Palace that we were finally put at ease. After five hours of stressful anticipation, we could finally relax.

Our room

Royal Palace was as described – a very nice boat with really good food, and lots of it. I guess this isn't the time or place for me to air my little grievances on our experience on the boat, plus I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. We had a good time. Ha Long Bay is stunningly beautiful. I guess my biggest problem was that the trip “itinerary” seemed to be more focused on the food and doing tourist stuff like kayaking around a bay and visiting a pearl farm than it was on the incredible scenery. It seemed like I was the only one on the boat to notice, however, so I guess they are just giving the people what they want.

"you have 40 minutes to kayak"

A floating "village" - in reality they moved most of these water-dwelling people to the mainland already

Steph relaxing while I did all the paddling

Visiting the pearl farm

It actually was kinda interesting - this guy impregnates the oysters with a small ball, then they stick it back in the water for a few years and hope a pearl has formed around the ball

99% of the boats on Ha Long Bay run the same basic itinerary. Sail out from the harbor, have lunch, do some kayaking around a floating “village,” swim for 15 minutes, happy hour on the boat, dinner, sleep, early morning tai chi, breakfast, go to a cave, do a cooking class and have lunch while sailing back to the harbor. That’s the two-day/one-night itinerary that most people seemed to be doing. Since we had opted for 3d/2n, after the cave visit we hopped on a smaller boat for our second day while the big boat took everyone else back to the harbor. This actually worked out well for us, since we were only 2 of 4 people on the smaller boat and we actually got to cruise deeper into the bay and closer to all the amazing limestone cliffs. Our guide for the day, “Peter Pan,” took us cycling to a small village on Cat Ba Island, the largest island in Ha Long and mostly covered by a national park. From the village we took a short hike through the jungle to look for langurs (a type of monkey). Didn’t see any, but could hear their booming calls across the valley, which was cool. Saw some big spiders. Another cave.

I jumped in for about 2 minutes

Heading to the cave

It's called Surprising Cave or Amazing Cave. I suggest "Crowded Cave"

Enjoying our nearly private tender

After our cycling trip we were dropped off at a little beach resort for a couple hours to have free time. We mostly just sat under an umberella and relaxed, getting into the water briefly to cool off. I'm not really sure how dirty the water in Ha Long Bay is, but it just seems dirty to me. The bits of plastic and trash that you commonly see floating around actually don’t really turn me off so much. It’s more the fisherman who live on floating houses all around the bay. I know where there waste goes. Plus the water is kind of a murky greenish color that just doesn't scream “jump in me!”

We joined up with the big boat just before dinner our second night. The rest of the cruise went smoothly enough. Steph had requested only vegetarian food and they really took good care of her, bringing out plate after plate of “vegetarian food." They would serve us an incredible amount of food, then really kinda skimp out on dessert. The Vietnamese aren't as into sweets as they are in Thailand. It’s a real tragedy for us.

Some of the fancy food we were served

Even the french fries had a beautiful bird carved out of a vegetable

Overall we had a great cruise on Ha Long Bay. Weather was great, food was great. I really shouldn't complain at all, but a few issues we had just really seem to gnaw at me. I'm not going to go into it further. Actually it was Steph and my 8^th wedding anniversary while we were on the boat. We made it, baby! Happy Anniversary Steph!