For the longest times, I've been seeing pictures of this amazing place in Asia, a seascape with all these small moutain islands jutting up through the mist towards the sky. I always wanted to go there - it defined Asia in my mind. I never knew where it was exactly, I just knew it was in SE Asia somewhere. Fast forward to Wednesday - we were walking around Hanoi and passed a tourism office. There was the picture of this magical place - it is called Halong Bay and it was only three hrs away!
We got up early Thursday morning for the ride there. We were the last two to be picked up so we got the back corner of the already crowded van. There were two guys in their early 20's who were Vietnamese but had been raised in Paris - they were typically French - enough said. There were also four young women from Madagascar, a woman from Japan and some folks from China. It was a long short ride - it's only about 100 miles but it took 3 and a half hours. Let's just say that the two lane road was very busy and our driver spent most of his time in the left lane, passing slower cars and tour buses. We boarded our old boat and started to make our way out into the bay.
The boat was probably elegant in its day - just not sure whether the day was in the 1800's or 1900's. There was wood tile everywhere and a giant dragon head at the front.
We kept checking for the sights as we plodded along.
The boat was loaded with characters, as you can see.
A lunch was served, which we shared with the three Shanghainese passangers. Pingle spoke Mandarin with them but didn't tell me what they were saying. It was probably something innocuous like "is this your first time here?" and stuff like that. But what I imagined are things like "does your dummy boyfriend know how to eat with chopsticks or does he eat with his paws?" It's funny how not understanding a language triggers my paranoia. No biggie, many of the 2,000 islands started to come into view and I was at the ready with my camera.
These photos cannot do this place justice. I took many and stared at them on my camera only to realize that they don't capture the beauty.
Various sizes and shapes of fishing boats floated by. I would love to spend a day fishing in these islands - I wonder what you can catch here.
Some of the islands were small and very steep. This one has a hole at the bottom that you can see through.
Many were fabulously colored.
We weren't the only boat in the bay of course. There were many out to see the sights. Some of them had sleeping quarters - you spend a few days living in the bay.
Some of the islands had beaches. This seemed to be one of the more popular, with a lot of boats parked to the side and a small house on top. If you click on this photo for a close-up look you'll see the beach.
We had a slightly different agenda on our day-long journey. We were headed to a large cave on one of the islands.
We were also scheduled for a small sea-kayaking adventure. To be honest, it's not an adventure I was looking forward to. You say sea kayak to me and all I hear is "slow death by drowning."
What a beautiful place. They are lobbying to be one of the new "seven wonders of the world." I cannot think of seven better than this. Where do I vote?
2 comments:
Sounds like heaven, floating around on a slow boat among such beautiful sights.
Sal, as much as this sounds like a cliche, it was a dream come true for me to visit this place. It is so much more beautiful in person than in pictures.
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