After reaching Hanoi at 4:30 we waited at the station till around 5:30 to catch a cab and get to Sinh Cafe... we reached by about 6 am and actually found a tour agent's office open.. he wasnt directly sinh cafe but an agent for them...at hanoi we had two options.. one was to goto sapa and the other was to goto halong bay...
we chose halong bay first... and set off with their 2 day package tour for $35 a head...
halong bay is one of the most romantic places i have seen in my life.. it is gorgeous... we got to the bay after a 2-3 hour bus ride after which we took a boat to halong bay...
i think halong bay gets its name from a legend which says that the bay was carved by the tail of a giant dragon...
it is truly a picturesque sight.. imagine yourself in clear blue waters... surrounded on all sides by random rock formations... some large and some downright tiny! and these are the thousands of islands of halong bay (all created by the dragon's lashing tail)... for toursity purposes these islands have been nicknamed things like fighting cock etc (coz they vaguely resemble two roosters fighting!!!!!) as soon as we got on board we were served lunch.... lovely for sea food eaters... me im vegetarian.. so i stuck with rice, chilli sauce and some peanuts!!! how i longed for a good meal in such wonderful surroundings...
then we went and sat on the deck chairs arranged on top, out of the confines of the cabin...amazing breeze! we'd bought beers before we boarded coz we expected the beer on board to be at premium price... simply demand supply laws!
we spent the next few hours in the water... even stopped at a couple of gorgeous caves... complete with stalactites and stalagmites... the caves were so awesome.. i tell you.. if i had decent food.. and maggi also qualifies and an internet connection.. i'd be prettty content in the caves! for a $1 each you can get off the boat and get into tiny dinghy's which take you out on teh water closer to some of the 'islands'.. its pretty cool... they eeven take you to the floating village (I know I've mentioned these alot in my blogs) which are basically fish ponds complete with mating squids an all.. the receptacle with the mating squids was GRRROSSSS....
now, when you choose this package.. you have two options..1 is to stay on the boat over night and go kayaking in the waters the next day and the other is to go onto cat ba island where theres a national forest park, spend the night tehere and come back on the boat the next day...
expecting loads of water sports in dalat, we chose option 2... i wouldnt recommend it to anybody if you pick a 2 day trip... cat ba island is really pretty.. but by the time we reached it was dark... and there was a festival going on there coz 50 years back Ho Chi Minh had arrived at Cat Ba island on that very day!
so no biking through the forest reserve for us...
the beauty of halong bay was more than enough tho
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