Halong Bay Day!

Today awoke ready to catch our shuttle to Halong Bay. This was a huge trip highlight for us, and something we had been looking forward to since Day 1. We got up, ate breakfast, and checked out of our hotel when the receptionist told us our ride had arrived. In the two minutes it took us to check out, our ride had disappeared. The receptionist looked a bit confused, but had just said that there was no parking on the street so they drove around the block. Well, we were hardly the only people at our hotel going to Halong Bay. It was basically organized chaos in the lobby of our hotel as about fifty people were catching random rides from different companies to the bay. Slowly the lobby cleared out, and there was nobody left waiting for a ride except for Brad and I. At this point, our ride was supposed to pick us up an hour ago. The receptionist reassured us that our ride was still it's way. At this point we knew that something was up. We waited another half hour, until the receptionist told us that two people got on the shuttle who were supposed to be with another company. A taxi was going to come pick us up and take us to meet our bus out by the highway. We were pleased that our receptionist had dealt with all the arrangements for us even though there was a mixup. When we reached the bus, everyone on it exclaimed "Brad!!!!" Apparently they had gone around asking everyone if they were Brad or knew who Brad was. The poor couple who had gotten on instead of us had been taxied to the correct bus.

We had a three hour bus ride to Halong City, the closet port to the bay. The trip was pretty uneventful and I slept most of the way (except for waking every few minutes when we hit and enormous bump). We got to Halong Bay, and took a little shuttle boat to our larger cruise boat, our home for two nights.

Many of the boats in Halong Bay look pretty rough. This is, after reading many blogs, because they are. We were warned not to take a cheap boat due to the fact the accommodations and food are not very good, and there was the possibility of rats on the boat. We were pleasantly surprised with the interior of our boat. Beautiful dark woodwork everywhere, spacious room and private bathroom. There were about 15 or so rooms on our boat, so it was not very crowded at all. We were greeted with a welcome drink and quite a delicious lunch. We then marvelled on the top deck of the boat as we cruised through emerald waters marked with glistening limestone cliffs. It was just like in all the photos you can google image search. It was pretty spectacular.

After cruising for awhile, we reached our first kayaking destination: a floating village. Until about 8 months ago, people lived in what were literally floating villages. They built houses on top of floatation devices and lived a couple hours off the shore of Vietnam. Unfortunately, these people were recently asked to move to mainland due to the water pollution problems they were causing. There was also an issue with educating the children. As you can imagine, getting a teacher to come out to the middle of the bay is not easy. Surprisingly, there was also an issue with the children not knowing how to swim(!), so drowning was another problem the government was not pleased with. When we kayaked through, there were a few houses left there to stage what a floating village used to look like. It was still very beautiful kayaking right next to the mountains, even though the floating village was a bit of a letdown. I had never kayaked before, and only canoed once, so Brad got the task of teaching me how to kayak. Luckily, Brad was pretty patient when it came to me spazzing at him when the kayak rocked back and forth.

After our kayak adventure, we were soaked with ours and the sweat of many before us that wore the life jackets we fashioned. We were then told it was time for swimming! We threw on our swimsuits and jumped off the boat into the ocean water. There is something very refreshing and wonderful about swimming around the mountains in the middle of the ocean like that. We had a pretty fantastic swim. I showered, and then we watched the marigold sky as we cruised into the sunset.

Dinner was very good on our boat. It never ceases to amaze us how many plates keep coming to our table during set meals. Between four of us, we had at least ten different dishes come to our table to enjoy. After dinner, we made some friends with an English couple and we sang karaoke and drank beer until 11pm, when we got shut down for the evening by the boat staff. We also hung out with a lovely Scottish and Australian couple, where we finished our night with beers under the stars in the upper deck. It was honestly paradise. It is one of the most beautiful places I've ever visited, with one of the most wonderful souls I have ever met :-).