Ha Long Bay, September 2017

Today I arranged with my hostel to go to Ha Long Bay with Wati Travel, Ha Long Bay is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and a landmark well known to Vietnam. 
I booked a one day tour for $65/£47 which included transport to and from Ha Long Bay, lunch, boat ride through caves or you have the option to kayak if you want. Also a tour of a stalagmite and stalactite cave. 


You can also visit Ha Long Bay for 1 or 2 nights. I'm not sure what those tours would include or what else you would see. Personally I think 1 day is enough but if you want to spend a night on a boat then you have the option to stay overnight. 


I was picked up at 7:45am and we left Hanoi at 9am by the time we had picked up the other passengers. There were 25 of us totally. It's a 3 hour journey to get to the Ha Long Bay marina, we had a pit stop half way there so the journey took 3.5 hours in the end. 


We arrived at the marina at 12:30pm and got on our boat. Pretty soon after we boarded we were served lunch which consisted of 10 dishes including cucumber salad, chips, fish, stir fried chicken, spring rolls, prawns, squid, morning glory, rice and fresh fruit. Weirdly drinks aren't included so if you wanted soft drinks, water or beer you had to buy that separately. 
The lunch was delicious and you got a lot of it. 


After about 15 minutes we were allowed to go on the deck and take photos. We then arrived at a port where you could either get on a boat that the local people would steer or you could kayak through the caves. I went for the former. There are 4/5 people on a boat, I ended up getting on a boat with 3 Australians who seemed nice enough. 


After the little boat ride we got back on the big boat to the next activity which was a tour of the Heaven Palace Cave which is a cave of stalagmites and stalactites. It's quite large and cool as these sorts of caves are. We had a tour guide who told us various facts and info about Ha Long Bay and Vietnam throughout the day. 


We then headed back to the marina and got the bus back to Hanoi. I arrived at around 8pm, grabbed some dinner and had a drink with Nelly a girl I was sharing a room with at my hostel. 

I packed up my things and hit the hay as had to be up at 3:45am the next day for my next flight.

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