It doesn't matter Halong it takes to get here

I'm going to be bold and say that when we get back to London and look back, Halong Bay will be one of the highlights of our trip. I'm also confident that none of the photos we took will do it justice (if they did I'd stop writing now - I'm sure you can easily google up some better ones taken in better weather, which would also not suffice). If I predict that my words won't either, I'll probably be 3 for 3. But let's give it a quick try.

On the coast a 4-hour drive from Hanoi is a huge bay full of spectacular karst landscape - millennia of nature's hard work sculpting limestone mountains, partially captured by the sea at the end of the last ice age*, and decorated with flora that can eke out a living in the tiniest of cracks and on the sheerest of surfaces.
People live here, in floating villages sheltered by the rocks. There are fish - flying and otherwise - hawks, coral, anemones, caves, mountains and beaches. And many dozens, if not hundreds, of boats carrying lucky tourists.
* The way the weather's going this may be out of date in a few years' time.

After much deliberation on our first day in Hanoi, we booked two nights on a junk, as the larger boats are called (the bay is full of both junks and junk, unfortunately) - we knew we wanted to spend at least one night on a junk and I got the impression that 2 nights gets you further out into the bay where it's quieter. (You can also stay on Cat Ba, the largest island in the bay, which has a town and a few resort hotels - but it wasn't resort weather. We're sure we made the right choice as the extra, middle day was brilliant. This was confirmed on the way back when we met a couple who'd taken the Cat Ba option and found almost everything closed for the winter.)

After the long minibus ride, we arrived at an incredibly busy harbour and hopped onto a little launch to take us out to our junk, which we'd share with 18 other passengers - a fairly average size, I think. The weather was the only disappointment - gray without threatening to rain at any point, but I would have given a lot for 20 minutes of sunshine to take in the bay.

We then cruised out into the bay. Halong Bay is huge - about 1,900 sq km, I think - and at no point did we get a sense of being near the end of it. That's one of the things that pictures can't convey - you are surrounded by these spectacular pieces of rock at all times, as far as the eye can see. The imperfect visibility painted them in lightening shades of gray back to the horizon.

After lunch and a bit of a cruise, it was back into the little boat to reach Surprise Cave. This is an unexpectedly large cave*, or set of caves, with some impressive limestone formations.

* I think the name of the cave comes from one particular surprise. I won't spoil it, but if you think about the sort of shapes that limestone formations take and use your imagination - but not very much - you'll probably guess.

We then paired up into kayaks for half an hour. Lilly and I quickly discovered that we are very bad at kayaking and rather than cruise along enjoying the scenery we were putting all our concentration and effort into correcting our rightward veer and keeping the rest of the group in sight. We'd really enjoyed our one previous kayak, on a river in France. We probably thought, based on that, that we were competent. However, we had failed to bear in mind that in France, (a) we weren't trying to keep up with anyone, and (b) we were current-assisted.

Then back to the boat for a sunset party - sadly without the co-operation of the sun, which had not RSVPed. And, fortunately, the threatened post-dinner karaoke did not materialise.

So a good day, but the bay felt crowded - the cave was full, there were 3 other parties of kayakers out around us, and our boat was moored in the middle of junk city - not oppressively close, but sitting at dinner we were surrounded by lights on all sides, and if you forgot where you were - easily done on the still water - you would think you were surrounded by the lights of buildings.

I had also thought that for a couple of days we might get away from the traditional Vietnamese greeting: "Buy something?" But no - the bay is full of women in rowboats trying to sell you Oreos and beer! (Drinks on the junks are very expensive, but the corkage charges they threaten for your own are worse, so we didn't risk it.)

Day Two was terrific precisely because we got away from the crowds. I opened my cabin door in the morning and was facing a tall limestone cliff, its top swathed in mist, just to remind me where I was. I had the top deck to myself for 5 minutes, and although sun looked unlikely, the mist was very atmospheric.

Most of our group were heading back to the harbour, but six of us had signed up for an extra day of kayaking, and fortunately they were good company - a charming Canadian couple, Marc and Nickie (we have exchanged blog addresses, but I must say that I couldn't find a bad word to say about them even if they weren't reading this), and what must surely be the only German-Romanian couple living in China. We left our junk for the day at 8am to get on a smaller boat.

