Ha Long Bay–Land of 10,000 Photos

Hung, our Hanoi guide, picked us up from the train station at 5:45 a.m., and after checking us into a hotel for 2 hours for showers and breakfast, we hit the road for 3 1/2 hours to drive to Ha Long Bay, located on the Gulf of Tonkin, with more than 1,000 limestone islands, none inhabited, all steep and spectacular. We boarded a wooden junk called Jasmine along with 40 other tourists and headed out for an overnight journey on the water.

The water was shallow, turquoise and warm.

In the afternoon we boarded a small tender and went to a grotto on one of the islands for a look at some archaeological sites, stalactites and stalagmites.

After the grotto, the tender took us to a floating village, Cua Van, where 120 floating homes and 600+ people live year-round, fishing and showing tourists their way of life.

 

The floating village has its own tiny land-based Buddhist temple for prayers and worship.

We boarded a sampan (hand-made grass and tar rowboat), two tourists in each sampan, which was rowed by a local all around the floating village to see the homes, people, their school, and the “grocery store boat” that brings them food for purchase.

 

Even very young children scamper over the boats and docks without life vests, seemingly unsupervised, and we imagine, but don’t know, that they must learn to swim very early.

“Jasmine”, the boat on which we spent the night.

This morning we were transported to a small island where we had the opportunity to climb 418 steps to the top to observe the Bay and scenery from on high.

Overall this constituted a highlight of the trip so far, beautiful scenery viewed from the open-air  deck, with a cold beer or glass of wine (or both, at one time or another), and star-lit sky after sunset. While we were told there were 200 boats in the Bay, the area is so large that they did not overwhelm the natural aspects of the trip at all.

Once again, the Vietnamese people allowed us to “invade their space” without showing any negative reaction, and conveying an imperturbable sense of dignity, maybe because the impacts are so much more benign than they were when “we” (Americans) were here 40 years ago.