"Halong Bay...WOW" a Haiphong Travel Page by tampa_shawn

We spent most of our time cruising by 'dragon boat' (the Vietnamese call the boats we were on 'Junks') in and out of the mountains. It was amazing.

Gill and I were also able to kayak while we were there. I talked her into going pretty far out into one of the floating villages but I couldn't talk her into stopping and getting off, despite the calls from several men inviting us in.

Because the mountains are so steep they are inhabitable. The people in the area live in floating villages, living off the sea. They have little floating shacks that they tie up their little boats. You can see them on their little two-person boat at night using a big light to attract the fish to catch. During the day they are home working on their 'fish farms.' They have large grids in front of their houses that from the surface look like large blue oil drums connected with planks. Under the water, there are nets in which they raise fish. Some of them also grow and harvest cultured pearls in this same way. There bright little shacks, with a backdrop of the mountains, left me breathless. Wait till you see the pictures!

We also stopped at Thien Cung Caves ('cave of the heavenly palace') which was on one of the islands and was once underwater. It was your 'normal' tourist cave filled with stalactites and stalagmites but much larger than
anything I've ever seen. You could put a 10 story building in one cathedral easily.

I met a German woman, Suzanne, on the boat who was really interesting (she once took 2 years to camp around Africa). She said the bio-luminescence were amazing in Halong Bay and wanted to find someone to do a midnight swim with her (since you can only see their lights when it’s dark). I was the only one who said yes. It was AMAZING! We jumped in and everywhere we disturbed the water we saw little glowing dots. I believe they were a type
of plankton. If I waved underwater, it looked like I had sparklers on the end of my hands. In one place the plankton were especially heavy and when we were treading water the entire area around us glowed.

Gill was worried about things that go bump in the night, so I couldn't talk her into the water at night, but she said it looked pretty amazing from the safety of the boat. Frankly, I was more worried about all our garbage that I saw them dump in the water just a few hours before and being able to climb back into the boat without any help, than with the living things in the water itself.

Suzanne and I also slept on the roof. It was so hot in the room with the generator off (we only had electricity a few hours a day) and on the roof there was a wonderful breeze. I just brought up my pillow and a blanket and slept on a small mat. I would rather brave the mosquitoes on the deck then all the roaches in the room!

Looking down at a local in a boat