We started our trip to Halong Bay by being collected from our hotel by our tour guide for the next few days, Binh. From day 1 he was helpful, caring and very very informative. We went to the Vega travel office where we paid the remaining balance for the trip and started to meet the people we would be enjoying this cruise with. Our group had 17 people on the first full day and then 19 on the second full day. We still don’t really understand why those 2 people weren’t with us originally, but assume it must have had something to do with the bedrooms on our first boat.

We stopped half way to Halong and had a chance to buy some snacks for the trip and obviously have a toilet stop. All the way there Binh had been telling us about Vietnamese culture and as it was Valentines Day, particularly about Vietnamese marriage custom. It was all really interesting and he kept using us as a comparison as we had been recently married. Weddings in Vietnam are huge events with up to 500 people attending. He showed us some pictures and there were a lot of guests in very casual clothes, which I found pretty odd, but the Bride and Groom were dressed up in either very traditional outfits or, more commonly these days, typical Western white wedding outfits. It didn’t used to be that guests would bring presents to a wedding, but he told us that it’s becoming more common for people to give ‘Happy Money’ to the Bride and Groom. The Bride and Groom then keep a record of exactly how much each person gave them and then give the EXACT same back at their wedding. How odd!!

We learnt on the next leg of the trip about how Halong Bay was formed by legend and also scientifically. Hanoi used to be called Thung Long, which means rising dragon and Ha Long means descending dragon.

‘The legend says that during the old time when the country was newly formed, Vietnamese had to fight against fierce invaders coming from the North through the sea. Feeling sorry for the country, The Jade Emperor sent the Mother Dragon and her children descending on earth to help ancient Vietnamese people defend the country.

While the mighty enemies were attacking the main land, The Mother Dragon and her children suddenly appeared and incinerated the enemies with their divine fire and giant emeralds. The emeralds from the dragon’s mouth were scattered around the battlefield on the sea and formed an invincible defensive wall that left enemy battleship fleet sinking. Thanks to the dragons, the Northern invaders were finally swept away and the peace finally came back the South East Asian country once again. After thousands of years, the wall of emerald turned into island and islets of different sizes and shapes.

After the battle, The Mother Dragon and her children didn’t come back to the heaven, but stayed in the mortal world and turned into human form and help people planting, cropping, raising cattle, reclaiming, and expanding the country.

To remember the help of Mother Dragon and her children, the people live there from generation to generation name the bay where the Mother Dragon descended “Ha Long or Halong” and the bay where her children descended “Bai Tu Long”, which means “Thanks to the Dragon’s children”. This legend is also a part of the general belief that Vietnamese people’s has Dragon’s origins.’ Taken from – http://www.halongbay.info/news/the-legend-of-halong-bay.html

We arrived at the marina and it wasn’t long before we were joining our boat and heading out into the beautiful scenery. We had a super tasty lunch straight away and were taken to our rooms, which were just perfect, with windows overlooking the Bay. We met some lovely people on our tour, namely Paul and his niece Lisa and Annie and Tim. Embarrassingly, these people are all British, but we all just clicked and had a great time. Annie and Tim live just down the road from us in Cornwall which is great and Paul and Lisa in Suffolk. I have no doubt that we will see all of these people again once we get home and there is a good chance we may join Paul for something very exciting in the future (watch this space).

Black kites were everywhere

Later in the afternoon we went kayaking through Bai Tu Long Bay. There are 3 bays in the area, with Halong being the most recognised, but the others are far less touristy and just as beautiful. We kayaked through lagoons and into archways and caves. Eventually we ended up at a lagoon where we saw lots of wild monkeys very very close up. 2 of them were even being super naughty while we were there. It was very relaxing and peaceful there and a really lovely introduction to Halong Bay.

After this we went to ‘surprising’ cave. Named because everyone is pretty surprised by how impressive it is. I still think our most impressive cave has been in Pai, but the way they had lit up this one made it very very beautiful. Our tour guide pointed out some interesting rock formations… see if you can spot any in these photos.

That evening we had a very tasty meal and enjoyed some drinks onboard with our new friends. A lovely way to end the evening. When we decided to go to bed though 1/2 of our group were having a lot of loud fun! Throughout the day the group had definitely become an ‘us’ and ‘them’ situation. They all knew each other already and to this day I still don’t understand why they didn’t go on a Halong party booze cruise. All they wanted to do was drink, moan and make life difficult for the tour guide. Ok, that’s not fair… not all of them did, but it got a little bit tiresome. We had to put our earplugs in that night as they were deciding to wrestle in the communal room above our bedroom and play Lana del Ray super loud on their speaker. How very depressing.

The next morning we were up nice and early for breakfast before our first stop of the day, Ti Top Island. We zoomed up 400 odd stairs to the top to get some stunning panoramic views over the Bay. Our tour guide was completely right that we needed to get up there quickly as by the time we were coming down it was PACKED! We had some spare time on Ti Top before going back to our boat and 4 of us decided to go for a brisk and refreshing swim. Once you were in it was ok, but a little shock to the system getting in.

Once back on the boat we started our transfer to Cat Ba Island, the largest island in Halong Bay. We were going to have a fun filled couple of hours exploring, starting with a bike ride to a local village. Seeing the locals going about their daily business was great and the scenery was breathtaking as we rode through the countryside. There were puppies everywhere in the village and we got to see the school, which only has 3 teachers and a head master. The younger kids are all taught together in the morning and the older kids taught together in the afternoon.

After our bike ride we started a trek through the jungle. Simon pretended to be Tarzan for a while and climbed up some vines into some caves. I decided that if I did that we would have to make a claim on our insurance and I’m not to keen to do that. We then did some rock climbing up to another amazing viewpoint. Simon and I zoomed up and down, which we were pretty proud of ourselves for. We rode back on our bikes to the boat and then enjoyed a lovely late lunch.

Spot my head…

For the rest of the afternoon we anchored near to a floating fishing village. In Halong Bay the fishing villages are banned as they cause litter and other environmental problems, but in this other bay they can still be found. We jumped in some more kayaks and spent a good hour exploring the fishing village and seeing how the locals live and work out here. We saw a woman feeding some of the fish that she was farming and also saw some men putting buckets of sand under the water to grow clams. It was really interesting, but after all the activities of the day we started to get tired and were looking forward to heading back to the boat to relax.

We made it to Cat Ba Island at about 5pm and transferred to our hotel. We had a balcony overlooking the bay and it was BEAUTIFUL. We went out for dinner along the water front and wished a little that we had longer in Cat Ba. However, I think we’d made the right decision to not spend more time there as the weather was a bit overcast and it wasn’t that warm. Next time though!

The next morning we had a breakfast buffet which included Spaghetti Bolognese. Now weird. Obviously, we didn’t eat Spag Bol at 6:30am… that would have been weird. We transferred back to the boat and spent the last day relaxing on the deck, reading and enjoying the beautiful scenery. It had been an amazing trip. Towards the end the ‘other’ half of our group were grating on me a little bit. We were asked to fill out a questionnaire on our experience and one of the girls went off on one about silly things. Needless to say the tour guide didn’t deserve the treatment he’d gotten from some of them. He had recovered 4 items of lost property that they had left on Cat Ba and on the mainland at his own expense, he had dealt with them bringing alcohol onto the boat which wasn’t allowed and endless other things which are difficult to explain on here. He did an amazing job!

We headed back to Hanoi happy that we had chosen wisely with our tour and glad that we had done as much research as we did.