JAG Journeys: Halong Bay

Vietnam Trip ~ Days 11-13

July 23-25, 2012

We got up early in the morning on Monday, had the free breakfast our hostel provided, and then used the computers in the lobby while we waited for our bus to arrive to take us to our tour of Halong Bay. It was supposed to arrive around 8 a.m., but was late. After waiting for about fifteen minutes, one of the men working at the hostel sat down at the computer beside me that Jonathan had just vacated. He looked up something on Google Translate and then told us, "I don't think you can go to Halong Bay today."' We were confused and asked why. He said the tour company had called and said there was a thunderstorm there. I looked at the computer he was using and he had looked up the word 'storm.' So then we had to figure out what to do instead of going on our tour. We looked up the weather for the Halong Bay area and it said it was supposed to be stormy all week until next Sunday. We didn't really want to just stay in Hanoi until our flight back down to Saigon, so we decided to just get a public bus to Halong City and at least see the bay from shore if we couldn't go out sailing on it. We got a refund for our trip and the lady at the front desk was sad we weren't able to go. She said that we could do a 2 day/1 night trip tomorrow if the weather was better, but we didn't really want to sit around for an extra day and then just have the weather not cooperate for us. So we got a taxi ride to the bus station. The taxi driver didn't actually know where the station was since it was quite a ways from the Old Quarter (I guess not too many tourists use the public buses since most get tours out to Halong Bay). He stopped twice to ask other taxi and motorcycle taxi drivers where the station was. Finally we arrived and then had an easy time buying tickets.

The bus trip was about 4.5 or 5 hours and some of it was in rain, especially the nearer we got to the bay. When we got close, the bus stopped and we had to get out and take motorcycle taxis the 5 remaining km to Halong City. We hurriedly dug our raincoats and pack covers out and put them on, then hopped on the bikes. Soon after we got to the hotel, the rain stopped! We got a hotel near the shore and then wandered around looking at the small city. After we ate supper, we walked down the main street in Halong City and came to a tour company. We went in and asked the lady about a tour of the bay and she told us about a couple options we could have if the weather got better. Since we couldn't go on a 3 day/2 night tour anymore we decided a 2 day/1 night would be nice. She said to come by the office by noon the next day to see if the weather would allow us to go.

When we got back to our hotel that evening we looked through the tour book that our hotel had at the front desk. It looked like a good tour, too, and it had a nice itinerary. We didn't know which one to take, so early Tuesday morning Jonathan walked back to the tour company to ask the lady there for the itinerary of that trip. It turned out that the weather wasn't good enough for going on a trip that day either, and we asked the man at our hotel, too, but he said his tour wasn't going either. So we spent the day just relaxing and didn't do too much. We did change hotels, though, to a hotel mentioned in our guidebook. We didn't really appreciate the man at the first hotel since he was quite pushy to try to get us to do what he thought we should do and also seemed a little too interested and snoopy in our plans. We didn't like that very much, so we switched to a hotel a few buildings down the street. It rained really hard in the afternoon and we spent most of it indoors watching some TV. In the evening we went back outdoors and walked around a bit, and then had supper before turning in for the night.

Wednesday morning we got up and ready to head out by 7:45. Jonathan tried calling the tour company on the phone in our room, but it didn't work so we went downstairs to call from the lobby. The lady told us that there was no tour in the morning, but we should come to her office just before noon and we could go on an afternoon tour that was coming from Hanoi. So we were happy we'd at least get to see some of the bay before we had to leave that area and go back to Hanoi. We walked along the shore in the late morning and took some pictures of the cloudy bay from the beach and dock. Then we headed to the tour company. They confirmed that we could, in fact, go on the tour and we were excited to finally explore a bit of the bay. We had a quick lunch at a restaurant across the street, where we could see the tour company from the restaurant windows. After two days of waiting we didn't want to accidentally miss the tour!

After lunch, we waited for a while at the tour company and finally one of the workers got a taxi and brought us out to the ferry dock. He showed us where to join our group and then we were with them for the rest of the afternoon. We just saw a small part of the bay, but it was quite amazing to see such huge limestone karsts jutting steeply out of the water all over the place! We visited a floating village and got rides in small boats around that area. Then we went farther around that group of islands and finally ended up at a cave that we walked through before heading back to the harbour. The trip took us about three and a half hours in total, not what we'd initially planned, but it was certainly better than not being able to go out in the bay at all. In the end, we decided that we'll have to come back here sometime and spend a good amount of time just in this northern area to see more of the bay and the other two bays that are nearby and less popular with tourists.

We were able to get the shuttle bus back to Hanoi with our group so it was much nicer and faster than taking a public bus like we had to get out to Halong City. It took us about three and a half hours with a half an hour stop for bathrooms, and looking at a souvenir shop.

So Mother Nature definitely had her own plans for the last few days of our trip. Hopefully we'll be able to come back and visit northern Vietnam again, though, to spend a little bit more time in this area.