Halung Bay, Vietnam
By Dave • April 4th, 2008
No sooner had we arrived in Hanoi than we were gone again. Our first day was spent visiting travel agents, with a view to getting to Halung Bay, three and a half hours away on the Gulf of Tonkin.
The deal we found was stunning. For $55 each we got three nights and two days in Halung Bay, including transport there, a night on a boat, a hotel, meals and all the admission tickets we could eat. We left at eight in the morning; after our epic 27 hour journey from Laos to Hanoi, three hours on an air-conditioned minibus was nothing. We were there before I’d untangled my iPod.
Halung Bay is a UN World Heritage Site which means it’s a) beautiful, and b) swimming in tourists. The last few miles into Halung Town (perhaps the most desperately unattractive seaside town you’ll ever see) were spent in the middle of a convoy of tourist buses. Our boat left amongst a flotilla of similar boats.
The boat (or junk, to give it its snigger-worthy technical term) was great. An all wooden affair, it had a deck for lounging, a restaurant, and tiny two-berth cabins, complete with hot, running water and – duh – sea views. There were, of course, no railings at the front, and we spent a happy few hours with our legs dangled over the water, books in hand.
We sailed for hours over perfectly smooth, light green water. We watched the other boats slide by; we looked at the some 2,000 islands that rise from the bay and give it it’s incredibly photogenic appeal. Then we finished our books. Then we drank beers that cost 50p each.
We relaxed so much, in fact, that the dreadful Phonsavan to Hanoi bus trip became a distant, terrible memory; a troubling murmur from the past rather than an immediate nightmare.
I even managed to bite my tongue when one of our group, totally earnestly, asked our tour guide to get the captain to turn the engine off because it was “too loud” in her cabin. I settled for nudging her overboard later.
Dave thinks Halung Bay is worth more than 500-odd words. But it’s hard to drum up a lot of writing when all you did was sit on a boat and knock back beers all day. To make up for the lack of words, have some pictures. Visit the Flickr Set for more.
Tags: beers, berth, bus trip, convoy, flotilla, green water, gulf of tonkin, half hours, hanoi, hotel meals, minibus, murmur, odd words, railings, running water, sea views, seaside town, tourist buses, Vietnam, water books, world heritage site
Just came across this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/world/asia/15laos.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
I thought it was interesting timing, since I had just read your last post on Laos.
The photo at the top is genius. I like the article as well, except for the moron at the end who argues that keeping poverty is an important part of Luang Prabang’s “heritage”.
There’s also the argument, of course, that an injection of tourism protects local culture, helping provide an income to people who would otherwise decamp to large cities to earn a living.