What not to do when travelling: Ha Long Bay

I decided on the easiest course for going out to experience Ha Long Bay. This is one of the famous areas of Vietnam for spectacular scenery. There are many options for visiting the bay. There are two day excursions, three day excursions and one day excursions. They can be booked Hanoi or from Ha Long city. One day excursions just go and come back. I discounted that immediately. If I was going to go, I was going to stay there. I also figured that two day excursions would be very touristy and I didn't want to just go and be around a lot of people all day and not be able to fully experience the beauty of the bay because of the hordes of others there as well. So I decided on a three day excursion. These excursions also have a couple of options. There is a fairly large island in the bay and one kind of excursion includes a stay in a hotel on the island. Then it is possible to visit a national park and do some trekking and that sort of thing before returning to the mainland and going back to Hanoi, or wherever. The other option is to stay two nights on a boat and the second day is moving further out into the bay. I decided that since my goal was to experience the bay, I would go with the two nights on the boat. Then it was just a matter of price. There are cheap options for 40 or 50 dollars, middle range options for about 100 dollars and then extravagant options for two, three, four hundred dollars and more. The cheap options can work, from what I understand, but it can be hit and miss. I went with the middle range and hoped for the best. One thing that bothers me about this sort of arrangement is that the excursion operators often treat you as hemmed in, kind of hostage. They agree to provide meals, but will charge for drinks and then forbid the bringing of outside beverages. They can thus charge whatever they want for those drinks. I was a bit worried about that. But there was no help for it really.

The trip to Ha Long Bay was about four hours and we arrived at the wharf at about 12 noon. The sight of the bay was a bit obscured by all the junks waiting to take eager sightseers out to the islands. I was somewhat discouraged by that, hoping this was not going to be overly overrun by tourists, even though I also know this is such a famous area that lots of tourists come here.

Then we headed out to the sights. And of course, our first stop was a desecrated cave. Caves are very interesting and in the absence of what the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Thais, and all the others do to them, it wouldn't be possible to go in and experience them. But there are lights all over inside and concrete pathways, and this is something everyone is “supposed” to do when they come here, because all tourists love to go in caves. (Hmmm... Sarcasm. Maybe I should stop that.) So we duly lined up with the hundreds of others and trode up to the cave entrance to view how fantastic it all was with the lighting that had been added to the amazing stone features of the cave.

The best part? The sunlight streaming through an opening in the top of the cave. That was amazing. And natural.

But then, it got better. We went out into the islands and all the boats were on different sorts of schedules, so they thinned out a bit. We could view the scenery without pesky boats in the way. And it was breathtaking. We stopped for some swimming and then we headed to the congregation area for the junks for the night. I don't know if there is just a safe place at the one spot and other areas are just too vulnerable, or maybe the administrators of the bay only allow the parking of the junks at this one spot, but it kind of spoiled the experience of being on a boat in a stunning natural setting when we had to share it with all those other boats. But that's how it goes I suppose.