Today is a relatively quiet day, after breakfast (fried rice with pork and some noodles, why not eh) we board a bus to take us to Halong Bay, a 3 hour ride away. Ordinarily I don’t think anyone would be adverse to a 3 hour bus ride, it’s not the end of the world, but the roads in Vietnam have been built, let’s call it badly, let’s call it properly badly, so the experience is rather like riding a trampoline – after the initial amusement, the constant bouncing just becomes really, really annoying.
Our guide is called Hung (pronounced hoong, spelled as written – he spelled it). He’s a lovely chap who speaks English very well and knows his stuff. Around an hour and a half into the trip we stop for opprtunities to go to the loo and pick up any refreshments we might need. The shop sold a wide array of goods such as scarves, bags, ceramics, clothes etc. We pick up a few recognisable western goodies because we can, along with some spirits for good measure to make our boat trip pass more smoothly. A really rather bad taste comment is made entirely innocently, but you’ll have to ask me about that personally.
Once at what I suppose you might call the harbour of Halong Bay we are immediately onto a boat, which at first is a frightening prospect. We are to spend the next 24 hours on this boat, and this one appears to only have seating room on a main deck. Relieved to discover this boat only transfers us to our actual boat moored further out, we hop aboard and get settled. The boat is much more comfortable than any of us imagine, with cosy dining area and casual seating indoors and a roof terrace on top with benches, reclining chairs and sun loungers.
Halong Bay itself is magnificent. It consists of over 2000 islands, most of which have been named. Personally I think thy are cheating a bit – any rock formation, no matter how big or small or what shape or size, counts as an island. As a result there are lots of “islands” which are just small areas of rock sticking out above the ocean. It is a beautiful sight to see, and though mist and fog prevented great long distance visibility, this kind of created a bit of mysticysm which made the whole place feel a little bit magic. Our boat weaved in and out of the islands past floating villages where people maiy live by fishing and selling it to the mainland.
Lunch is served on the boat almost as soon as we board it and we are all very impressed, apart from Darren and Barry due to a minor misunderstanding. They crew had been informed that two of our number were not hugely keen on fish, so if they could avoid giving Barry and Darren fish that would be great. When lunch arrived we were served a delightful array of seafood including prawns and crab, but, technically, no actual swimmy swimmy fish. Good as the staff were they shuttled off to prepare something a bit more palatable for those gents. Sadly it seems the request for no fish for two turned into no fish for anyone, and given the nature of this particular excursion I would have liked to have seen what they would knock up for us.
We eventually arrive at a part of the bay where there is a pearl farm. The folks here make their living by pulling oysters from the sea bed and turning the pearls into items of interest. We’re not allowed too close because we may disturb they oysters with the boat, so after taking in the sights and appreciating the windlessness of the cove in which the farm lives, we about turn and set off for the Surprising Cave.
Initially we wern’t overly fussed about seeing another cave as the couple that we’d seen previously were not wildly impressive on their own, it was more the significance of them and their meaning that made them special. However, the suprising caves are well named. They (if I’m honest I’m not sure if it’s one or more than one cave) occupy a vast underground area full of incredible stalactites and stalagmites which have formed in the limestone, the rooves of the caves being more than 10 metres high in some places. They were discovered by a fisherman in (I think) the 17th centuary and are now a fully fledged tourist attraction. Hung shows us many different rock formations which have been spotted to look like different animals or situations or faces etc. The surprise for me was that we would be in one area which was amazing, then we would crouch through a small alleyway and out into another vast cave which was even more impressive than the last. The people who have turned the caves into an attraction have done a great job, the lighting is very well done and certainly adds to the experience.
After visiting the caves which takes around an hour, we jump back onto our waiting boat and head for a point in the bay which we are allowed to drop anchor and stop for the night. Once stopped our crew turns to serving dinner which is another lovely and huge meal (forgot to mention that lunch just never stopped coming – as soon as we thought we were done, more arrived – brilliant it was). The dietary requests are all satisfied this time.
Once the evening settles down we have a few drinks and crack open the cards. Gaynor teaches us to play Chase the Lady (though I think Barry called it slimey meg) and I quickly recognise it to be the PC card game Hearts, with some subtle rule differnces just as any card game has. Whilst Darren, Rafa and Barry play chess, the remainder play cards, with the game being entirely new to all but Gaynor and I. On the first practice go Steven pulls the perfect hand capturing all hearts and the queen of spades, before the meaning of this has even been explained to anyone (idea of game is to keep low score, pulling that hand earns you 0 whilst all others gain 150 points). By the end of the game Gaynor is the eventual winner having had several zero rounds. Once he had been beaten a few times at chess (turns out Barry is a very good player) Darren pops over to learn to play the game and we have another quick round before bedtime.
It was a very relaxing evening, with good food, great scenery, good background music, the boat spinning slowly on its anchor, drink flowing and a couple of good sociable games going on. Tomorrow we return to Hanoi.