Halong Bay

Friday 29 November

We were leaving for Halong Bay between 8 and 8.30 according the hotel. So I got up early, had breakfast and was luckily ready for 8.00 as that was when they were ready for me. It turned out that there were two other punters in the minibus, plus a guide and driver. The guide was a nice guy, just graduated, who tried jollying us up with his quiz questions but I don’t think any of us really wanted this method of learning and we lapsed into relatively long but happy silences. The other two were Berliners, she a lawyer and he a computer scientist.

We hurtled off down the road overtaking every which way, with a break about halfway at a one of several huge retail outlets where one could buy some nice garden statues. We got to the port pretty well dead on midday and got our tender boat to our boat, Carina. It was a pleasant enough boat that looked as though it was quite old and had been brought up to standard for a quasi luxury market. The cabin was pleasant and clean and we had the first of several very decent meals before setting off at about one o’clock. 

Unfortunately the skipper had the same approach to steering as his compatriots on the road and we had a nice near miss with another boat that resulted in the others’ captain, dressed in a fine white uniform coming out of his wheelhouse and having words. After that, everything calmed down and we progressed through the amazing landscape / seascape of Halong Bay.

We fetched up at a floating fishing village which seemed so well geared up for the tourist horde and rowing them around that it is hard to imagine why they carry on fishing! That said, it was not over flooded with tourists and the whole day was a lot more pleasant than Trip Advisor had led me to fear it might be. 

However we then went off to the bay where we were going to stay the night and that, unfortunately, was full of boats of all sizes and degrees of tastelessness including one that looked like the Alicante casino on water. Halong Bay would be an amazing place to soak up the atmosphere if one was alone but with this fleet the atmosphere was rather lost. Anyway, we still had a very pleasant meal and a fairly early night.