After another pretty painless overnight journey we arrived in the capital city of Hanoi and immediately booked a trip to Halong Bay. The tour was a 3 day 2 night trip into the bay spending the first night on an old Junk boat and then the second night on a private island owned by the company running the tour. We left early the following morning and it took about 4 hours to get to the harbour at Halong where we were able to get the first look at our Junk boat. We had deliberately chosen a tour boat that only had 8 bedrooms on it as we wanted to ensure it wasn't crowded and with only 9 other guests it was certainly going to be nice and quiet. The boat itself was lovely, very well maintained and the bedrooms were just as we imagined all carved wood furniture and a giant carved bed, we even had our own shower and toilet. Having unpacked some of our things it was time to sail out into the bay for a closer look at the amazing natural beauty of some 3000+ rocky outcrops emerging from the ocean floor. I should point out that this time of year is not the best time to visit Halong Bay, in fact it is actually the worst time to visit as there can be lots of rain and a permanent fog hanging over the entire place but we had decided that weather aside we really wanted to visit the natural wonder and so we weren't too surprised or disappointed to find the weather a lot cooler than the south and unfortunately the fog obscured many of the more distant rock formations! After chilling out on the decked roof taking in the view it was time for our seafood "smorgasbord" lunch and having not listed any dietary requirements at the office I was more than a little nervous about what was in store. I am sure I don't have to tell you what my face was like when the first course put down in front of me was a whole crab still in its shell and a set of nutcracker thingy's! Having never even eaten crab before I had no idea how you got the meat from the shell so I was very much relieved when the tour guide used my crab as a demonstration to everyone else as to how to open it which eliminated some of the trauma. Once opened I managed to pick out some of the meat and the taste was definitely not as offensive as the work you had to put in to get the meat out! After hacking the shell to death for a good 20 minutes we had to admit defeat and let the waiters take away our severely abused crabs. The next course was a giant plate of prawns all still with their heads and shells on so again we were going to have to work for our supper. Having eaten prawns just a few days ago I was happy to have another go this time peeling my own and actually really enjoyed them. Feeling a little more comfortable with the whole fishy thing the smile was soon wiped off my face when the next course was a whole fish, head, eyes and tail all still attached. Thankfully I didn't have to worry about how the hell you carve it as one of the men we were sharing it with seemed to know what he was doing and happily took charge. With lunch out the way it was back to the deck for some more sightseeing and as we sailed further into the bay we got the first up close look at some of the islands and even with the poor weather conditions it was still a pretty impressive sight. A little later we dropped anchor and swapped the junk boat for a 2 man kayak and with the rest of the group and our guide we kayaked around some of the islands and finished the tour with a close up look at a floating village, an amazing community of huts literally floating on a load of empty plastic barrels. I have no idea how or why anyone would choose this way of life with no proper sanitation or running water I cant imagine what daily life must be like. With the tour finished it was back to the boat for a shower and some relaxation before dinner. Having had over 2 weeks in the buzy and extremely noisy towns it was heaven to be in the middle of nowhere with no honking horns or air pollution. It was only when it was really quiet that we realised neither of us could remember a day in the last month when there hadn't been any noise! Dinner was not surprisingly more seafood and we were absolutely horrified when the first thing put in front of us was another crab! Fortunately it was just the shell of the crab with a crab cake mixture inside and it was definitely preferable to the lunch time episode. The highlight of the whole meal were some of the biggest tiger prawns I have ever seen. We then spent the rest of the evening getting to know everyone on the tour which was a lovely end to a great day out.
The next morning we upped anchor and sailed to a cave network called "the amazing cave" for a guided tour. Having visited a few different caves in our trip we weren't too impressed with the amazing cave as it wasn't as well preserved as it could be and you could clearly see how the tourist traffic had made its mark on the natural structures. Our time on the boat was almost over so after the caves we boarded for the last time and made our way to the island. Our junk boat was too big to sail right up to the island so it was back to our Fiji days as a little bamboo raft came out to collect us and transport us to the island. The raft was barely sea worthy and with us and all our belongings on it we were soon taking in water and we were much relieved to get to the island and get off before the whole thing went down. The island was lovely and if it had been sunny it would have been paradise as there were only 6 bamboo huts on the beach with sun loungers in front of each one. As soon as we arrived lunch was served and we were pleased to find that as well as seafood there was beef and chicken which was a refreshing change from all the fish we had been eating. One of the seafood courses were little things called sand crabs which looked like giant wood louse and would have looked more at home in a jungle than on a beach. Having tried everything else I didn't want to let myself down so after taking a few minutes to prepare myself I delved in, and for the record, I don't like sand crabs!!! We gave lunch time to go down before taking out a couple of the islands kayaks to go exploring ourselves and not surprisingly our huts were the only sign of life on the island. If it had been a little warmer we could have spent the afternoon reading on the beach however it was just a little to cool so instead we spent the afternoon in a couple of rocking chairs on the veranda reading our books and it was absolute heaven just to relax and do nothing for an entire afternoon!
Our final day of the tour was really just making our way back to Hanoi and it started with another transfer on the bamboo death raft before taking a different junk boat halfway to Halong harbour before we swapped onto another junk boat to make our way back to the dry land. Not the swiftest mode of transport it took us about 3 hours to get back. We then had lunch in a lovely restaurant in Halong before getting back on the minibus for the final transfer back to Hanoi where we would spend three days before flying to Thailand.