31. Halong Bay

During my stay in Hanoi I went for a couple of days with Anna to Halong Bay.... Well Halong Bay is meant to be beautiful..... Towering limestone karst scenery with many rocky outcrops rising from the sea. But we were greeted on board our beautiful boat by the guide saying that we were short of one member of the crew... The captain... As all the captains were with the local harbour police to decide if it was too foggy to move..... Eventually all the boats were allowed to go from the harbour, but we didn't travel far, and saw even less. Apparently it is common at this time of year. We had a lovely couple of days on the boat, but visibility was severely restricted...

This was the best viz we had... At 0630am just before we did tai chi on deck..... Which was wonderful! 

The boat was beautiful

and the food was fabulous

We did manage to kayak into a fabulous cave. Actually we paddled under an outcrop of rock into quite a large circular pool open to the sky and with cliffs all around towering probably two hundred feet vertically above us. It was quite spectacular.  On the way out of the cave, there were lots of tiny monkeys playing on the vertical cliff faces with all the ease in the world. 

The next day we were taken to another cave, this time it was a cave burrowed deep into the rock, chiseled out by water running through the limestone over many millennia. We went with what felt like everyone else on all the many of the other boats in the bay.... The boats didn't stagger the arrangements at all and everyone had to queue, in the rain, to very slowly work our way up the steps and into the cave.....  I looked back an hour later and the jetty which had been absolutely packed was now empty.... But the caves were good.... 

Oh... And I did see several sea eagles from the boat which was a real treat, flying majestically above us in the mist...

Halong Bay is very very touristy.... And very polluted. I would have liked to swim, but decided not to with all the debris in the water. I hear there are other bays nearby that are less busy, which I'm sure would have been better, but I don't think there would have been any less fog!