Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island

Normally, we would prefer not to join tours. In this case though, we were glad we did. Trying to visit Halong Bay independently would have been far more complicated and we suspect, less rewarding. Instead, we enjoyed the best of both worlds by joining a tour through the famous bay and visiting Cat Ba island on our own. Through our helpful guesthouse, we organised to spend 2 days and 1 night on a tourist "Junk" (Big Chinese looking wooden boat with funky orange sails) and a couple days on Cat Ba Island, the biggest and only inhabited island, before being taken back to Hanoi.

Halong Bay is all that people say and should not be missed. It is probably the most beautiful scenery we have seen on this trip to this point and will be hard to top. As our ship was quietly gliding through the tranquil silver waters, finding a path between the hundreds of vertical karstic formations, a french woman was pacing the top deck, soaking it in and repeating in a quiet voice, over and over "ce que c'est beau, oh la la, mais ce que c'est beau..." Her simple words summed it up as sometimes this kind of beauty just needs to be looked at, admired, taken in rather than explained.

Towards sunset, a predictably beautiful time, we all boarded kayaks and went for a quick paddle around some of the islands. We then had a surprisingly feastish dinner, followed by a couple beers with a lovely Swedish couple with whom we exchanged tips and travel stories. They had somehow managed to save up enough money to go on a gigantic trip around the world including S.E.Asia, China, Tibet, Everest Base Camp, Japan and a few other places by working in Norwegian supermarkets for 6 months...Apparently it pays to work in Norway. At a somewhat embarassingly early hour, we all retreated to our lovely little cabins from which talking of a view of the water would be a slight understatement.

Around 10am the next morning, we were dropped off on Cat Ba Island. As our "tour" was then interrupted until we were ready to be picked up from the island, there was a bit of confusion as to what to do with us exactly and we somehow ended up joining the group on a short but steep walk up to the highest point on the island. The view was pretty good although, surprisingly, we could not see any water around. After the trek, we were taken into the centre where we quickly found a guesthouse and started walking around.

Life in Cat Ba is full of contrasts as on one hand, the area around the town is slowly but surely being covered by fancy resorts and ugly hotels, while the rest of the island remains home to a number of small fishing villages scattered around. The main specialties are seafood and Nuoc Mam (fermented fish sauce) as well as pearls although they are of low quality. The town market is full of fresh fish, crabs and squids as well as all of those things in dehydrated form including starfish, cute seahorses and stretched out lizards. We spent a whole day driving around the island on a scooter. We figured that it would be one of our last chances so we made the most of it and had a great time driving up the coast and down through the centre. We finished the day by going to the beach where the water was surprisingly fresh and wavy.

The next morning, we got back on the boat and slowly made our way back to Halong city before catching a bus to Hanoi. The feeling I had was a bit like going home after a week-end away, looking out the window as the outline of the freakish rocks became fainter and fainter until they disappeared completely and we were back in our river of scooters.