Halong Bay - The place of dreams :)

HALONG BAY!!!! The place of dreams :)

I love Halong Bay :) 

What an awesome place, and looks just like the pictures I have been looking at for years to come! Beautifully stunning setting. Shame about all of the tourists though, sadly this has become a bit of a tourist trap. You can understand why people want to come here though as it is so peaceful and calming looking at those enormous pinnacles reaching out of super calm luxurious velvety waters.

Halong Bay literally translates to "descending dragon bay".  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The bay features thousands of limestone karsts and isles in various shapes and sizes. The Halong Bay has an area of around 1,533km squared!! It's huge, and beautiful :) 

The last two days have made me realize just how happy a person I am by the ocean, or when I see and hear the ocean every single day :) :)  Yay to smiles, good times, Halong Bay and the ocean.

It was such a nice trip. I went along with the English couple I met after a long bus ride arrived for our boat crossing to the centre of Halong Bay.  It didn’t feel as though we actually went out too far to be honest, and only so far as to the point where we could no longer see the shoreline.  The boat was full of really, really young people. So young that a popular question was how old are you? I must have shocked the 19 -23 year olds with my answer haha! Luckily there was a couple of English guys who were quick to join forces with me and another couple of English girls.

Funny how small the universe is - Ben had actually spent september of last year working in Bermuda at the yacht club for a sailing event, so probably met quite a few people I know! Always amazes me just how small the world is. Just like in the middle of the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal when I met a guy who works on Lanta and I have dive friends in common with! Bermuda relationships rule the World :) Anyway, we all stuck together and became evening drinking partners, and during the days we lazed on the sun deck chairs trying to catch some colour. 

We spent the afternoon exploring some caves and taking kayaks out around the water, we found a few little caves to paddle into and then found ourselves inside a huge limescale area with enormous pinnacles all the way around us which was awesome and so peaceful and quiet inside.  We had some fun throwing our voices around and then totally lazing in the kayak and enjoying the peace and quiet.

We also met a couple of young Dutch boys, who had traveled through Vietnam on motorbikes! They had taken all the back roads and explored small villages that most people would be likely to steer clear of due to lack of westernized facilities. They were only 19 years old having just finished school if I remember rightly, and both had such amazing smiles, and wonderful stories of their adventures on the bikes.  When you meet people like this I always catch their enthusiasm for life, and I love that. I would ordinarily in another world have taken a quick look at them and thought to myself well they are so young, no need or point to go and talk to them. I am so glad I have grown and developed from that place, because now I can share the pleasure it was to meet them and hear their story. So brave. I reflected on others who are that age and not brave enough to take on such adventures, and felt very happy for them.

We also met a lovely Irish couple who were such calm and positive energy people. I really enjoyed having them there, and we swapped contact information at the end of the trip as I am really excited to see where their journey takes them.

We stayed on board the Monkey Island Cruise boat for our first night, which was lovely. We cruised around the islands and as the sun started to set we all jumped off the top of the boat into the water and hung out in the water swimming and drinking G&T’s!! Very fun, and totally reminded me of Cup Match weekend in Bermuda, which is fast approaching. That was such a funny weekend of fun spent with my lovely friend Lindsay who came all the way from Chicago to celebrate in bikinis with me :) Good times!!

The crew seemed determined that we would join in on karaoke which was a bit much to be honest, all of us just wanted to chill out on the water and enjoy being on a lovely boat in the middle of the most stunning landscape around South East Asia. Sadly not to be, but we did manage to escape to the roof of the boat in between rain showers and drink our G&T’s in peace eventually. That night we had the most torrential rain storm ever! Not ideal when sleeping on an old boat, as I discovered at about 2am when the rain started pouring heavily through several holes above my bed. I had to spend the night curled up like a baby to avoid the thoroughly soaked through patches on my mattress. I was sharing the room with a lovely girl from Korea called Toko who was making a big brave move to try and find work in Brazil later this year. Toko was also my kayak buddy earlier in the day. Very exciting! I love that about backpacking – meeting people with a journey, an adventure, a story to tell. My kind of people :) 

Our second night was spent at Monkey Island. Shortly after arriving we took a hike up the steep trail to see the view from the top of the national park area. Stunning...or at least it would have been even more so had it been a lovely clear sky. Nonetheless it was pretty spectacular.  The hike itself was hilarious...we were advised to not walk up in flip flops, but honestly it was so hot none of us wanted to put sneakers on so up we went in flipflops... As soon as we reached the top, having virtually climbed on our hands and knees as it was so wet and slippy in the mud, we immediately panicked about how an earth we would get down lol!! It was 'interesting'.  We went super, super slowly and literally sat on our bums and slid down at parts. We braved spiders, bugs and other horrid things before finally reaching the ground and changing into bikinis and slowing down our pace to lazing on sunbeds on the beach all afternoon :) Ah happy days.  It's impossible not to smile when the ocean is in front of you :) 

We spent a very relaxed afternoon and evening at the beach on Monkey Island, it was so nice to relax and read on a sun bed. Of course I couldn't sit still for too long so enjoyed a nice long swim at sunset and some yoga, along with handstand practice ;)

During the course of my stay in Halong Bay I decided that trying to fit Sapa Valley into this trip was just too much. I still hadn't fully recovered from the cold, and as much as everyone tells me how wonderful an experience it is I still felt exhausted at the idea of hiking so shortly after Nepal.  So when I got back to Hanoi I cancelled the trip, instead opting to spend another 24 hours in Hanoi fully recovering. Vietnam is teaching me that I need to slow down my pace and enjoy the moment, also that I have the power to make my trip and my day exactly as I please :) Just for me :) Yay!! 

Upon returning to Hanoi I stayed with Hanoi Hostel again. They gave me a room which was different to my original room. I very quickly discovered bed bugs :( I was so sad, they were everywhere. As quickly as I squashed one, I found another, and another and another. Endless fight. There were 3 beds in my room and each bed had bed bugs :( I discovered them in the middle of the night so couldn't change rooms, I ended up sleeping on my yoga mat on the floor inside my sleeping bag liner. They still managed to bite me and I woke up the next morning (after a maximum of 2 hours sleep as I had spent the night googling what to do if they ended up in my backpack also....) with lines of distinct bed bug bites everywhere. Not cool.  I told the hostel and they were extremely apologetic and gave me an almost full refund. I would still stay here again....it was caused by some backpackers who had been hiking and had borrowed the room earlier in the day. They had it seemed brought the bed bugs with them in their backpacks :( I just really hope that the bugs didn't get inside my backpack and don't follow me to Hue...

Ah Vietnam, it's a love affair! I needed this kind of adventure right now, I really did. So many beautiful places that I want to explore. I have never been so excited to explore a new country before. Vietnam has such a nice feeling, such good energy. Now I move further south towards Hue, and slowly slowly to Hoi An and the beaches in the south. Trying also to decide if I can find time to squeeze in a few days in Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and some other temples again. Ah smiles. I love my life. Anything is possible in the next few weeks!! 

Watch this space :)