Ha Long Bay: The Best of Vietnam and Worst of Tourism

I've never been the type of person that likes being part of a tour group.  I find it too restricting and doing things that you don't want to do.  But tour groups can not be avoided.  It makes some things easier and definitely can be more economical in certain areas and this is definitely the case for Ha Long Bay.  Ha Long Bay is located about 3 1/2 hour drive NE of Hanoi and has been newly minted as one of the "New 7 Wonders of the World."  It's a bay dotted with around 2,000 islands, which beats the Hundred Islands that we visited in the Philippines.  What it also has over the Hundred Islands are a lot more people and a lot more boats.  And this is the downside of tourism.  Good and bad, beautiful places draws a lot of people and you have to deal with the crowds to enjoy the site.  (Yes, I understand that we too add to the crowds and spoiling the beautiful scenery.)

And with so many people, the only way to handle the crowd is to have them join tour groups.  And that is what we did. The options to visit Ha Long Bay are either a day trip, a 2 day/1 night trip, a 3 day/2 night trip, and private boat.  All online guides that Darin and I read recommend the 3 day/2 night option and for $200 USD per person, we booked our tour and we were off.  We were picked up in Hanoi and 3-ish hours later, we were in Ha Long city boarding a boat that will take us to our home for the next two nights.  

The boat that brought us to our "home" on Ha Long Bay

Not our boat, bus similar.  Ours didn't have the fake sails.

On the top deck of our tour boat

And true to form, our first afternoon/evening on the boat is like every bad tour group come to life.  We had 1 hour to kayak and we were all corralled to go to specific areas.  We then went back to the boat and had 10 minutes to gather our stuff to go to Tee Top Island to spend time at the beach.  And the beach was nothing compared to the gorgeous beaches we've been to.  But the view from the top was nice.

 Though we were enjoying the view and the bay, we were dreading our time because we felt very constricted and regimented.  It wasn't very fun and we left comments saying as such.  The start of day 2 was similar to the previous afternoon where we were corralled again to go visit a cave.  After caving in Sagada just a month previous, this was very lackluster and not worth a picture or further comment.

After visiting the cave was when the best of Vietnam showed itself.  Sharing the tour boat with us were 15 other people that only signed up for the 2 day tour.  So we said our good-byes to our fellow passenger and boarded a smaller boat for our 2nd day trip.  And this is why the tour books recommend doing 3 days on a boat in Ha Long Bay.  We got on a boat that can hold 10 people comfortably, yet we were the only ones on the boat.  Our "day trip" boat took us out further in the bay, where we saw 2 other boats at a time carrying no more than 2-4 tourists each.  We were in heaven.  Far far less people and far far far less other boats.  So we were left to our own to enjoy this beautiful piece of nature.  And we had no set agenda.  We could jump off our boat and take a swim, we can kayak for as long as we wanted.  We were even suppose to visit a pearl farm and Cat Ba Island, but we fell asleep on our boat and napped for as long as we wanted.

After a glorious day on our "day trip" boat, we returned to our "home" boat where we met a new batch of tourists on a 2-day trip or the start of their 3-day trip.  And the scheduled time started again.

Don't get me wrong, our "home" boat was still spectacular.  Below is our view from our bedroom and our typical view during meals.  Not too shabby.

So if you come to Vietnam, go to Ha Long Bay.  You haven't really been to Vietnam unless you do.  And if you do go to Ha Long Bay, shell out the cash and eke out the time for the 3-day tour on the boat for both nights.  It will be well worth it and you will find out why so many people flock to this site.  

The Jaded Traveler in Sa Pa

Prior to arriving in Vietnam, we had a couple of cities in mind to visit.  It looked like we would have been able to see 4-5 cities, but would have been limited to ~2 nights at each cities w/ all the travel time in between.  So we had to decide between Sa Pa and Hue.  As you can guess from the title of this post, we opted for Sa Pa.  This is a little town in the northern hills of Vietnam, close to the Chinese border known for the rice terrace views and the minority people that live there, the Hmongs (pronounced Mongs).  We're sad to report that we might not have chosen wisely.  As beautiful as the hills and the views were, it was nothing compared to the views that we had in Sagada in the Philippines.  Sa Pa is just a little bigger than Sagada and the town is much more used to tourist as we were constantly asked to purchase a trinket or get a ride on a motorbike somewhere.  Even Cat Cat village, where you get to see the Hmong people live, felt like it was staged for the tourist.  It's pretty sad that we've become the jaded traveller and had a difficult time enjoying the beauty of Sa Pa without it's comparison to Sagada.  And we're left wondering if we would have felt the same about Sagada had we visited Sa Pa first.

