Ha-Long-City

19th April 2010 Typically, today was the first day of sunshine on our Halong Bay trip. We awoke on our island paradise and don’t get me wrong, it was a paradise setting, even if we were woken up at 6.45am with the builders starting work for the day. We weren’t even allowed a peaceful breakfast, with drills and saw benches going. The boat to transfer us back to Cat Ba island arrived around 9am, so we all loaded our kit back onto the boat and made the short crossing back to Cat Ba Island. We were met by the minibus which took us back across the island to where we boarded a bigger junk which would take us back to Ha Long City. ...

17th April 2010 Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s most famous natural tourist attractions. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, there are literally hundreds of boats visiting it everyday and there are a myriad of tours available from Hanoi. Karen had recommended the trip which we booked two and a half weeks ago in Saigon. As we’ve become accustomed to, we had very little information about the tour’s itinerary besides it being three days and two nights. One night would be spent about a boat in Halong Bay and one night in a beach hut on Monkey Island. However, we weren’t worried since Karen had already done this trip with her parents, and enjoyed it. ...