Halong Bay

Halong Bay was an exercise in contrasts. We had booked a hotel that looked pretty nice online, and was surprisingly cheap. It was located in the "Sunland" area of the city, and when we got there we discovered some interesting things about the place. It seems that the development was part of a real estate boom pre-COVID, where unscrupulous developers built frantically for investors who then got caught out with a bunch of (mostly) useless properties. The development we found ourselves in was like a weird ghost town. It was allegedly modelled on Vienna (complete with statues of famous composers at street intersections), and was full of empty hotel receptions, closed restaurants and empty street level shop windows. A stroll down to the beach revealed more of the same, with lots of beach bars and deck chairs, but no people. The creepy factor had definitely started to set in - it felt like we were on the set at the start of a horror movie. Wandering around, there were very few people anywhere, apart from some confused looking tourists looking for somewhere that might be open for dinner (or breakfast). That said, we finally found a lively little local bar that had some great seafood dishes for dinner on our first night - the local specialty was squid cakes. 

Our hotel was superficially nice, but there were some serious issues. After inspection, we decided that no time would be spent in the pool for fear of what we might catch. There were some serious drainage issues in the bathroom, which led to some minor olefactory distress each time we walked in. And it took a little while to realise that the wet floors weren't because we had been wandering out in the rain, but were, rather, from water coming up from under the floorboards as we walked around. In the end, the room (which was big and cheap, with a decent bed at least) did the job, but we were pretty glad it was only two nights. One more would definitely have been a bridge too far.

Of course, we were there for a cruise around the bay, which is the (world Heritage listed) star attraction. We had booked a half-day tour, and had decided to pay about 50% extra to switch from a maximum of 49 people, to a private tour for two. Concerns about the weather meant we got an early morning message saying the tour couldn't go ahead, but by lunchtime the weather was deemed satisfactory and we were able to reschedule for the afternoon. The tour made up for all hotel- and location-related disappointments. 

We got to the main tour port and met our guide, the very personable Hieu, who took us to the boat. It was a big boat, for one of the 50 people tours, but just for the two of us. There were twice as many staff as passengers... 

The water was calm and a tasty lunch provided as we set out into the bay. It was actually a glorious day for it in the end, incredibly calm on the water and with few other boats around as well. Mostly, people come up for a day trip from Hanoi, and we think that the bad morning weather (combined with the fact that is was a Tuesday), meant that very few trips went ahead. The bay is a bunch of karst formations sticking up out of the water, and it was immediately apparent as to why it is such a big attraction. We went for a ride around some of the islands, and past the famous (apparently) "kissing rock", before pulling up at a floating fisherman's village. 

Fishing families have lived on the bay for a very long time, and continue to do so, now supplementing their income with tourist money. In this particular case, it took the form of kayak rentals and boat rides, through the cave formations in the islands. We grabbed a kayak and some instructions ("go over there - it's a private tour so there is no schedule, take as much time as you want"), and we were off. Small numbers meant that we went through the first cave formation into a lagoon located in the centre of an island, which was beautiful, spectacular and mind-blowing. Especially because we got there just as another group was leaving and found ourselves completely on our own in the "hidden" lagoon for about 15 minutes - and experience that few tourists ever get and born from the combined circumstances of the day and dumb luck. We left as another group arrived and went on through another cave into a small bay which we again had to ourselves. The gods were definitely smiling on us. 

By the time we made it back to the boat, it was on to see some big limestone caves on another island, and we were again lucky enough to have one of them all to ourselves. Hieu was a fantastic guide, full of plenty of interesting stories and facts, and we felt incredibly lucky to have picked just the right trip and just the right time to do it. We didn't even mind so much that we had to be careful where we trod on our hotel floor when we got back for the night!