Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island, Vietnam

Towards the end of our stay in Hanoi, Vietnam, we booked a three day, two night tour of Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay is well known for it’s beautiful limestone islands scattered throughout the turquoise bay. This largely uninhabited area has been the focal point of many a movie scenes – my first view of the islands was actually via the most recent “King Kong” (Kong: Skull Island) that has shown on an English station at some point on every continent we’ve visited so far 😂. The grey stones surrounded by the blue waters, covered in the emerald greens – it’s quite a sight!

We originally were planning to book the tour through one of the hundreds of tourist companies in the area, but lucked up and found a deal online for significantly cheaper. Though we thought we were booking a tour in which we would spend one night on a boat in the middle of the bay and a second night on Cat Ba Island (one of the larger islands in the bay), both nights ended up being on the island, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

The company we booked with, Fantasea Cruises, sent a bus to pick us up in Hanoi and we traveled to Ha Long alongside a jam packed bus of fellow tourists. We assumed the rest of our days would look similar to this, but as it turned out, Kirk and I were the only two people who had booked with Fantasea for this day. When they dropped us off at the dock, we boarded a small cruiser where the two person staff catered only to us for the rest of the day – pretty fantastic!

We lounged on the Astro turf covered boat deck, talking and laughing, sipping on tea while snapping pictures of the beauty around us.

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The cloud cover made the sea breeze feel especially chilly on this 70 degree day!

Taken on the upper deck of the boat

A view around the lower deck/inside of our empty boat 🙂

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Many of our first views of the bay were filled with brightly colored communities! Though most of the tiny limestone islands have little to offer other than beautiful views, these fish filled waters have several communities of colorful houseboats with pearl/oyster farmers throughout. If you look close you can see restaurants, markets, and laundry hanging out to dry. They live their lives on the water.

Houseboats

One of us together 🙂

It was beautiful how the water had eroded the bottom of many of the islands over time.

Many of the islands look as if they are floating due to the erosion on the bottom.

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They served us a mini buffet for lunch! It was so lovely to sit and eat with those beautiful views outside the window!

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Because Kirk and I were the only two on our boat, we were able to have greater input in what our day entailed. We opted for the kayaking in the “caves” and a visit to Monkey Island. First, kayaking.

We hopped in the kayak and began paddling towards the caves, but after experiencing my first timer steering skills, Kirk said he would just paddle for us 😂. (I did eventually help again towards the end, and I think it was better! 😂)

As we were paddling we took note of the immense amount of trash around us – we’d seen a lot from the big boat, but it’s even more noticeable when it’s right next to you! It’s so sad that this beautiful area isn’t being better taken care of!

—The first “cave.” There wasn’t much to them, but they were still beautiful to kayak through.

Because we only took the water camera with us (and it doesn’t take great quality pictures), this is the only picture of the inside of the caves that turned out. The video below gives a pretty good view though!

There is not picture to describe it, but as we came out on the other side of the cave we found ourselves enveloped in silence. We had entered into a protected bay where the hum of the boats disappeared, and only the occasional bird overhead could be heard. We floated in the kayak listening to nothing and taking in the beauty around us for several minutes before kayakers on the other side of the cave came into view. It was a beautiful moment!

A second view of one of the caves

My sturdy paddler 🙂

The second activity we chose was a stop on Monkey Island. We’d been told there was some hiking here alongside a chance to see monkeys, and that sounded like more fun than swimming since we knew we’d soon have other opportunities for that. As soon as we stepped off the boat onto the sandy shore, the monkeys came into view. We hesitated to approach them (monkeys can be quite mean!), but our boat host handed us each a pack of nuts and told us to feed them, so we went for it.

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It was a strange experience feeding monkeys. I think I first felt strange because I am so used to seeing signs that say, “Don’t Feed the Animals,” that I couldn’t help but wonder if these nuts were actually good for them. Alongside that thought, I was also readily aware that monkeys are wild animals and will do what they want (including running into the patio of the restaurant next to us, sneaking up behind a woman eating mango, snatching the mango out of her hand right before it got to her mouth, and running away abruptly). Finally, and perhaps the strangest feeling of all, I felt the monkey’s hand. You hear people talk about how similar to humans monkeys are, but there was a moment when one of the larger monkeys grabbed my hand to get the food, and it was so human like that it freaked me out a bit. The monkey had hand the size of a small child, but the grip of a grown man, and though a bit calloused, the skin on his hands felt more like my hands than (my only comparision) the pads on the paws of a cat or dog. If anything I would have expected his hands to feel more like my feet – a bit calloused from walking around in flip flops, but his hands were actually quite smooth. I don’t know why this surprised me so much, but for that brief moment, I was taken aback.

