a weekend on halong bay

After spending a week inside a sterile phone exchange, it was time to escape outside. A tour to Halong Bay was booked for us by one of the local engineers. It turned out to be a very good choice! Although it was fairly expensive as far as Halong tours go, we were outside the area of extreme tourism numbers. Sure there were still other boats and people around but it wasn't too bad. Halong bay has many many limestone islands and at this time of year is cloaked in misty fogs.

Many battles have been won by the Vietnamese here, and I can understand why - it'd be very easy to hide amongst the islands and channels. More on that later. The bay also supports a whole bunch of fishing and industrial shipping:

In 1994, UNESCO classified the site as a "world heritage site", the Vietnamese people seem to be very proud of this. Unfortunately the combination of people living on the water, industrial uses, and tourism means the bay is polluted with rubbish. As part of the world heritage listing, the fishermen were ejected from the caves that they lived in. I'm not sure how long they had been living in the caves - maybe only since the Vietnam war, any longer than that and I would have thought that would have been part of the heritage. Anyway, when they were banned from living in the caves, UNESCO and the park management built them floating houses:

Overnight we slept on the boat, it was very comfortable! I had a king sized bed, and my own en-suite. All the islands in the bay ensure it is very protected from the any bad weather in the gulf, hence I couldn't detect any motion while sleeping (the boat had anchored too). In the morning the sun was shining through the clouds. I'd been in Vietnam for 7 days, and it was the first time I'd seen the sun! February through April in Northern Vietnam is characterised by its overcast days, and it was certainly living up to that. The bay looked even better with a bit of sunshine. Here's a photo of the sunrise that I managed to fall out of bed for:

The second day of the tour took us to one of the 300 known caves in the bay. This one was particularly big, and was used as a hospital in the Vietnam war. The bay itself has been used as a defensive position against ancient attacks by the Chinese and Mongolians. In the Vietnam war it was heavily bombed by the American forces because they knew there munition supplies stored in the caves. The caves provided enough protection however. The caves were explored by the French in the early 1900's as well. The following photo shows a mix of French and Vietnamese graffiti. Enlarge the photo to see the dates more clearly; 1901, 1906, 1907 and 1911 are all visible (although 1906 is partly obscured).

The tour included all our meals, which were quite nice. They provided us with many dishes per meal, which was great way to sample a range of local stuff. Some of the dishes I'd had with the local engineers during the week, but some were new. Sautéed squid is nice : )

The tour wrapped up at midday, and it took about 4 hours to drive back to Hanoi - of which I mostly slept. Sitting on a boat all weekend really takes it out of a wayfarer. More photos are in my Picasa album too, so have a browse around that. There's a really good one Mark took of an eagle. Mark's photos can be found on his Yahoo album.