Vietnam's World Wonder
Generally speaking, Rachel and I don’t get too excited about “touristy things.” We prefer to avoid tours wherever possible, to try to separate ourselves from the crowds and the guides and settle into a place using pidgin English, bad hand signals, and a vast inexperience with the local culture. I don’t know why this is the case, but that’s travel. Or something. I guess.
However, sometimes you just have no choice. Going to Vietnam and not seeing Ha Long Bay is like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower or going to Rome and leaving out the Coliseum. You just don’t do it! The only way to see Ha Long Bay though is through a guided tour, so we put on our Hawaiian shirts, dusted off our Tilley Hats, pulled up our socks, made sure our sunglasses were strapped on, and booked in.
Actually, booking the tour is one of the most interesting parts of this whole story. As we were walking through Hanoi we kept noticing these ‘Sinh Travel Agents;’ Rachel was convinced that they were a chain, but in hindsight I think they’re all knockoffs of an original, reputable travel agent. We were walking around, drinking Bia Hoi (local, fresh, low-strength beer that everyone seems to make in their backyard) all day debating whether or not we actually wanted to do this, before summoning up the courage and choosing a Sinh Travel Agency to book our tour.
You know when you have no real reason for feeling like someone is shady, but you still do? Yeah, that’s the vibe that both Rachel and I felt when we were talking to this guy. Nothing was easy – our first choice tour was full and our second choice had one room left, which we finagled him into upgrading. When we asked him the difference between the first and second tours, he replied with, “oh! same same, but different,” so very informative. When we left the place we were convinced that we had just paid an exorbitant (by Vietnam Standards) amount of money for an all-expenses paid weekend in the cargo hold of a leaky Somalian pirate boat.
So imagine our surprise when, after a back-breaking bus ride, we got to the boat and it…actually wasn’t half bad! I suppose the lowered expectations helped, but the boat was clean and the food was great, even if the bathroom was kind of stinky. We were lucky that we strong-armed him into the room however, as we were the only people on the boat who’s roof didn’t leak during the thunderstorm while we were sleeping!
Slow boats and limestone cliffs -- Ha Long Bay in a nutshell.
The beauty of Ha Long Bay itself is better told in pictures (and boy, Rachel got some goodies), but it’s evident from the moment you get out of the harbour. Legend has it that a dragon came down from heaven to help fight off Vietnam’s enemies, and the limestone karst rocks that were left behind in Ha Long Bay were the dragon eggs that it left. The islets are sheer cliff faces, the water warm, and mostly not filled with garbage. Kind of a Vietnamese paradise, really.
As far as the tour went, well, let’s just say our minds haven’t been changed about guided tours at all. We did a self-guided walk through a big cave (which was neat, but mostly because I’m a nerd and geology rocks), went for a bit of a hike up to the top of one of the islets and swimming afterwards, and then dinner on the boat with drinks and squid fishing afterwards. I’m not going to quit my day job just yet, but I think Rachel missed her calling as a squid fisherman! The next day we visited a pearl farm (NOT a bird farm – we were convinced this was where we were going due to our guide’s thick accent and Rachel especially was NOT excited for that) which was kind of hokey but we learned a little about how pearls are farmed, so that was kind of neat and a little gross. We asked our tour guide what the difference between the different grades of pearl were – she replied with the old South East Asian standby, “same same, but different!” Ooookay then. Afterwards, on the cruise back into harbor, we learned to make spring rolls and prepared for another back-breaking bus ride back to Hanoi.
Rachel really missed her calling.
Hopefully they fared better than Allen did with the squid fishing.
The bay at night.
The verdict? We wouldn’t go back, unless we had our own boat. Ha Long Bay is beautiful, no doubt about that, but one can’t help but think that this gluttony of guided tour boats is ruining the place. Garbage seems to be becoming a real problem, and it takes away from what should be an idyllic landscape. You’d hate to come to Vietnam and miss out on being able to take in the things you want to see, but I think that some regulation on the number of boats and what they’re allowed to leave behind would do well for the area – maybe some sort of National Park setup? Just a thought in case anyone in the Vietnamese Government is reading this.
Ha Long Bay -- almost as beautiful as the subject of this photo...
...but SO MANY BOATS.
Even with all that said though, it really is beautiful, and we think if you had the chance to go, you’d be remiss to skip it. Ha Long Bay is truly Vietnam’s ‘world wonder,’ and if you’re in the neighborhood you should definitely check it out. However, unlike us, maybe look into your tour provider more thoroughly, and make sure that you’re using your dollars to promote a company that is sustainable, responsible, and is preserving the natural beauty of this place like it deserves.
