9th Feb 2010: Ha Long Bay, Viet Nam

Ha Long Bay. I had been looking forward to this day since I saw my first poster of Ha Long Bay many years ago as a young teenager. The one with all the grand limestone rocks emerging from the emerald green water with a beautiful boat serenely drifting down the middle of it all. This was definitely a day that I hoped would live up to expectations, and in a lot of ways it did.
We started the day in a bit of a foul mood as we had to traipse all the way down to the travel agent with our heavy rucksacks at 7 in the morning, only to find that there was no one there, although the door was unlocked. As Leon went off on a mission to find us breakfast, I sat in the office thinking that my worst nightmare had come true, that is, that we had been part of a scandal, paid the money for the Ha Long Bay trip, only for the agent to have run off with it and here we were, left in the dark with no means of visiting the Bay. Fortunately my paranoia was just that, as 30 minutes later the man did show up and a little while later so did the minibus to take us down to Ha Long City.
As is very much the norm in South East Asia, our minibus did the rounds at all the guesthouses and hotels picking up more people for the trip and packing us all in like sardines in a tin. However, this didn’t stop us from feeling the excitement as we approached Ha Long Bay, nor did the dark clouds and grey sky that were looming, After disembarking we were put into two groups and luckily for us, Leon and I were put in a group of people who were really fun, down to earth and were overall a great crowd to spend a night on the boat with.
We boarded our boat and even though it wasn’t as luxurious as the brochure suggested (they never are anyway), it was a little bit like a pirate ship with a Vietnamese crew who were pretty much like modern day mercenaries, so all in all we were very happy indeed. Although the sun wasn’t out, the views were as spectacular as I imagined. Huge pinnacles of limestone were randomly dotted about in the sea and as we meandered through them, we were also served a hearty lunch of fish, vegetables, chicken, spring rolls and fruit which was much needed after the long journey there. To break up the day, we were dropped off at some spectacular caves in which there were some stalagmites resembling Margaret Thatcher, as well as one that looked a lot like a woman’s breast. After lots of picture taking we went back to the boat and just chilled by playing cards and having a few drinks whilst taking in the views. We retired to our little cabin after some supper and more cards, ready for the next day which we were told would involve some sea kayaking at 6 am!