After a brief stopover in Hue, we boarded another overnight (14 hour) train and a 4 hour bus to reach Halong City. Once we’d arrived, we headed straight back out to the harbour which was right near our hotel (the views were amazing!). We got on to a junk boat which had two levels and restaurant style seating downstairs. We were served lunch almost immediately which was an abundance of crab cakes, fresh prawns, rice, spring rolls, fish, fries and more… The boat tour took around 5-6 hours and we stopped along the way at a floating fishing village; many of the inhabitants have never seen land! Each floating house tends to farm a different sea food, from crabs to squid to baby sharks. We also stopped at a cave along the way but spent the majority of our time lounging on the top deck. Halong Bay is beautiful and is definitely worth a visit – the huge mountainous rocks appearing from the waters just looks like something straight out of a film!
We are heading back to Halong Bay in December 2016 and plan to spend the three days before Christmas on another boat cruise, then Christmas day in Hanoi. They’ll be lots more information up after my second visit!
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