Ha Long Bay

Our last stop in Vietnam was to the world famous Ha Long bay, a Unesco world heritage sight and one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. It was so incredible to see in real life and the pictures look terrible compared to how beautiful it actually was like stepping into the film Avatar. We booked a 2 day 1 night sleeping on a boat with Golden Dolphin Tours, the first day we went from the harbour out into Halong Bay for around four hours cruising around all the islands and then went to a small village on the water and borrowed some kayaks from the locals and kayaked around the amazing limestone cliffs it was very surreal after we went back to our boat to watch the sunset and have some drinks, followed by karaoke of course, we then went to our cabins which had air con and were really cute and old fashioned, waking up on the water and seeing Ha Long bay out my window was probably one of my most incredible moments of this trip the next day we sailed around the islands and stopped at a pearl farm where they showed us how they cultivated the best pearls and the process behind it. 

pearl farm - Ha Long bay

Ha Long bay - at night

 

view from our cabin on Halong Bay

Pearl farm worker

I thought the tour we did was pretty great and I loved sleeping on the boat, it was around 70USD but I had friends that did their own thing minus a tour and said it was pretty easy to get around on your own, we didn't manage to get to Cat Ba island as we ran out of time but i'd recommend spending 4 days doing both.