Halong Bay pt. 1

A 3D2N trip to Halong Bay

The previous night had been a bit more involving than I had thought it would but I had a fairly early start the next day for a 3-4 hour drive to Halong Bay. The bay is one of the better-known parts of the north of Vietnam and has some interesting limestone formations through the bay lending it an otherworldly atmosphere. The person that I met a few days earlier in Ninh Binh had suggested that a day trip was all that was required to drink it all in but a) I had booked it earlier than the conversation and b) I was not convinced that I agreed. The tourism trade in Hanoi is very much aware of the gamut of opinions on this and offers a multitude of trips of differing ranges and prices. As the bus ride is about 4 hours, the majority of boats leave at about 11am-1pm and so a day trip gets you a few hours on the water. I did not feel that this would sate me, so I looked at the two and then three-day options. Most of the options are much of a muchness but the slight variations of offer to me led me to plump for a two nighter and a stay on Cat Ba Island which seemed to offer a slightly different perspective. in the end, we are all just tourists so maybe it did not matter too much.

I was ready in my room at the allotted time, 7:30 am, and when not contacted, I went to the reception and was told that they had already gone but would return to pick me up in a few minutes. Those minutes dragged on until it got actually rather a bit later - about 8:30 which I found a bit stressful, to be honest as I was not sure whether the next three days would be a write-off. Obviously, the name of the post suggests that it was not. I was taken to a part of the Old Quarter where Vega Travel were based and boarded the bus with about fifteen others. Everyone looked, like me, a little bleary eyed and so it was a pretty tired looking ride until the first refreshment stop. The tour guide, Bobby, tried to inject a little energy into proceedings which he did do - he was a good guide to be fair and surely had a lot of experience of these types of morning rides. After the first stop where we could get some snacks and refreshments, the bus was a little more chatty but obviously not with me. These kinds of tours, any kinds of general tours really, are not really aimed at people travelling alone and so, of course, people will talk amongst themselves. This is to be expected (and was by me) and is not in any way a slight against the tour or the people there. This is actually one of the weird parts of travelling alone if you have my personality as you are basically surrounded by people having fun which just seems odd - I didn't come on holiday to watch other people having fun! Anyway, the ride was relatively uneventful and we reached the port on time despite the late start.

As I mentioned, the tours are plentiful and there is a real industry built up around do them with lots of boats setting off at similar times to enter the bay. Those tours follow a similar plan and that, today was:

Lunch while cruising,

Lagoon kayaking

Going through the surprising cave.

A "cooking class" followed by Dinner

A morning on Titov Island

Transfer to Lan Ha Bay on a different junk

Time on Cat Ba Island

Cruise back to Halong

Onto the Junk

We were given access to our rooms^[1] and told when lunch was, to be enjoyed in the dining room/bar, so everyone retired to their rooms for half an hour or so and returned for lunch. The room was barely big enough for the beds but was fairly well appointed and seemed pleasant enough - as ever, I didn't expect to spend much time there.

A shared lunch was pretty nice and a quick and easy way to bond, or at least get to know, your fellow tourists. Being on a boat is different to being in a hotel as the space is so much more restricted so although you can escape, it is much harder to do so. Being able to not feel awkward with people is pretty useful here and the chat was relaxed and easy to enable that through the trip. This may be something that goes on in my head, but I feel more comfortable knowing that it isn't like a speed date, that I don't have to be instantly interesting and can just be myself a bit more. As I say, this may be an internal debate. The lunch was shared in the sense that we all had our own plates but we picked from central bowls of the dishes which I sometimes forget is not a particularly European way of eating. I do like it like that, but it can mean that there are some silent negotiations around who gets what and a little bit of game theory in order to get what you want. The scenery was fantastic as we ate but it was easy to forget the scenery as the food was also pretty good.

Post lunch, as the boat made its way to the stop for the kayaking at the lagoon near the Luon cave [map], there was opportunity to spend some time on the sun deck and relax - which for me meant taking rather a lot of pictures of very similar scenery. Deleting incredibly similar pictures later is one of my holiday pleasures. Others took fewer pictures and spent more time sunbathing which was a wise move.