We still made the most of our time in Sa Pa by renting another scooter and scooting around the little town and to a nearby waterfall.

A View at Breakfast

Love Waterfall

The other upside to our visit to Sa Pa was getting to be closer to the rice terrace and the caribiou (water buffalo).

South America...I mean, Phu Quoc Island

The beauty of having no set itinerary and the willingness to be flexible has allowed us to find small towns to visit and plan for it just a couple days in advance.  And that is exactly what happened in Vietnam.  The usual cities to visit are of course Saigon and Hanoi and then thrown into the mix are either Hue, Da Nang, Hoi An, Sa Pa, and/or Ha Long Bay.  But a place that hasn't hit the mainstream yet is a little island off the East coast of Southern Vietnam called Phu Quoc.  This little island, which is just south of Cambodia and has territorial disputes w/ Cambodia, is shaped kinda like South America and is slated to become a tourist destination...but not yet.  Plans for large resorts to be built haven't taken off yet.  So we decide to book a plane and book a resort and off we went.

Our resort has individual bungalows in a little garden that steps off onto the beach.  There are maybe a dozen resort on this beach, with each resort claiming the beach area right in front of their property.  While the sand was a little coarse and grainy (nothing close to the powder white sand that we experienced at Boracay), it was a perfect area and Darin and I were glad to have been back on the beach after a month of touring North East Asia.

Our Garden Resort, Thanh Kieu Resort

Our Resort's Private Beach

Since Phu Quoc Island doesn't have the massive amounts of people that Saigon had and that the island seemed fairly small, we decided to rent two motorbikes (at 120,000 dong or ~6 USD a piece) and tour the little island.  Having only one previous experience driving a motorbike, I was a bit excited and apprehensive at the same time.  It was wise of me to be apprehensive, since I almost crashed the bike after going only 20m.  With a little scrape on my shin and a tip from Darin, we were off again.    And after an hour, when I wasn't gripping on to dear life, I was able to look around and enjoy the beautiful scenery and feel the wind blowing through my helmet covered "beautiful hair" (the guy we rented the motorbike from apologized for having to wear a helmet and ruin my "beautiful hair").

In Phu Quoc Island, you can either stay within the city, at the beach near the city, or at the beach on the South East beach called Sao Beach.  This is the beach that the travel guide books says is more beautiful and contains only 3 resorts.  The down side is that since there isn't much else on this side of the island, you don't have much else to do except use the resort facilities and lay on the beach.  But with our rented motorbikes, we were able to visit this side of the island and get to enjoy the crystal blue waters and powder fine sand.  It's like Boracay again with a fraction of the people & resorts.

After an hour or two at Sao Beach, we jump on our motorbikes and head back to our resort.  This time, we travel along the west side of the island.  This road travels along the coast for ~12km and was the uber-highlight of our motorbike trip for the day.  This beach, known as Long Beach (but much nicer than the one in Southern California), is where the mega resorts are supposed to be built.  So perhaps one day, we can return when they're built and say, "I remember when..."

Vietnam Cities Visited

Just left Vietnam yesterday and we had a great time.  A country that we would highly recommend to anyone.  We'll hopefully have posts up about the country sooner than later.  In the mean time, it's time to update our cities & transportation tallies.

Our last tally had us at 24 cities.  So on w/ our Vietnamese cities:
25. Ho Chi Minh City (AKA HCMC, AKA Saigon)
26. Phu Quoc Island (located just South of Cambodia)
27. Hanoi
28. Sapa (an 8 hour overnight train ride NW of Hanoi)
29. Halong Bay

Map of Vietnam; Hanoi in the North and HCMC in the South

Map of South Vietnam

Map of North Vietnam

Our transportation tally:
Hong Kong to HCMC by plane
HCMC to Phu Quoc Island by plane
Phu Quoc Island to Hanoi by plane
Hanoi to Sapa by train to Lao Cai, then van to Sapa
Sapa to Hanoi by van to Lao Cai, then train to Hanoi
Hanoi to Ha Long Bay by van
Ha Long to Hanoi by minibus

Plane rides: 8, previously at 5 plus the 3 listed above
Car rides: 10, previously at 7 plus the 3 vans listed above
Bus rides: 5, plus the minibus listed above
Ferry/boat rides: still at 5
Train rides: 17, previously at 15 plus the 2 listed above

Lots of travelling around!