Halong Bay – A Natural World Wonder

Halong Bay is a UNESCO World Heritage site located in the Gulf of Tonkin. It is home to around 1600 karsts, which are limestone islands, that are mostly uninhabited and untouched by humans. That said, the area around the islands has been completely overrun by human activity and the area attracts around 10 million people annually. Luckily for us, we came in the winter, so there were only about four other people in the whole place (that is an exaggeration, of course, but its emptiness had a weird feeling of eeriness to it, particularly in Halong City).

We spent our first night in the area on the island of Tuan Chau, which is the location of the ferry that takes you over to the largest island, Cat Ba. I imagine Tuan Chau is hopping during the summer, but there was hardly another soul here. It was difficult to find a place to eat, so we ventured from the island to the mainland town of Halong City where the weird emptiness continued. The city was clean and had the feeling of modernity with lots of Vegas-like lighting, but there was literally no one there! Two out of every three storefronts were closed and there was a lot of unfinished construction going on. I can’t complain about having a city to myself after the chaos of the other places we have been, but I just can’t get over the ghostliness of this place!

We did eventually find a couple places that were open and had a nice surprise when we found gluhwein and German pretzels on the menu at one restaurant. They were way overpriced (for Vietnam) but it was good to have a familiar comfort. From there, we found an ice cream shop and had the weirdest ice cream I have ever had. It was supposed to be mint chocolate chip, but was almost sour. We were instructed to pour whatever the white stuff is in that cup (pictured below) on top of the ice cream, which helped, but I don’t think I need to get ice cream in Vietnam again.

From Tuan Chau, we took the ferry over to Cat Ba island where we found the rest of the off season travelers hiding out. This island is home to a national park and many travel agencies that offer trips out into the waters of the bay.

We decided to do a one day kayaking and biking tour which was a highlight of the trip! We boated from the island out into the bay, through the rock formations. I took a lot of pictures but none of them can really show the magnificence or beauty of what it was like to be there.