Ha Long Bay
I booked with a tour for 3days/2nights to sail around the pillar islands of Ha long Bay. They were spectacular. The highlights of the tour for me were Kayaking and riding mountain a bike into the heart of one of the larger islands.
The Kayaking is fairly straight-forward; paddling along side cliffs and through caves where the water has eaten away at narrow bits of cliffs.
On the bikes we only had a couple of tough little hills. We followed the bottoms of cliffs and through a cave where your eyes don’t have enough time to adjust to the darkness before you come back out the other side – riding on faith that there are no stones or pot-holes in the path. Once inside we rode a while until we came upon an entire village that lives there in the middle of cliffs. They have a large flat area for growing rice in the centre and around the edges of the rice paddies are other crops. We had to ride back out the way we came in – single entrance village.
Luckily I got my cabin / room to myself. I paid for twin share but the other singles on the tour had all paid for rooms to themselves – bonus for me!! In our group we were 5 Aussies, 3 Kiwis, a Finnish couple and an Irish couple. We all got along quite well and purely by accident all the Aussies ended up having dinner together after we got back to Ha Noi.
I know I am just glossing over all this – don’t have much time. At least you are half-way updated. Next installment – Sa Pa.
Tags: Ha Long Bay, kayaking, Travel, Vietnam
mjb
One Blue Dragon has buds. That bay and the islands looks amazing.
Looking forward to next installment.
Whoops, please correct my grammar.