Halong Bay

Helmut and i are just back from our 3 day/2 night tour of Halong Bay. This was definitely one of the highlights of our trip so far. 

Halong Bay is crawling with outfits that will take you out to see this Unesco World Heritage site,

 but after a TON of research, we decided to go with Indochina-Junk company.

The reason for this is because it's the only company that goes further out into Bai Tu Long Bay as well. 

Our boat

It was a bit more expensive, but completely worth it and was a once in a lifetime thing that we will never forget.

Indochina-Junks have a fleet of boats ranging from 1 cabin to something like 22 cabins. 

We were on a boat with 4 cabins called the Prince 3 which was great! It was very intimate and while there weren't as many cruise-shippy activities like Karaoke and early morning tai chi, it was better because we aren't keen on doing those things and hanging out with a ton of tourists anyway. 

Halong bay is about 930 sq miles and contains about 2000 islands which are small limestone karsts that jut out of the water.

The scenery was breathtaking. 

The view from our cabin room was amazing and waking up to this every morning made the tour worth every penny.

It rained for a fair amount of the time we were there but it was light rain mostly and we went kayaking anyway.

We would occasionally come across fishermen who lived on these small boats and pretty much did nothing but fish all day.

The ones in the smaller boats would row with their feet to free their hands for casting nets.

The boat crew was amazing! 

The food was to die for 

and on the last day, the chef carved a bunch of amazing sculptures out of fruits and vegetables.

This was a sculpture of our boat!

Helmut and i are not the type to go on organized tours (unless it's absolutely necessary), but this is really the only way you can see this place. 

There are cheaper companies to go with but none of those venture out as far as Indochina-junk does. There were very few boats out where we were...all of them from the same company.

Bai Tu Long Bay at Dusk.

 This in contrast to the other tours that stayed in the main part of Halong bay with 100's of other boats. 

Overall, we had a great time and both felt that this experience was worth the money. But towards the end, they took us to this fishing village and a pearl farm that was just as touristy as it comes. 

They shuttled us to a row boat 

And they rowed us to see these "authentic floating fisherman houses"

We got off the boat for a short while and walked around and saw a little school and a fish farm. There were items you could buy but no one was interested.

Then we got back on the boat and rowed around a bit more. We ended up at a pearl farm where they showed us the process of cultivating pearls. At the end we were dumped off into a store where one could buy pearl jewelry.

Even after we came ashore, the touristy stuff didn't end! The van on the way back stopped at the Yen Duc village water puppet show that was super cheesy and lame.

evidently the tour companiy needed as many "authentically cultural" activities as possible to justify the steep price they charge. Thankfully it was only about 15 minutes.

If the rest of the tour hadn't been super outstanding, i would be inclined to call Halong bay a tourist trap. But the kayaking and stunning scenery made up for this blatant attempt to separate tourists from their money.