Hanoi - Halong Bay

Sunday, March 15th

The weather report for Hanoi was kind of promising, although the one word summary was still "drizzle". We hoped the sun would indeed peep through the clouds sometime, if not today, then while we were at Halong Bay.

It's only about 140km from Hanoi to Halong Bay, but it takes between 3 and 4 hours depending on traffic. That means a Happy Room stop half way, which usually involves a shop selling marble, or other Vietnamese souvenirs. There's also food and drink, but we don't need that, yet.

In Halong Bay, there's a huge number of boats of varying sizes waiting to depart, but unfortunately the weather hasn't improved.

After some confusion about which "package" we've bought, we board the tender for the first of many rides over the next couple of days - life jackets are mandatory.

We spot our boat moored among the flotilla, at least we think it's ours - they all look much the same.

We're shown our cabin, which is very nice, although necessarily smaller than your average hotel room. We hope our luggage makes it to this boat, and not the other one they thought we were on.

After a welcome drink and a bit of "unpacking", we have lunch as we set sail.

The almost 2000 islands and islets that the Bay is famous for virtually start appearing just outside the port.

But unfortunately, the weather started to deteriorate - first a sea mist, then a slight drizzle. Same forecast as Hanoi, obviously.

And all the while we were shadowed by our faithful tender.

The deck was full of deck chairs (what else?), but they had seen a bit of rain recently and were too wet to sit on :-(

But the scenery was "picture postcard". Indeed, someone commented that every postcard they had seen from Halong Bay looked misty!

Our boat was a converted "junk", apparently, and still had sails from the days when it wasn't diesel powered. Just as well we had a motor - we would be becalmed otherwise.

Even the fishermen used diesel engines these days, albeit extremely noisy "putt putt" engines. The smaller ones use oars.

Somewhere during the afternoon I tender slipped away and returned with a flotilla of kayaks which accompanied us for the next two days.

The islands and outcrops are made of limestone which means erosion, and caves, both external as well as your stalagmite/stalactite variety (see later).

Visibility continued to worsen.

We continued our slow cruise among the islands, probably never exceeding 5 knots.

Meanwhile our tender slipped away to buy our sinner from the local fishermen, always accompanied by the pesky kayak fleet.

They were eventually put to some use - kayaking anyone? We passed, this time, given the fog was closing in and there was a strong risk of getting lost out there.

See what I mean? The kayaks disappeared around an island and didn't reappear for about an hour. At least it was calm.

G&T time came, the deck chairs were dried by the crew, and we were able to enjoy a drink on the Poop Deck - it wasn't cold, it wasn't windy, it wasn't raining, life's good.

After a lovely meal of local seafood, and a bottle of French Chardonnay accompanied by a nice French couple drinking Chilean wine (they didn't see the irony - perhaps they should have ordered the Yalumba instead), we retired to bed - it does look kind of nautical, doesn't it?