Day 1 – Halong Bay

We started early in the morning from Hai Phong in a small van. It took around 1.5hr to reached Halong port. We had two options to reach Halong, one is from Hanoi and other from Hai Phong. From Hanoi, it takes 4.5hrs to reach, but package costs little less as they pick up everyone in a bus. We chose Hai Phong to decrease travel time on road. The road is good and well maintained, with lot of paddy fields on the way.

We waited for a couple of hours at the port and then boarded the cruise around 12pm. Our cruise is “Dragon legend” by Indochina Junk. It was very big and has almost everything inside it. I was reminded of Titanic looking at that 🙂 It is definitely worth the experience.

This is my first cruise experience. I have been waiting for this day from many years and it happened suddenly without much planning. I am firstly so happy, just looking at the cruise. The view from the cruise is stunning, I couldn’t think of a better experience. I kept clicking on photos for a long time and later got bored of taking photos and simply enjoyed it 🙂 It’s a must-visit place and must-have experience.

I had the best vegetarian food ever in Vietnam, since the chef took our dietary preferences during booking itself. Had an elaborate lunch with soup, salad, starters, rice and fruits, served on the cruise open deck. We enjoyed our lunch enjoying the views. I guess we are more than full, just looking outside.

After lunch, we had 2 options, Kayaking/take a ride on small boat to click pictures. I and Sayan went for boat ride as we don’t know swimming and also wanted to do a good photo shoot. Dan, Pete and Chuck went on Kayaking. Most of the people on the deck went for Kayaking. Had a good tender(boat) ride and got good photos. Tried all kind of poses and enjoyed the scenery. I don’t have any words left to describe the experience, I have used all the adjectives I have known so far.

After Kayaking, people went for swimming near the cruise and then had a good dinner. We had a birthday celebration on our cruise of a tourist. We had moon/candle light dinner on the deck. Cruise stopped at a place in the middle of the bay, could see other boats nearby ours. Everyone else except me in our group went for squid fishing after dinner. They found jelly fish instead of squid for fishing.

Here comes the Halong story from our guide. Shared from Pete’s blog.

“According to local legend, when Vietnam had just started to develop into a country, they had to fight against many invaders. To assist the Vietnamese in defending their country, the gods sent a family of dragons as protectors. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. As these numerous rock mountains abruptly appeared on the sea ahead of invaders’ ships; the forward ships struck the rocks and each other. After winning the battle, the dragons were interested in peaceful sightseeing of the Earth, and then decided to live in this bay.”

Day2- Halong – Hai Phong

We started our day with Tai chi session at 6:30 in the morning. The instructor showed us how to do it, on the sun deck. It was more like yoga, but couldn’t follow it properly as instructor was not speaking at all. It was fun doing that.

After breakfast, we went on to an island nearby, where we have a big limestone cave, leased by IndoChina group. It has some steep steps go reach that place. It is similar to the Borra caves near Vizag, little smaller than that. It looked so fascinating to see how the caves are formed in such an amazing way.

We freshened up ourselves and came for lunch. After that, we reached Halong port where we checked out of the cruise. Felt so sad to leave the cruise.

We reached Haiphong by 2pm and went outside on the roads to check out the local markets. They looked like markets in India, but little more colourful. Roads are full of bikes, with very less place to walk. We went all over the lake and went to a mall to have snacks. Then we all headed to spa, where others took massage, I went for pedicure. Had dinner and walked back on the streets to see lot of lights. It looked very colorful.