This is a picture of the monkey that grabbed me – who was also the monkey who stole mango from the woman at the restaurant 😂

After feeding the monkeys we headed towards the hiking area. As it turned out, it was a hike nearly straight up! I thought we’d gone nearly straight up at points in our Patagonia hike, but this put that to shame. There were several places that if I weren’t holding on with my hands, I would have fallen straight back because there was no ledge for our feet, only small grooves to get you to the top of the next rock. My little legs didn’t make it as far as Kirk, but we still got a great view!

The highest point I made it to 🙂

The same look out, but without us in it. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but the tops of the islands layered on forever!

The view from the top, where Kirk made it to!

A picture of me at my highest point, taken by Kirk from the top 🙂

This was some of the easier part of the climb – it was more like big stairs! And yes, since we thought this would be a leisurely walk, we only had our flip flops! Mine ended up pretty chopped up on the bottom from the rocks in the picture below and above this one.

This isn’t the path we took, but it is the type of rocks we climbed on. Our flip flops and hands gripped pretty easily onto these gnarly rocks, shaped by rain, but yeah, I tried not to think about what would happen if we slipped! In spite of that, aren’t they beautiful??

Us towards the bottom of the trail.

Back on the beach, about to board this boat to take us to our larger boat.

Monkey Island beach – the rocks we climbed up were on that hill.

Back on the boat, going back through the house boat community. I don’t know what the metal thing Kirk is holding is for, but I think it looks like he’s going to play tennis :). The sun finally greeted us at the end of the day!

When we arrived back at the dock they took us to our hotel, which ended up being one of the nicest places we’ve stayed – king sized bed, huge room, private balcony, and all meals included. I don’t know what the rooms on the boat would have been like, but we were very happy to be in this one for two nights. We were also able to explore Cat Ba island a bit, which we also appreciated.

A picture from the “boardwalk”/park near the pier on Cat Ba.

A close up of a boat seen from the boardwalk – note the laundry drying!

We went to the local market and saw all kinds of interesting foods – dried fish, dried starfish (not like a collectible “shell” starfish, but dehydrated, ready to eat), above is a bag of dried snake!

At night, restaurants on the water lit up. You had to take a small boat from the dock to reach them.

Our second day of the tour they took us to the local national park for some hiking. This hike was also mostly up (all with stairs), but ended up having a beautiful view of the hills on Cat Ba Island. They ended up mixing us with a larger group of tourists this day, which turned out to be a good thing, because the other people in the group were the only things between us and our middle aged male tour guide, who was clearly interested in Kirk 😂. With very little English, not caring I was there, this man flirted shamelessly the entire hike – fanning Kirk as he walked, touching Kirk’s arms and tummy, and at one point, taking the opportunity to rub a balm on Kirk’s legs after I got stung by a bee (the balm was for bee stings, and he rubbed it on Kirk first!). In the picture below, I’m cracking up about it – Kirk was less amused :). There were several other guys on the tour, but the guide ignored them!

The next day, we ended up hearing numerous stories of other tourists being hit on throughout Vietnam. Apparently it’s a pretty common occurrence, especially amongst “stockier” men!

Us at the highest point we reached! Look at those layers of mountains!!

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I love how the mountains here peak! It’s so different than other places we’ve been. There is no single peak, but many rolling and pointy peaks throughout the spread of the land. It creates a unique landscape as the differently shaped peaks layer behind each other.

We spent the rest of the day exploring more around town and buying some souvenirs. I got myself some pearls :). Our final day they put us back on a boat where we saw our final views of the island. They put us on a bus and 4 hours later, we were back in Hanoi. We spent one night there (and ate our last bowl of our favorite Bun Cha) before heading to Hue, home of the old Imperial City. That’s the topic of the next blog 🙂