Halong Bay Day, finally!
For our Halong Bay tour,
we chose to go with a guided group tour, again for economical reasons. Halong
Bay is located in Quang Ninh Province, which is a good four hours away from Hanoi
so even if we had an early head start, we arrived at the Bai Chay Tourist Wharf
at noon. This was our jump-off point to the UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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| The monolithic rocks of Halong Bay over floating fishing villages |
What makes Halong Bay
amazing is the giant rock structures towering above everything else. They make you stop
and wonder how they were formed or what lies beneath those monoliths. I wasn’t
very enticed by the water, however. It was green and disappointingly dirty. I think this
was because the area where we stopped was near floating fishing villages.
We had the chance to go
boating or kayaking (for an additional fee) but since the waters weren’t pleasing
to the sight and the weather was uncooperatively high (‘twas hooooot!), we
lounged in the shaded portion of the awesome roof deck of our boat, just taking
the sights in.
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| Tourists boating on the bay |
There are tours that go
for as long as two to three days and they usually explore other islands in
Halong Bay. That’s something I’d like to try in one of my future travels. :)
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| Looks like a scene from a movie, but this is an actual shot of natural light shining beautifully inside Thien Cung Grotto. |
One of the stopovers of
the day tour was the Thien Cung Grotto. I’m no fan of caves but this was a
sight to see. It’s not purely natural now that they put in concrete steps for
the tourists and installed artificial lights. I must say though that the lights
illuminated the beauty of the stalactites.
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| Just look at those formations behind me! |
We got back in Hanoi a
bit late that night and refusing to feel drained or defeated – we just spent
eight hours traveling, which was more than the time it took to tour Halong Bay –
I dragged my travel buddy to a restaurant to grab dinner before retiring for
the night. We found a nice restaurant, Newday, which was small and almost
inconspicuous but served a very delicious and cheap dinner. I also didn’t let the
occasion pass without tasting Vietnamese beer, Bia Hanoi, which was served in a
420ml bottle, making our local beers look puny.
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| Bia Hanoi. Ahhh, beer. That magic elixir after a long, tiring day. :) |
