Ha Long Bay is about 3 hours away from Hanoi. We got a minibus there, then got on our boat at the port. Could not believe how cold it was! Feels a bit like England. We have nice little cabins on the boat, and all meals included. It was just such a shame the weather was so awful, because I can imagine it would be absolutely incredible to see this place in the sun instead of murky and damp drizzly weather. I am used to that now anyway, so got on with it and enjoyed it.
The caves were brilliant - all the stalagmites and stalactites just fascinating and the whole thing was just huge. Rather than explaining the science behind the creation of the interesting rock formations, our guide chose to tell us which animal each rock looked like, but that was fine.
Next we went up a small mountain/hill where there's a nice view over the bay, followed by a slippery walk back down.
Once back aboard the boat there was the option to go kayaking which I had initially wanted to do, but by this point it was rainy and cold and one look at the wet kyak with a big puddle of water in the seat made the decision to stay on the boat and try to warm up pretty easy. Dinner was great - lots of fresh prawns and squid (they do squid fishing off the boat at night). There was a bit of a storm at night, and just the night before they had to move everyone into hotels because the weather was so bad, but luckily it wasn't too bad for us. The only problem was Shaun and Gail had to move rooms at about 3am because they had water pouring through their smoke detector.
The caves were brilliant - all the stalagmites and stalactites just fascinating and the whole thing was just huge. Rather than explaining the science behind the creation of the interesting rock formations, our guide chose to tell us which animal each rock looked like, but that was fine.
Next we went up a small mountain/hill where there's a nice view over the bay, followed by a slippery walk back down.
Once back aboard the boat there was the option to go kayaking which I had initially wanted to do, but by this point it was rainy and cold and one look at the wet kyak with a big puddle of water in the seat made the decision to stay on the boat and try to warm up pretty easy. Dinner was great - lots of fresh prawns and squid (they do squid fishing off the boat at night). There was a bit of a storm at night, and just the night before they had to move everyone into hotels because the weather was so bad, but luckily it wasn't too bad for us. The only problem was Shaun and Gail had to move rooms at about 3am because they had water pouring through their smoke detector.
Breakfast was dire, then we had a look around a pearl farm which was interesting. The morning was spent making our way back to the port and having lunch at 10:30am...The weather was getting even worse when we got back, so we were glad to head back to Hanoi where we hoped to get warm and dry.
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