We got better kayaks today, and we figured out that less is more when it comes to paddling. I think we were still the slowest, but not by as much! 

After paddling through a floating village - complete with school (for kids up to age 7, after which they have to go and board on the mainland - but schools are free for them, to discourage the parents from putting them to work fishing), dogs and at least one cat - we passed through a series of openings and caves to get into "lakes" entirely enclosed by limestone hills.

At the final lake, we simply puttered around for 20 minutes or so, enjoying the tranquility, while our guide, young and ever-cheerful Mr Hai, poked away at the flora and fauna, occasionally coming up with unusual things to show us, when we weren't watching the schools of flying fish leap out of the water in glistening formation or trying to take underwater photos of anemones.

Just like our trip to the Rockies earlier this year, it was the sort of morning that makes the most hardened city-dweller appreciate the simple pleasures of nature. That sounds terribly pretentious, but after days of dodging traffic it really was pretty much the perfect morning.

As we turned to make our way back, we realised how lucky we had been, as a small flotilla of other kayakers followed in our oarsteps. We had had the entire trip out to ourselves and almost forgotten that the rest of the world existed.

After a leisurely lunch we did a short kayak to a little beach with a trek to the top of a hill for a pretty good view of (part of) the bay. While we relaxed on the roof of our boat en route back to the junk, I had a click through the day's photos. One of the two crew members came over and seemed very interested in them too - he was able to point out useful things (That's a temple on top of the hill. That's a phone mast next to it.) Suddenly he leapt up and dashed off downstairs. Where's he rushing off to? I wondered. And why are we heading straight for a mountain? Meanwhile, behind me, Marc had just asked Nickie, "If one of the crew is trying to sell us pearls and the other is looking at photos, who's driving the boat?" A close shave - but fortunately Lilly didn't buy any of the pearls.*
* We had sailed past a pearl farm earlier - interesting, but not much to see on the surface.

The water had been amazingly warm in the morning (bearing in mind that this is sea and it was an overcast day) and it was all I could do to stop Lilly jumping out of the canoe in the morning for a swim. Hai told her that she could go for a swim when we got back to the junk, but he thought she was joking. And when I told her that I'd only come for a swim if I could jump off the junk, she didn't realise that I meant the top deck. So both of them were in for a shock. Here's our boat:

And here's somebody who's half a second from having a sore bum and finding his goggles pushed halfway up his forehead:

(Marc in the foreground has a much better falling technique!)  I hope my fellow expert drowners are impressed that I survived the experience and even managed a quick lap of the junk to warm up. I highly recommend this, but do check carefully before jumping that there are no Oreo-selling women trying to conduct transactions with passengers on lower decks.

A great day (although you can guess who once again didn't show up at the sunset party). Even a spot of post-dinner karaoke couldn't spoil it. In fact, the waitress who led off with a Vietnamese song had a great voice, I have to give props to the first passenger brave enough to sing, Justin, who gave us a great Take It Easy (a song we hear every couple of days out here so a bit of a favourite - so good we were a bit disappointed when he didn't do a Mancunian accent when he followed up with Champagne Supernova, but since he's from New York I'll let him off) and even Lilly was eventually "motivated" enough for a very well-received rendition of Let It Be.* I said I'd rather jump off the boat again than do a song, and fortunately the evening wound down quickly.
* When I hear Lilly sing she's usually jumping from note to note as required by Rock Band, so it's nice to hear what she can do when she actually sings!

On our last day the sun again declined to appear but it stayed dry, if a bit windy, as we enjoyed our last views of the bay. A stunning place. You could enjoy it with an overnight trip, as we'd originally planned, but we got so much more by staying longer. And I'm sure you could pay less than we did - the choice of companies is daunting and what you get isn't transparent - but we were very happy with what we got (on the Phoenix, if you need a recommendation). Even the long journey back to Hanoi is a chance to catch up on my badly-behind blog... which explains why I've rambled on so long! We're looking forward to getting back to our new hotel in Hanoi (after a scouting mission on our first day here) and trying to find somewhere to see in the New Year...