Halong Bay

Just like Pitt St, this shot is a few minutes after leaving port, I counted over 50 boats heading out





 Saturday 19th
Up early have breakfast, pack, check out, then onto the bus to the dock and onto our boat. This is a madhouse, so many tourists mostly Chinese, it turns out that Halong is a big, easily accessible & cheap destination for them. It is Saturday, and once again summer holidays, so the whole world seems to be here. This is a 4 hour trip which includes lunch.

This is a highlight for me as I have wanted to visit Halong Bay for sometime, I was not expecting the large numbers of boats and tourists, I guess you don't see this on the travel programs, nevertheless quite spectacular. Another hot & humid day, but as the boat is moving slowly at about 8 knots, there is a pleasant breeze.

Here is a narrow passage between a couple of large rock formations, and yes it looks like we were all headed for the same destination

After about half an hour after this, we have gone in a different direction to most other boats, so have the opportunity to see the unique formations in relative isolation without getting other boats in the frame.

Local fishermen, who live on one of the floating villages









Some of  the spectacular limestone formations

After a couple of hours sightseeing, they served a sumptous 7 course seafood lunch (crab, prawns, fish etc), one of the best meals with some of the best scenery - perfect - well almost we had a bottle of the local Vietnames wine - not so good but drinkable