Excursions from the boat

The timing of our departure meant that we went to the lagoon before the cave as the sunset times made that more sensible - interestingly we were all asked to consent to the change. Kayaking was done in pairs and so my partner for this was the guide, Bobby. This worked out pretty well as he was both competent at kayaking and obviously knew the place and could point things out to me so I could try to see it and not quite make it out^[2]. The weather was great and the timing of the water time was ideal to capture the later afternoon light which was pretty close to the golden hour. We also got to see some monkeying around by some actual monkeys which was fun. The other notable thing within the lagoon was the non-kayak boating which seemed to be larger boats seemingly for Chinese tourists. Vietnam is obviously easily accessible from China and it has become a popular spot to visit which has made Halong Bay even more popular than it was. This tourism market is different to the European market and you get a very different clientele as it is a much shorter trip and less of an "adventure". The more mass-market style holidaymaker means a different feel and these boats were much louder, more apparent and left a bit more of themselves behind. It seemed to chime with the Ninh Binh experience too, of larger groups of Oriental faces and "foreigners" in smaller boats that were a bit more expensive although I would guess a lot of the Chinese tourists were very well off. Bobby told me that they had a much bigger litter problem than they used to as Chinese tourists were far less careful about what food they threw to the monkeys - often throwing fully wrapped food that they could not get into. The Chinese tourist phenomenon is one which seems constant across most holidays that I have been on recently and it brings both opportunities and challenges for host nations but also, arguably, a little more cultural sensitivity is required from the tourists too.

The Surprising Cave (or Sung Sot) was not too far away from the kayak spot so we were not long on the boat before mooring again to enter the surprisingly named cave. I believe the surprise^[3] is that it is so large inside but there are many other stories for the name of varying degrees of believability. It was big inside and genuinely impressive to see the rock formations and also the lighting that had been done to give it some drama. To give it the kind of compliment that you won't see in many travel guides, it reminded me very much of being in a JRPG and going into the centre of a cave to find a sword or something similar. You may not be aware, but this is high praise.

By the time we left the cave, it was nearing sunset and we were treated to some lovely dusky views - the delay of my trip by a day was really paying off here - as we returned to the boat for an exciting cooking class. In this cooking class, we made summer rolls which, famously, involve wrapping meat and salad in rice paper and no cooking. Which seemed a little incongruous for a cooking class. I have had summer rolls plenty of times before and sometimes you are given the option of rolling your own but they are often prepared for you in London. The only real thing to learn was about not overstuffing and getting a tight roll - I also learned that the rice paper should be square, as round is only for fried rolls. This surprised me as I have usually used round ones, even earlier in Hanoi, but I did not think it was worth mentioning that to remove the magic of the "fact" from everyone else. The class was followed by a dinner which was, again, shared at the table and we had all had a few more opportunities to talk so the conversation was less stilted than it had been. They were a pretty good bunch of people from lots of different parts of the world which made it quite fun. There was nobody that I spoke to here that left me with the same desire to jump off a boat that I had experienced earlier in the trip so it was a lot less awkward than I thought it would be. What I did find interesting was that I think all except two other groups, everyone was travelling through Vietnam as part of a "break" in their lives of some kind rather than a simple holiday like myself. I wasn't yet sure why that was interesting, but I felt like it would end up being a fault line of some sort at some point. One couple from America seemed amazed at the idea of Europeans on the tour being able to take sabbaticals from their jobs for a few months to travel and still have jobs to go back to. We do take the employment rights fought for and earned in Europe for granted sometimes. We really shouldn't. It didn't get particularly rowdy or anything like that and it stayed fairly low key and conversational, other than some games revolving around making coins do things on tables, which was pleasant for me until the majority of people retired for the night as we had another early start the next morning to try and catch sunrise. Of course, I retired to the deck to try and get some photos... [TBC]

^{1. On the bus, we were all asked if we wanted double or twin rooms and also if we wanted to upgrade which was phoned ahead to make sure all could get the rooms they wanted and they would be ready. The perils of cross-cultural communication is that sometimes jokes can go awry. Next to me, a couple of young ladies from France were asked and they said that they didn't really mind- "either" and then "whichever has the best views". It caused a bit of an odd atmosphere with the organiser and there was a certain frisson in the air which I assume was confusion or uncertainty around what that meant. Female friends are generally a bit more comfortable around sleeping arrangements (I find) than male friends, but I assumed that they were homosexual but that they didn't want to make a big deal which in itself reminded me of a Seinfeld episode [link to video montage]. The guide, Bobby, asked a few times (they were next to me - I was not eavesdropping) but there was not a seemingly clear answer - they answered: "whichever has the best view". When we were all given our room keys the ladies came back from their room and asked what was going on as they had not got what they asked for. Bobby was confused and said that he had asked on the bus to which they responded that they thought he had been joking and that they had booked a superior room anyway when they had booked the tour so were not sure where the mixup had been. The situation was resolved and they got the room they had paid for but it was a reminder that most people were conversing in what was not their native language and attaching language and cultures together can lead to problems sometimes. Kind of like linguistic "false friends". I think they had a good time though - they were not false friends after all. ↩}

^{2. It is at these times that I remember how much worse my eyesight is than most other people as I cannot really see so far and camouflage really works on me.↩}

^{3. Here is your Orange Surprise, sir. [sips drink] this is disgusting and I can't even taste a hint of orange. Why is it called an Orange Surprise? The surprise, sir, is that there is no orange.↩}