Steve and Cathy's Blog

We board our junk right from the tender dock on Deck 3 of Insignia. No need to ride one of our lifeboats into Ha Long City and then get on. What an advantage. It was a very clever setup. The tour company used a boat that has a flat steel platform as a dock extending from the ship. The junks would tie up to this other boat, and we would come out of our ship, cross the boat serving as a platform and board the junk.

Our guide is a young lady named Chung, but she said we should call her Cherry (her picture is at the beginning of this post). She welcomes us to Vietnam, and, as she is from the north, we listen carefully for differences in how things are interpreted from our guide Lan that we had on our Mekong Delta trip. Their outlooks are indeed different, as one might expect.

Cherry explains that this country of 96 million people is divided into three regions, north, central and south. Here in the north there are actually four seasons, and now we are in the best season, spring. The summer in the north is the rainy season.

We start our cruise on the lower deck so that Cherry can give us information about the area. She explains that she is from the local area and describes Hanoi as a city of traffic jams. Ha Long City, which has a population of 200,000, was actually created by decree in 1993 when the towns on two sides of an inlet on the bay were merged. The two parts of the city are now connected by a bridge built by a Japanese construction firm in 2006, eliminating the need for a ferry. There is also a 230-person cable car connecting the southern section of the city with its northern counterpart and tourist area.

Ha Long used to be a coal mining town, but it has transformed into a very active tourist city. While it has two industrial areas, its proximity to China and the obvious draw of the islands in Ha Long Bay are defining its tourist-town future. Cherry tells us that there are many hotels, more building, and a five-star resort that opened three years ago.

We are now beginning to weave in and out of the 1,969 islands in this bay, 900 of which are so small as to not even have names. Some just have nicknames given to them by the fishermen that live and work here. Only forty islands are inhabited. The bay encompasses 1,550 square kilometers, and the limestone islands (topped with rainforest) which are the unique attractions are called karsts and have been undergoing transformation for the past 20 million years, the limestone itself having been formed as seabed 500 million years ago.

UNESCO declared this a World Heritage Site in 1994, and gave it additional recognition in 2000 for its geological and geomorphological value (can you tell I am quoting from someplace because of that six-syllable word?). As you can tell from the photos, the weather is a disappointment, but we cheer ourselves by suggesting that the haze and clouds give the bay and its islands a very ethereal look.

Our guide gives us some information on the Buddhist culture using her own background and experience as illustration. Buddhism includes a great deal of ancestor veneration, and “Ghost Offerings” are often brought to the temples to appeal to the ancestors to bring the living good luck. She states that she believes in both scientific explanations and in the legends of her culture. There is much about ‘holy animals’ in her religion, and jokes that she was born a monkey. Those are from my inadequate notes, and I wish I had written more. Fascinating stuff.

We now move to the open upper deck after Cherry’s half-hour introduction to get a better view of the islands and to take billions of photographs. About ninety minutes into the cruise, we land at Bo Hon Island to tour the Thien Cung Grotto (Heaven Cave). At least, that is what the sign says. Our tour description says Sung Sot cave (Surprise Cave). Regardless, it is an incredible sight, and a surprise in that it is ten times larger than we anticipated.

There are 120 narrow slippery stone steps to climb up (and down!) to reach the entrance, and Cathy is not a cave lover, so she opts to stay in the dock area, which she finds very entertaining [We had learned in Saigon that there are basically no traffic rules on the streets. Well, apparently the same is true on the water. The boats all tried to get up to the dock at once, honking horns and bashing into each other trying to squeeze into spots too small for their boats and the boat guys yelling at each other. The Vietnamese language really sounded like they were swearing at the top of their lungs. Maybe they were! ]

Steve joins the Noomen family for the tour of the cave. The climb is doable and is a great people-watching opportunity, as most all of our fellow tourists are Vietnamese, including many teenagers. We reach the entrance, which is deceivingly small. Very soon on the 1,500-foot walkway that runs through the cave, things begin to open up, and we begin to see huge rooms with hundreds of stalactites and stalagmites. Some of the rooms are over ninety feet high, and the cave complex covers 10,000 square meters. We have to keep moving along, because there are hundreds of people. It is quite well laid out, as we enter and exit through separate places. The tour takes about thirty minutes.

We head back down another 120 steps and all regroup and board Thanh Nien, our junk. Our pilot maneuvers out of the cove and we resume our cruise. For another ninety minutes, we sail past so many interesting island formations, with clever names such as Dog, Teapot, Chicken, Duck and Thumb. We also get to see some of the local fishermen at work. We wave to the Vietnamese tourists in other boats, and they wave back.  [It was just beautiful. And so peaceful! There weren’t many other boats so the ambience was great. The misty weather was actually kind of nice, gave everything a mystical quality. And the temperature was perfect, nice and cool. One of the best tours so far.]

Toward the end of the tour, we are ushered back to the main deck, and Cherry continues her commentary. We arrive back at the ship right around noon. We aren’t ready for lunch, so we go up on to Deck 5 and watch the three junks for the 12:45 tour arrive, load and depart. Brian and Barbara are on one, and Brian waves enthusiastically. What a fun guy.

The rest of the day is uneventful. The ship weighs anchor around 5:00 and we are on our way to Sanya, China. Despite the weather, we are delighted to have seen this unique natural wonder and spend time with the Vietnamese people in one of their most popular tourist venues.