Halong Bay

Around two hours train journey east of Hanoi is Halong Bay which is famous for phallic looking rocks jutting out of the sea.These rocks are the biggest tourist attraction in Vietnam.



Jen had been to Halong Bay before and had no urge to go again, so we decided to spend two nights apart and meet back in Hanoi. It felt strange to not have her around but I was not making the journey alone, since the floods in Hoi An we have adopted a German backpacker called Marco who also wanted to visit the bay.



Before we left for Halong bay we knew that we wanted to stay overnight on a boat amongst all the rocky islands. Staying overnight is quite a common tourist activity, but we also wanted to stay one night on one of the larger islands called Cat Ba.

So we decided to go to Cat Ba for the first night then start the boat tour from there on the second day.

Cat Ba island was beautiful. A large part of the island is a national protected forest and it contains a rare species of monkey with a punk haircut. We never saw the monkeys but we did go hiking to one of the highest points of the island in search of them.



The views from the top were spectacular but in addition to climbing up a mountain you had to also scale a rusting metal viewing platform that I'm sure was built during the Vietnam war.



(note the gap in the woodwork flooring just behind my feet!)

We visited some nice beaches on the island too but later when trying to organise the overnight boat through Halong bay for the following morning we ran into difficulty. Nearly all the travel services were either not offering a boat because it was off season or charging 65-75 US Dollars per person. We knew that the trip did not cost this much money and so decided to get a boat from Cat Ba island to Halong Bay and bargain directly with the boat owners rather than go through a middle man.


The boat trip to Halong Bay proved to be at first the worst then the best decision we could have made. We purchased the boat ticket from a hotel in Cat Ba but when we arrived at the ferry pier the boat operators would not accept the ticket. None of them had any agreements with the hotel to operate a service and so we had just spent 5 US Dollars each on a worthless piece of paper.

With no choice we paid another 5 dollars and jumped on a boat to Halong Bay feeling slightly frustrated that we were cheated out of money by an unfair and tricky hotel owner.

Our luck was up though when got on the boat and realised that we were actually surrounded by tourists who were just returning from the same two day one night tour package that we were interested in taking. The boat was a massive tourist junk.

This is what we learnt.

1. The price for the 2 day one night tour depends on your bargaining power, some poople on the trip had paid 25 USD per person and some had paid 75-95 USD per person.
2. The cheapest deals seemed to have been organised through tour operators in Hanoi. (Although no one was on the boat had tried to bargain direct with the boat owners at the pier)
3. The trip we were doing from Cat Ba Island to Halong Bay was exactly the same journey and seeing exactly the same sights as everyone else had seen the previous day. In one hour we were getting a snapshot of what the others had seen at a slower pace for the past 48 hours.

So we arrived in Halong bay having got the views and boat trip for a fraction of the price. I was not that bothered about sleeping on a boat and the tourists we spoke to who had done it were also not that bothered by the experience either. We quickly did not care that much about going back out to sea again.

Instead we got a bus to a nearby city where tourists did not exist. We spent the day exploring, drinking and eating on the streets with the locals and for 3 amazing meals and 5 beers each paid 4 US Dollars each. I'm starting to feel like the best places in Vietnam are the places less travelled on the guide books.

bx

PS: The hotel man that sold us the ticket that does not exist from Cat Ba Island was called Mr Thang and his contact number was 0914416785. His hotel is called the " Thao Minh Hotel" on "Cat Ba Island". The address of the hotel is 'Khu Trung Tam du lich Cat Ba - HP'. My advice would be not to trust either the hotel or Mr Thang in the future and hope that if people find blog entry by researching on google they avoid the place.