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…alas today was indeed the day.  We saw our first McDonald’s at an out of town shopping centre.  Didn’t get a chance to stop though.

Anyway, today was the long awaited and much anticipated trip out to Ha Long bay.  Unfortunately that meant a 6am start 🥱 

We were told that a bus would come and pick us up from our hotel at 7:15am, before travelling some 2.5 hours east of Hanoi.  At least that was the plan before rush hour traffic had its say.  If I thought the traffic was pretty bad here, the early morning rush was something else:  swarms of bikes everywhere!

The bus brought us through the town of Ha Long, which was only formed in 1994 with the amalgamation of two smaller towns:  Bai Chay and Hon Gai.  From what I can see, it basically only exists for the tourist industry servicing Ha Long Bay.  It’s all tour operators, multi-storey hotels, and colonial style buildings – think Portrush but without Barry’s or Benidorm without the booze.

Honestly Ha Long town looks like a bit of a dilapidated wreck of a place.  I think there is a reason for that – I mentioned before about the heavy flooding, but Northern Vietnam also gets a lot of hurricanes, or typhoons as they’re known here (pretty sure I got a vaccination for that before I came out here).

It appears as though a recent typhoon has left a trail of destruction (broken trees, ripped canvases and debris) through the town and they’re slowly rebuilding and tidying the place up.

In Ha Long’s marina, hundreds of cruise ships lie idle, awaiting their fresh load of tourists.  These include the Hera Boutique Cruises ship which will be our base for the next 24 hours.

Just as we’re instructed to come on board, the sound of drums can be heard.  Beside the drummers is a dragon (not a real one, probably the Vietnamese equivalent of a pantomime horse).   This is the crew’s way of welcoming us aboard. 

We are led straight to the communal dining area for welcome drinks – watermelon juice.  And watermelon it was!  

Leaving the harbour, the weather was overcast but dry, hot and humid.  Visibility wasn’t brilliant, but the passings islets turned out to be an awesome spectacle in the haze.

Ha Long Bay is another UNESCO World Heritage site, and one of the 7 natural wonders of the world.  It’s said (by the internet) that there are 1969 individual islets, and I would not want to be the man tasked with counting them!

The name Ha Long means descending dragon, and local legend tells of how a dragon and her children descended from above to defend the Viet people from invasion, spraying fire or emeralds. These jewels eventually formed the towering limestone mountains that we see today.

Since many of the islands are uninhabited, many locals live in boats, and there are floating villages with many people who have never set foot on the mainland before.

Our first activity was a visit to the surprise cave, and true to form, there were surprises aplenty.  

Here, heavy rainfall over many years has formed thousands of stalactites and stalagmites – all uniquely shaped, and some which bear a passing resemblance to other things or animals.

Can you see the elephant?

This one looks like a turtle, and because this is a sacred animal in Vietnamese culture, people come here and leave money.

I asked our tour guide Dan where this money goes and he says – the government come and take it away every now and again.

As it was raining quite hard, I had accepted the offer of a disposable emergency rain poncho.  Bad move – these things radiate heat, and it was a sauna inside.  

The rain also was causing havoc with the shiny marble steps (who honestly thought this would be a good idea)?  My trainers were slipping and sliding all over the shop.

And speaking of marble, the surprise cave is no Marble Arch.  

Next stop was Titop Island – named after Mr Titop who lived between 1935 and 2000z. Who is he?  Without any working WiFi on the ship, your guess is as good as mine!  I’ll go with army general from the Vietnam War.  

His island was wayyyy overcrowded when we arrived.  They bill this as a good spot for swimming, but unless you want to contract ecoli, I wouldn’t recommend.  The water is a thick dirty green.  One German tourist on our boat said he had measured the water quality and it was very bad.  He showed us a picture of an island of discarded plastic.  

In honour of Mr Titop, we climbed the 500 steps to the Titop of the island.  Seemingly most of the other tourists had the same idea.  It was single file and stop / start all the way up.

By now the rain was quite heavy, and that emergency poncho might have been more useful, but I’d made my bed at this point.

In fairness, despite the weather, the view from the covered bandstand at the top was impressive, but it was a real fight to get a decent view with everyone else.

Back at the bottom, and we had been told to be at the meeting point for 5pm.  We were a little early, so identified some familiar faces from our group and stayed close.  I say faces, I mean face – Phil Mitchell from Eastenders.

Anyway, long story short, I turn around and Phil is nowhere to be seen.  The tour guide Dan is now frantically running around looking for us and the rest of the group have somehow magically teleported onto the boat.  It was 2 minutes to 5!  Anyhow, we all made it back!

Evening entertainment onboard included happy hour with 3 for 2 on drinks (the waitress banned me from ordering a Fanta 😆), a cooking demonstration where we learnt how to make banh chay (floating cakes), were treated to a display of traditional Vietnamese dress, squid fishing (unsuccessful) and dinner (very successful).

After dinner we headed onto the top deck to soak up the scenery at night.  You could just make out the sky behind the mountains when dark.  The flotilla of boats moored at sea now illuminated with fairy lights, and an echo of awful karaoke carrying through the bay.

After that it was off to bed for another early start in the morning.