Freezing but fantastic trip to Ha Long Bay
Trip Start
Apr 08, 2010
1
110
113
Trip End
Mar 11, 2011
Cat Ba, Vietnam
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
The limestone islands have tons of caves and we got to explore a few. The biggest is called the Amazing Cave (creatively named by the French who apparently found it amazing) and amused me endlessly because it was full of trashcans shaped like penguins. We also had time to kayak among the oyster farms and fishing villages, and roam through the jungle on Cat Ba Island (the largest). There are a lot of floating villages, which are fascinating to me.
The first night we slept on the boat which was really big and comfortable compared to the sail boats I've stayed on. The crew repeatedly mentioned that they had an excellent karaoke system on board, and even though we were all hesitant, the crew started off the night by putting on an impressive show for us. Their enthusiasm was really cute...they were all practically giddy waiting for their turn. It was Valentine's day, so we heard quite a few Vietnamese love songs.
The second night we stayed on Cat Ba Island in a monster hotel, which definitely lacked the atmosphere of the boat but had a pretty impressive view of the bay.
When we returned to Hanoi, I heard the news that a tourist boat had sunk in the bay the night before, killing 12 people. Tragic and shocking...they had been anchored in the same place we had been the night before (lots of boats stay in the area), and it's really hard to imagine a boat of that size going down so quickly in water that was perfectly calm. It was a big news story that everyone in Hanoi was talking about (Ha Long Bay is a huge tourist attraction and the tragedy is definitely unusual). They (temporarily I think) stopped over night tours to the bay until they have time to figure out what happened.
