One of the top places on our Southeast Asia bucket list was the famous Halong Bay. There are plenty of ways to see it, with hundreds of tours to choose from. We had a recommendation from Chloe’s friend to stay on Cat Ba Island, and do a tour directly from there, so off we went! A bus to the port, a short ferry ride and another quick bus journey and we had arrived at our hotel in Cat Ba.
Yes, you read that right. Hotel. We got a private room for 3 of us for 2 nights for a grand total of £18. Absolute steal!
After a late lunch and a little explore, we set our sights upon the bay for the first time. That evening we (myself, Chloe, Alpa and our two Aussies pals from Hanoi, Nate and Emel) went for drinks and shisha and played some cards, before calling it a night – our boat tour adventure started early the next day.
The Tour of Lan Ha & Halong Bay
We were up at 7am and very excited for our tour; a one-day boat cruise around Lan Ha and Halong Bay with plenty of activities included.
Our first sight was the fishing village – an entire floating village where the islands’ fishermen live. We had breakfast on the boat – rice and noodles at 8am, whilst taking in the incredible scenery.
Everywhere you looked you couldn’t quite believe how picturesque it really was. After an hour or so on the boat, we stopped at a quiet part of the bay where the waters were very calm. Here, we disembarked the boat onto a small pier, put on lifejackets and hopped into 2 man kayaks. We had an hour to explore so off we went – Chloe and I in one kayak and Emel and Alpa in the other. Chloe and I got a pretty good rhythm going and before long we were practically professionals. It wasn’t long before we came across our first cave! It was a short passage under the rock, but our steering wasn’t quite up to it so we were often having to duck to avoid decapitation.
Once we were through the other side, we saw my favourite thing of the day – monkeys were climbing and swinging all over the rocks! We all sat in our kayaks mesmerised. Of course we’ve seen monkeys before, but never totally in their natural habitat without any humans coming along to mess everything up.
We spent an hour exploring, singing, and crashing into each other, before heading back to the boat, now confident kayakers and on a massive high.
Back on the boat we set sail again, and it wasn’t long until the waters got choppy! We went on the top deck and at times it was hard to even stand up. Our next stop we anchored up in the middle of the bay, and it was here that we took turns to jump off the top deck of the boat. So much fun that we did it twice! We then made the short swim to the ‘beach’ (the tiniest piece of sand next to rocks that I’ve ever seen). It was really great to swim in the sea – it’s the first time we’d seen the sea on our trip! Unfortunately we were both a bit spooked because when kayaking we had seen jellyfish in the water, so we swum pretty quick to that beach and back!
Back on the boat, we were served lunch. They struggle to understand that we were vegetarians and kept bringing us various cooked sea creatures, until finally the understood and brought us a lot of rice.
After lunch we played cards on the deck with a couple of girls from Guildford (Woop Woop!), and before we knew it we’d arrived at our last stop of the day, monkey island. It lived up to its name, they were everywhere and if you had anything vaguely resembling food they were all over you like a rash. Alpa and I fed them some nuts, and Chloe took some pictures that are National Geographic standard, see below.
We spent an hour or so relaxing on the beach, enjoying the whitest sand I think I’ve ever seen. Then it was back on the boat to return to the port – all in all a fantastic day.
However we still had some more energy to give, and we were chasing the sunset, so we hurried straight up to the viewpoint. Chloe and I decided to walk it, and made the 30 minute hike up to the Canon Fort. Emel and Alpa took a scooter and we met them at the top. I thought the views of the day couldn’t be topped, but having a panoramic view of the whole bay as the sun went down was superb.
That night we hit the town and went to our favourite bar, Oasis, for food and cocktails. And beer is as cheap as water in Vietnam, so we sunk a few of them too. It was the last night in our little group of 5, so we partied into the night, and cut some pretty questionable shapes on the dance floor.
The next morning we were up at 8 to catch our bus to our next destination, all a little worse for wear, and regretting yesterday’s decision to save 50p and take the speedboat instead of the ferry.
Halong, you didn’t disappoint!
Annie x
Pint-Sized Adventurers 