30th
We wake up in good time for breakfast... But our room with a view is tempting us to stay put.....
The boat drifts with the currents so the view is always changing and always impressive... We are in the place that postcards are made of....
We arrive for breakfast just as the first plates are being placed on the tables.... Thankfully breakfast does not consist of fish.....
We are soon on the move... The engine is really quiet and the sea is like a pond as we travel to our first stop of the day.... Cong Dam where we do some kayaking around some of the karsts..... Up close you can see that the area around the bottom, where it comes into contact with the water is covered with shells, and above is actually quite holey and way up above your head the tree line starts...
The kayaks are all doubles so it's pretty easy going... We paddle as a group around many karsts and just sit back and admire our location, along with a handful of local fishermen... The water is far warmer than the air temp, and although it's tempting we are trying not to get to wet.... We find ourselves being taken to a large cave that's only accessible by boat.... We are the first to enter and do so cautiously.... The kayaks are old and fiberglass and the rocks are very hard.... With zero disability we don't want to hit anything to hard..... The boats a long way away...
After a while in the cave using only camera flash to see we exit the cave and head for the boat... We are the first back and have showered and are sitting around on top deck when the last of the bunch get towed back to the main boat by our tender..... There was a reasonable headwind back to the boat so I guess some where struggling to make headway...
From here we are going to a traditional Halong bay fishing village called Vung Vieng. Here we end up in a little wicker boat being rowed around by a tiny Vietnamese woman who rows whilst stood... The women here must have the most toned stomachs in the world as the boat rowing technic requires them to push there upper body forward to make the boat go forward with a final arm push to help....
The fishing village has a school which intern has a main land teacher that gets given a years secondment to teach there.... The village people live on the water permanently... There homes are very basic and float on large plastic drums... They grow little vegetable gardens in pretty much anything that will hold a little earth and they trade the fish they catch for everything else they need... Its a very sparse existence with one piece of luxury.... Pearls.... There farmed here and along with the floating village is a floating pearl shop... There is also live displays of the pearls being planted inside the shells and also there removal from shekels that have contained the pearl for 2 years....
From the floating village we head back to our boat.... The large red sales are now up and the boat looks very impressive.... Once on the boat we head off to our last destination... This is where we will be eating tonight's meal and it's called Thien Canh Son cave.... This cave is within a large karsts which has a small beach...
We spend some time on the 100ft long beach to watch the sunset then back to the boat for a shower before dinner in the cave....
Whilst waiting for me to get ready Shiree goes off in search of satisfying her newly found fishing needs..... Rod in hand she plonks the line in the sea and within a minute has caught a squid.... I come out of the room as the squid is getting lifted out of the sea after releasing a fair amount of ink... Shiree now don't have the faintest idea what she's going to do with the squid she's just caught... But one of the crew lends a hand and fetches a bowl.... " very big " the crewman says.... Yum Yum I'm sure he's thinking......
Shiree is now left in a quandary.... She's cause a squid and now has to watch it slowly die as it appears there's no quick way to kill a squid.... So with the crew members smiling face looking the other way somehow the squid managed to find its way back into the water....
We arrive back in the karsts with the beach and cave in the dark..... There is a makeshift pathway up the karsts that winds its way through the bushes..... Its light so we can find our way without issue, but it's all up hill....
Once at the top we are held outside for the whole group to arrive so we can enter as one....
We all walk through the narrow opening into a cave that's light by candle light..... There is a narrow walkway through the rock to a larger opening within the cave.... The crew have made a huge heart out if candles on the ground and behind this there's a table that will sit all 20 of us.... It's impeccably dressed with silverware, plates and candles and looks like it belongs in a five start restaurant.... We are all seated and straight away served our first coarse.... Coarse after coarse is served from what I can only imagine is another smaller cave beyond the one we are sat in.... This just of been fitted out as a kitchen... There is mains power in the cave and the food is so good, and presented so well it can only if been cooked and prepared within the cave..
In the middle of the long table is a larger area that has been empty... It's now getting filled with a number of carvings made from food with were amazing..... The whole cave meal experience was absolutely perfect.... It was the icing on a very lovely cake and blow our breath away...
At the end if the meal we, along with two other couples got given a lovely chocolate cake as a " happy honeymoon" gift.... The cake then got divided up and shared around before heading of to the boat and off to bed...