Majestic, mysterious, inspiring and imperious is how Lonely Planet describes it.
There are many adjectives that can be used for Halong Bay but none of them would ever do it justice.
It simply is just STUNNING.
Halong Bay is a large group of incredible islands that rise out of the emerald waters of the Gulf of Tonkin and reach for the sky. If you watched the Vietnam episode of Top Gear you may recall that this is where Jeremy Clarkson waited for the others to arrive while sipping on a beer on an isolated floating pub.
UNESCO designated this as a World Heritage site in 1994. There is a campaign to have it voted as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. We have been to the Grand Canyon and we think Halong Bay wins hands down.
We left Hanoi early this morning for the four hour non-eventful drive to Halong.
Our cruise boat was "The Emotion". There were only about 28 rooms and 50 guests. The rooms were lovely but had no TV or Wifi. Jordan and Tia were horrified, how were they going to keep themselves entertained? Brynley thought that posting the daily blog was going to be a problem. We would just have to make do by watching the scenery!
However there was a surprise - they had a birthday cake and flowers waiting for Lisa in our room. All the staff knew it was her birthday and kept wishing her happy Birthday. We found out later that Lisa had deliberately made sure they knew it was going to be her birthday when she booked the cruise. Honestly, she can be such a child sometimes!
What can we say about the views. Even though Lisa took over 200 photographs you simply have to be there to appreciate the natural beauty and scale.
We visited one of the 7 fishing villages in the bay. There are about 200 people that live in this village on floating homes. Most live their whole lives on the water without setting a foot on dry land. They have a floating primary school, temple and normal community activities.
Even pet dogs!! Jordan suspected there would be a lot of inbreeding (like Tasmania) and expected to see people with two heads.
We were the last ones on the top deck at night having a few quite beers and soaking in the scenery. It was like the Marie Celeste after 10pm. Bit spooky!!
