How Long? Halong Bay! 18.12.16 Ro

After a well needed nap we explored our area around the hostel in the old quarter and we were on the hunt for a good deal for a tour out to Halong bay. The first agent we found gave us a really good price and we left early the next morning. We set sail on the boat that we were going to stay the night in. Halong bay is just stunning even without the sunshine we were in awe of the natural beauty.

We went to look through some caves and then did kayaking and I taught Joe how to steer the boat from the back.

Our guide said there were jellyfish so there was to be no swimming, not that we believed him. That evening we had dinner and a party on the boat, met some interesting people including an Aussie Bogan and a German couple.

The following day we were taken to a pearl farm which was interesting but not the best activity after a night of boozing. We sailed back out to the bay and were told to get on a different boat, as we were jumping between we saw the biggest jellyfish!! So felt happy that we hadn’t tried to swim!!

Our new smaller boat took us to a cool bay where they said you could swim and kayak so we opted for the kayak option which was just beautiful and felt like we could have been the only people there.

After a massive lunch of fresh fish and prawns we were taken to monkey island.

At first everyone ran up to the monkeys oh aren’t they so cute .. and suddenly one of the monkeys has a pair of reading glasses in his hands. It was so funny but as I was laughing a monkey lunged for me! I managed to quickly dodged out of the way but it did shake me up a bit! We then warned a family who had just come onto the beach that the monkeys were taking stuff and they didn’t believe us and as we were walking away we heard screams and the monkey had stolen the little girls toy turns out the toy was a soft monkey which we all thought was quite funny.

Next stop was Catba Island, our home for the night. Free time so we hiked up the cannon hill to get an awesome view.

On the way up we saw goats, chickens and wild boar grazing and snoozing. The view was spectacular and it was hard to think that this was used to fire such huge cannons!