When you look at travel guides for Vietnam, one of the typical “must go to” places you see listed again and again is Halong Bay and once you catch a glimpse of it, you can see why. Countless fantasy-like gumdrop islets rise from calm waters as boats navigate through the mists. It’s no wonder why the legends of its creation revolve around a family of dragons calling this place home. We called it home for a whopping 3 days and here’s what we did!
First off, there are a TON of options for way to explore the bay (hey, that rhymed!) Since you really need to have some kind of boat technology to explore the bay, you have many choices to choose from. You can choose a day trip, a fast jetboat 3 hr quick tour or you can do an overnight cruise. If you choose the cruise then you can either go with a one night or two nights package. Now if these weren’t enough options, there are seriously HUNDREDS of tour operators to choose from which made it really tough. You’ve got everything from “party” themed cruises to 4 star luxury cruises- make sure you know what experience you want. We ended up going with Emeraude as our friends in Hanoi recommended it (apparently it’s also the boat Anthony Bourdain went on in his Halong Bay special). These cruises are offered by all sorts of in person travel agent touts who apparently do all kinds of shady business. We actually found an awesome deal on Hotels.com. We’d recommend you find a boat or company you want to go with and then shop around online for the best price.
We embarked and were shown our cabin which was the captain’s suite! We splurged a little and the crew gave us an awesome upgrade with complimentary Champagne and fresh fruit (since it is our honeymoon). The cabin had everything a small hotel room would have- shower, bathroom, writing desk- and it was super cute. The Emeraude definitely was throw back to the early 20th century golden era of ship based travel with all the trimmings. Brass railings? Check. Hardwood paneling? Check. Big ass metal portholes? Double check. With our bags in our room we were ready to see the bay!
The towering limestone islands you see in pictures stands like a wall right in front of the coastal towns- it’s pretty amazing to take a look at. Our ship was one of many- all traveling into the countless islets together. Standing on the main deck and watching so many other ships all headed in the same direction you felt like you were part of some rag-tag armada. Some ships looked like cruise ships, others like like faux-junks and some just looked like they were slapped together escape boats from the Fyre festival.
Regardless of the boat, everyone seemed to be on the same itinerary of visiting key scenic views, boating by fishing villages, visiting caves and most importantly- visiting pearl farms. That last one was kinda annoying since the “pearl farm” was basically one big gift shop/tourist trap. The other stops were pretty cool though.
The impressive interior to the Surprise Cave (SURPRISE! It’s a cave 😉 )
Surprise Cave was actually pretty surprising! With huge stalactites, stalagmites and other cave features, it was pretty impressive. Our guide from Emeraude did a great job showing us aspects of the cave that we would have missed otherwise (even cracking some funny jokes about what some of the formations “could” look like). After this we went sea kayaking (Tiff’s first time!) I had low expectations for this but it turned out to be totally rad! Watching the sun go down behind the massive limestone islets was something out of a movie.
Our ship dropped anchor in one of the many bays between the islands and all the lights of the neighboring boats twinkled in the night. You could hear conversations and music lightly filtering across the water between boats- it really was something special. Our companions on the boat were mostly German retirees save for a fun couple (Henry and Juliana) from Denver.
Day 2 of our cruise was a bit underwhelming from the awesomeness of the first day. The draw to us on taking the 3 day cruise over the 2 day cruise was that we’d be able to get to less touristed parts of the Bay. In reality, we got handed off to another smaller day boat along with those foolish enough to have booked this part of the tour from other boats. This smaller ship was commanded by who I think was 19 year Vietnamese guy who spent most of the time throughout the day hitting on a group of girls from the US. While we did see parts of the bay that had less tourists boats, it was pretty much the same views we had already seen. In the cave we went to, it was basically a smaller, less impressive version of the previous days cave. After toodling around the backwaters of Halong Bay, doing some directionless sea kayaking and snacking on the all-fried food from the galley, it was time to go back home to the Emeraude.
We were treated to another night of floating on the bay and watching the lights of our fellow ships twinkling in the night and reflecting on the trip and its ups and downs. While the 2nd day had been a bit of a letdown after the first, sleeping on a ship moore between massive stone towers was pretty impressive.
For day 3 we madly packed our bags and headed back to port with a short stop at a vista point. Halong Bay was breathtaking and we enjoyed our time voyagin on the Emeraude. If we had to do it again, would we do the 3 day trip again? Probably not- we’d stick to the 2 day option – but we did enjoy the experience. After all, there’s always other places to adventure to. Which reminds us…it’s time to _finally_ write up our Hanoi adventures. Until then…..
Final moments of our Halong Bay trip…