HALONG BAY!

After a brutally boring and uncomfortable 18-hour bus journey, we arrived in Hanoi, Vietnam. We had about 12 days in the North, and we still had to figure out where we wanted to go first, and for how long. We shuffled our way over to a guesthouse and looked up some weather reports for the Northwest of Vietnam, as well as for the eastern coast - the two big sights we’d wanted to see in the North. We ate a complimentary breakfast at a hotel that we weren’t staying at, and decided that it made sense to stay for the night and take a trip to Halong Bay the following day.

We booked a trip to go see Halong Bay, which is about 4 hours east of Hanoi by bus. They send groups on 3-day excursions out into the bay on big wooden boats called junks. You get to sleep one night on the boat, followed by a night sleeping in lean-to’s on their private island. After lots of deliberation, we decided to book the trip with one of the party companies called Hanoi Backpackers. It has a bit of a reputation for being a booze cruise filled with lame drunken idiots, but we got lots of recommendations from friends, and even more on the internet, so we crossed our fingers and booked it.

We arrived by bus in the afternoon, and got shuttled out to the mothership The Jolly Roger by about 1. On the bus we ran into a couple of Scottish hipsters that we had met in Southern Vietnam, and they had amassed a crew of about 8 other British hipsters from their travels - 4 of the 5 guys had these weird crew cut haircuts where they buzzed the sides and back and left a long floppy grungy mess on top… and they kept talking about their fringes. It seemed like a funny crew and we realized when we got onto the

top deck of the boat that we were going to have a blast either way.

The Jolly Roger was a big wooden ship with 3 levels. Private cabins with marble bathrooms on the first floor (nicer than most of the guesthouses we’d stayed in), a full restaurant and bar on the second floor, and the top floor had a massive deck the size of a tennis court, with reclining beach chairs, big speakers and red and yellow Vietnamese flags flying high. The big boat slowly lumbered out of the harbor, and after about 15 minutes we were in the heart of Halong Bay.

Halong Bay is one of the most unique places I’d ever seen. It is a seemingly endless emerald green bay, where giant towers of light grey limestone jut straight out of the water. There are over 1000 of these giant cliffs- called carsts. Some have the diameter of a city block, while others are skinny slivers of cliff not more than 60 feet across. The further we went into the bay, the more congested the water became with these huge cliffs. As The Jolly Roger weaved in and out of the towering carsts it felt similar to sightseeing from the top of a double-decker bus in New York City while staring up at skyscrapers.

The giant rock formations shot straight up out of the water to a height of about 1000 feet. Jagged grey rock formed the body of the cliffs from bottom to top and each cliff had a full head of hearty green vegetation at the top.  Birds with 5-foot wingspans circled overhead or stared at us from nests perched high in the sky. There was nothing uniform about the carsts, but they all shared one distinct feature. Countless tides had eaten away the limestone at the base of every carst, forming a deep, dark relief in the base of each cliff. At low tide a black band of shadow wrapped around the base of each cliff and it almost looked like the cliffs were hovering above the water.

The boat had a good group of people on it, so we sat out admiring the scenery, playing cards and having a few beers. The boat took us deep into the bay, and after about two hours we anchored in a little harbor and everyone started jumping off the top deck of the boat into the water. We spent the afternoon swimming and exploring some local caves, before heading back for a giant dinner and a long night of partying.

The next morning they woke us up at 7AM so that we could switch to smaller ferry boat that would take us to the private island. Half of the people on the trip took a ferry home having paid for only a one-night trip and so we thinned the group out and headed to the island. The ferry took us deeper into the maze of carsts and by about 9AM we had arrived on the beach of Castaway Island – such a corny name. The beach was about 100 meters long, with two massive cliffs acting as book-ends. There were a few communal, lean-to bungalows at the edge of the beach, equipped with mats and bug nets, and a large floating dock out deep in the water. There were also a few beaten down, old fiberglass kayaks strewn along the beach. This was one of the few sandy stretches that we’d seen in the entire bay, and it felt great to be able to get out of the boat and explore the bay on our own a bit. 

Meliss and I spent the morning swimming around in the bay, before hopping into a kayak and checking out some of the narrow stretches where The Jolly Roger was unable to fit. We paddled into little lagoons and were able to get an up close look at the floating fishing villages scattered throughout the bay.

We paddled through these little floating towns, which were 3-4 hours away from any inhabitable dry land. Families built small, shed-sized shacks on 10x10 foot floating docks out in the water. Most of the shacks had an adjoining grid of bamboo rods and nets that Vietnamese fishermen would scamper across to check on their catch. Most of the shacks had an overly energetic dog meant to scare birds away from the nets.  It was the most bizarre place to live that I had ever seen, but the people seemed as comfortable as anyone on dry land. Little floating villages would have about 10 separate floating houses, and people would hop into their little boats and head to their neighbors dock for a cigarette or for lunch. Everyone seemed pretty friendly as we kayaked through and took some pictures, and we had a great time trying to find our way back to our beach.

Back on the island they were fixing up the speed boat for an afternoon of tubing, and a few rock climbing guides had just been taxi’ed to our island to set up ropes and help people climb up the sides of the cliffs. We spent a little bit extra for this 3-day tour because none of the other companies have activities like these. We had a blast tubing and climbing the cliffs for the afternoon. Meliss and I did as much as we could, and we were happy not to be too hungover from the night before, lots of people just slept the day off on the beach. Eventually the sun started to go down and it was time for another big dinner.

The tour guide - a 22 year old girl named Bianca, who looked 40 after a few too many  months of drinking and partying – tried to force another night of drinking games, body paint, and shenanigans, but most people opted to chill out by the beach and relax after such a full day. Sleeping in the open front lean-to’s was great, and Meliss and I woke up early the next morning to take the kayak out for sunrise while everyone was sleeping. We got to see the fishermen adjusting their nets before setting out for the day, while watching the sun creep up between the cliffs.  We went for another swim and then had to pack our bags and head home.  It was an action packed couple of days, and the weather was perfect for us the entire time. We hopped back onto the bus to head back to Hanoi just as the rain clouds came out and opened up on the bay.