Still on
Vietnam, - I went on a group tour to
Halong Bay on Wednesday, February 21st right after the
Tet festivities.
Halong Bay is one of
North Vietnam's best nature showcases. Designated as a
UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994, the bay is home to 3,000
karst mountains sprouting out from the sea in different sizes and shapes. There were sixteen of us in the group including our guide. The sky was overcast when we travelled from
Hanoi [3 hrs.] to the bay so I wasn't very excited but the view was amazing starting from
Hai Phong to
Halong Bay even with the cloudy skies and occasional rain showers. The mountains along
Hai Phong rose straight up from rice paddies and made a picturesque image of a bygone civilization. The waterfront was teeming with tourists when we got there, all queueing up to their boats. The clippers were handsome in their reddish black coating and their furled masts, almost like the ships on the '
Pirates of the Carribean'. One dinghy was even more beautiful with its masts unfurled, showing some Chinese influence on its design. Our guide rented a boat and herded us in just before the rain poured. The motor hummed with the spattering rain as we circled the rocky mountains. The mountains were magnificent and calm! There were fishermen living right on the bay, tending some fishpens. We stopped in one of the pens , apparently to buy some seafoods being kept in the cages. We had lunch on the boat and then we took a smaller boat to see two lagoons inside the mountains. Our last destinations before heading back to
Hanoi were the cave
Hang Dau Go or
Grotte des Merveilles and the adjacent cave,
Hang Thien Cung. The first cave was huge and consisted of three chambers and its walls sparkled when light is shone on them. The other cave was smaller and had the same characteristics with the first one. We wandered inside the caves for some thirty minutes, then sailed back to the docks. We were back in
Hanoi at 8 pm, exhausted.
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