This is one of the new 7 Wonders of the World and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I have wanted to see this place since we came to Vietnam last year. It is situated in the NE region of Vietnam and is a bay in the Gulf of Tonkin. Halong Bay is made up of 1,969 limestone or schist monolithic islands of various sizes. Each island is topped with thick jungle vegetation, and many are hollow, with enormous caves. A community of around 1,600 people live on the bay in four floating villages.
The word halong means “descending dragon.” According to local legend, when Vietnam had just started to develop into a country, they had to fight against invaders. To assist the Vietnamese in defending their country, the gods sent a family of dragons as protectors. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. Magically, numerous rock mountains abruptly appeared on the sea, ahead of invaders' ships; the forward ships struck the rocks and each other. After winning the battle, the dragons were interested in peaceful sightseeing of the Earth, and then decided to live in this bay. The place where the mother dragon descended was named Hạ Long, the place where the dragon's children attended upon their mother was called Bái Tử Long island (Bái: attend upon, Tử: children, Long: dragon).
The Sojourn anchored out in the bay, and for the first time in my experience on a cruise ship, a barge was rafted to the loading platform where passengers access the tender. And to the barge was rafted a slew of touring boats for our journey through the mountains in the bay. I was hoping to sail on sampans, the boats with the distinctive red sails, but when you are moving hundreds of people, the boats they used seemed to be the most practical.
My group was the first to board. I was an escort, but there wasn’t really anything for me to do. Michael was still confined to the cabin even though he felt fine. You have to be totally symptom free for 24 hours before they will let you out. If you disregard the quarantine, the ship has the right to put you off at the next port, leaving you to find your own way home. He was not happy about missing this wonderful site.
The boat looked rather ratty from the outside, but the inside was newly remodeled. There was an enclosed lower deck that had tables and benches, and that is where most people rode. There was an upper deck, but it was a bit windy and chilly. What a surprise to find such cool weather here. I always thought of Vietnam as being hot and humid all of the time. The northern part gets this strange type of fog that we experienced today quite regularly. It often rains in the winter. The weather in the south, is hot and humid. Today, I wore a long sleeve shirt with a jacket and jeans. I even wore enclosed shoes with socks, the first time since boarding the ship on January 4.
She tried to sell us bananas
I was disappointed that we had such bad weather for viewing the scenery, but at least it wasn’t raining. The light was so flat, that picture taking was unsatisfactory. I have seen pictures of this place with sun and bright blue skies, and it is breathtaking, but we take what we can get. Our guide spoke good English and told all kinds of stories and myths surrounding the various rock formations. One must have a good imagination to see the dog, cat, duck, fighting chickens and other assorted mythical creatures in the faces of the limestone rock mountains.
See the cat
After our three hour cruise, we returned to the ship for lunch. A bunch of us decided to go to town to see what we could see. The tender docked at a most unusual pier and sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words, so I will let this picture speak for itself. Unbelievable.
Five of us rented a taxi to go to the big market across the bridge. This was opposed to going to the little market that we could get to on foot. Big is better, no? In this case, it turned out that bigger wasn’t better. This was a market for the locals. It had everything you could need for your house and body, but didn’t have much in the way of junk for tourists to buy. I was on the hunt for a new case for my iPad, but nary a one was to be had. Our driver did not understand what I wanted, so I’ll try and get one in the next few stops. This market was in a huge building and was three stories high. The escalator went up, but you had to walk down. It was clean and did not smell, and that’s because the fruit and vegetable markets were outside and the wet (fish) market was behind the building.
The beauty parlor -- ladies getting their hair washed
Outdoor barbershop
Working too hard?
After an hour of walking around here and finding nothing to see or buy, we had the driver give us a tour of the city. There was a new promenade built right at the water’s edge where some of the mountains were so close, you could reach out and touch them. New condos and hotels were being built along the promenade. Some of the mountains were lit for night viewing, and some of them had ramps to walk up to the top.
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