Vietnam - Days 2-3: Halong Bay

The first stop on my journey through Vietnam begins on a junk boat in the beautiful Halong Bay.

Halong Bay is a breathtaking secluded harbour with 2,000 limestone islands rising from the emerald waters of Bac Bo Gulf. One of Vietnam's most scenic regions, this area of about 1,500 sq km is dotted with innumerable beaches and grottos, created over thousands of years by waves and wind.

It was a wonderful start to the trip. The drive to Halong Bay took about 4 hours but along the way we saw beautiful rice fields being worked:

Rice Field with workers

 and we stopped at a ceramics workshop where we could see how they made different pieces.  Since the official Tet holiday vacation had already begun, there was no one there working but we still got to see the workshop.

Large ceramic bowls

Hand painting dishes

Then it was on to the main event! Our boat was extremely nice and they served lunch, dinner and breakfast.   It was all good and I've tried several new things including squid. I don't think I'll have it again.

Karsts in Halong Bay

Beautiful Scenery

We stopped to enter inside one of the Karst and it was HUGE inside:

The best part besides the relaxation of the cruise through these beautiful karast was kayaking in a lagoon. We had bananas to feed the monkeys on the banks. It was so fun.

Feeding the Monkeys

Kayaking with Lucy

We spent the night on board our boat and enjoyed the morning sailing back to shore although it was extremely foggy all morning.  Then it was back to Hanoi for a little free time and dinner out before we headed off for the overnight train to Hue.

For dinner we went to the Old Quarter and it was packed.  We were running a little late on time so we decided to take a taxi back to the hotel.  This is the traffic we drove through:

It took 25 minutes to walk there and 40 minutes to drive back!  But we made it and we got the train.
 It was a 10.35 PM departure.  The carriage we were in was the top class ticket available.  There were four classes: seated - hard, seated - soft, bed - hard, and bed - soft.  I can't really say it was very soft.  Or all that clean.  But it did the job.  Some people complained about the bathrooms - there was a toilet at each end of our carriage.  They were not very clean but no worse than you would expect on a 12 hour trip with about 30 people using them.

Our carriage only had members of our tour but other people were separated and shared their space with local travelers.  That would have been interesting.  One person per bed is apparently not really a rule - Lauren and Corinne had a father and daughter sharing a bunk and our guide, Ha, said that there was a family of 4 and a family of 3 in two of the bunks in his carriage.  I had the top bunk and there was plenty of room to store our bags under the bottom bunks and in the spare area at the top.  It was a little difficult to sleep.  We did manage to turn off the extremely loud Vietnamese music that was planning inside our carriage and we stuffed the lock with toilet paper so it stopped rattling.  But we couldn't do anything with the amount of jostling the train provided as it barreled down the tracks.

Lucy, Me & Maja in Carriage No. 7