Ha Long Bay

I decided not to have any breaky but just join the boat ride. Because of the misty weather (it was still raining and very gray) our boat seem to have been the only tourist boat out in the bay that day.

We had a good group here, maybe 10 people from Australia, New Zealand, France, Russia and Ireland.

We set out to ship to a little place called Monkey Island where we saw two monkeys (they also seem not to enjoy the weather and were hiding).

After we conquered the peak and took some pictures we went up north around Cat Ba Island and enjoyed the really amazing scenery of Ha Long Bay.

It is quite magical and I am not surprised that the myths suggest that a dragon has landed here and formed the rocks.

About an hour later we stopped in a hidden bay and switched to Kayaks which we used to paddle around and discover some caves and covered passage ways.

Quite adventurous but also pretty cold, wet and exhausting.

We were all happy to get back to the boat after 90 minutes, where our lunch waited already.

It was a selection of fish, spring rolls, Tofu and rice and for the fact that the wheelman and his mate cooked it on the little boat it tasted really great (maybe our exhaustion and the cold helped here).

Next stop was a bay where the plan was to go for a dip and swim to a beach. Not really inviting, considering the weather conditions, and initially no one really wanted to go. But, in the end it is not every day you are in Ha Long bay, so we all jumped in, quickly swam over and returned back to the boat.

After this all our energy was drained and we were happy that the set course was our home Harbour.
After a shower and an hour of relaxing we all wanted to meet up for dinner again.

It took a while until the group of 8 decided for a place but the food was good and we all got a complementary beer with it.

After dinner we even had a back and head massage right there in the restaurant.

Everyone was quite exhausted from the day and most of us went home.

On the way, Basti and I stopped by a festival at a stage, right at the pier where another Island seemed to be presenting their history and relation to the sea and it's animals. It was a sort of play with some crazy Vietnamese music but was nice to watch.