Vietnam - Ha Long Bay

Early Thursday morning our driver picked us up for the trip to Ha Long Bay. While it's advertised as a 3-hour drive, it took us almost 4 hours to get there. Friends recommended we spend a couple nights on Ha Long Bay because we wouldn't be in a hurry to make the return drive. They were right. While we didn't have the same motorbike traffic as in the city, our driver spent much of the trip driving on the wrong side of the road to pass vehicles in our path. Of course, we never went faster than about 40 mph on the highway the entire time so he wasn't in too big of a hurry but it was still a little hair-raising.

We mostly saw farmland along the way with many rice fields and also several plots with leafy vegetables. We watched farmers in their conical straw hats drive ox carts through the fields, as if we had been taken back in time 100 years. In those same fields we spotted cemeteries and in some cases, there were just a couple grave stones in the middle of a rice paddy. I suppose it made sense to bury people where they had labored their entire lives.

While visiting Vietnam and eating the delicious food, I was impressed at how self-sufficent the country was with food. The climate allows them to grow their own vegetables, rice and fruit. They have enough land for animals and their position next to the water provides fresh seafood. Everything we ate during our trip came from Vietnamese land and water, which is refreshing compared to Singapore where there is no room to grow anything other than a few orchids.

After a break at a tourist trap selling overpriced souvenirs, we arrived in Ha Long City around noon and proceeded to board our junk, the Princess IV. There are over 100 boats that offer overnight experiences on Ha Long Bay and we chose a junk from the Indochina Junk Company because it has a license to cruise a different part of the bay, providing a more private view of the stunning scenery.

Ha Long City

Our private junk had a crew of 5 men -- the captain, engineer, cook, waiter and our guide named Qyet, pronounced like "quit." While the boat had 2 large sails, they were merely for decoration as all the junks on the bay are motorized. Qyet gave us a quick tour of the junk where we were shown our cabin, the "outdoor restaurant" (a table out on deck), the "indoor restaurant" (small dining table next to our cabin) and the sun deck on the top of the junk offering the best views of the bay.

Princess IV

Our first activity was lunch and it was an elaborate event. Our waiter brought us seafood soup, salad, clams, prawns, crab, fish stir-fry, rice and fruit for dessert. We didn't expect quite so many courses at lunch. We tried the local beer, Halida, which was good but we liked Bia Hanoi back in the city better. The meal was delicious and Brian quickly became attached to the remote control the crew gave us to ring them at any time on the junk, like when he desired another beverage. :)

We spent the afternoon on the sun deck admiring the view. Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is located in the Gulf of Tonkin and features over 1,600 islands that create gorgeous limestone pillars emerging from clear blue-green water.

Cruising the Bay

Ha Long Bay

Our junk anchored in late afternoon so we could kayak around the nearby islands and watch the sunset. Qyet led the way while sharing information about the local culture and his own childhood in Ha Long City. Several times he spoke about the "venomous" people who lived in the floating villages and fished daily for their livelihood. Confused at first, I figured out Qyet was just talking about "Vietnamese" people and Brian and I laughed about it later because he had been perplexed about those venomous people as well.

Our dinner consisted of another seven courses of local cuisine and afterwards, we realized there wasn't much to do on a boat anchored in the middle of a bay in the dark with no television or internet access. So, after a few games on the iPad, we were done for the night. I will undoubtedly remember our time at Ha Long Bay for its natural beauty and for 10+ hours of uninterrupted sleep I had each night on the junk. It felt like vacation!

Friday morning we were greeted with cooler, cloudier weather and I was hesitant to have breakfast for fear the waiter would bring out noodle soup, a traditional Vietnamese breakfast. Unlike my husband who now ventures to the Asian section of the breakfast buffet, I have not warmed up to the idea of eating rice and noodles at the beginning of the day. Thankfully we ate fried eggs, about a dozen slices of white bread toast and bacon.

I showered after breakfast and learned the hard way the water heater on board only had a capacity of 10 liters. After my brisk shower, we boarded a bamboo boat and visited the Cong Dam fishing village nearby. 160 people live there permanently in floating houses while fishing daily. These villages exist because years ago it wasn't practical for fishermen to return to land from the far reaches of the bay so they opted to live on the water instead. The Vietnamese government would like to encourage the end of floating villages but it has become a way of life for the fishermen's families. The children even attend a floating school until the age of 10 and then most will follow in their parents' footsteps because they have not been educated to do anything else.

Floating Fishing Village

Each village has a chief who communicates with the mainland so the village is aware of weather conditions. Boats from Ha Long City arrive daily to collect the fish from each village as well. And by opening up the floating village to tourism, the village receives money and educational support from the tour companies.

The Cong Dam Village Chief greeted us with candy, green tea and a glass jar of rice wine infused with honeycomb. The chief smiled as he explained the drink would make men "very strong." What made it questionable was that the bees were still in the honeycomb inside the jar. Of course the chief poured us each a small glass of the bee mixture and not wanting to offend him, we drank it. The honey made the drink somewhat sweet and thank goodness neither of us had to drink a bee.

Honeycomb Wine

We also noticed several dogs in the village and Qyet shared that fishermen keep dogs as pets and described the floating village pets as "lucky dogs" because unlike most Vietnamese, the fishermen will not eat dog meat. Lucky dogs, indeed.

The homes in the floating village were kept afloat with styrofoam blocks and since they were not connected to each other, small bamboo boats shuttled people between them. Children Megan's age were paddling the boats around the village and we visited the new school house, recently built after the previous school was destroyed by a typhoon last year. We visited a floating house, where an altar for prayer was the focal point of the living room. Directly below the altar was a television, which our guide described as being important to the villagers for news and weather reports. Karaoke was also a popular form of entertainment in the village.

Village Children in Front of New School

It was hard for me to imagine people living their entire lives on water in a remote location but in terms of scenery, they had chosen well. I'm glad we were able to visit the village because it was so different than anything I had ever seen.

By the time we returned to our boat, the cook had already set up a grill on the beach for our lunch. We enjoyed a tasty beach barbecue with pork ribs, chicken wings, grilled fish and prawns before returning to the junk for an afternoon of cruising. Late afternoon we explored limestone caves on an island and then had a brief kayak session in the choppy water before happily returning to the warmth of our cabin.

We enjoyed our last extensive dinner on the junk Friday night and the following morning we bid farewell to the crew and made the drive back to Hanoi. We relished our time on Ha Long Bay and a private junk made the experience feel like a second honeymoon for us. It was the perfect destination for a romantic getaway!