Today I present to you the first article about my four-week round trip through Vietnam. I thought I'd start with a nice and calming natural object. I'll save the capital city Hanoi for my next post. The next lines are about the wonderful Ha Long Bay.

Unknown beauty!

I must admit, I had never heard of this place before. Only when we were wondering after our arrival in Hanoi which destinations we should head for directly from Hanoi, this name came up again and again. After a short research it soon became clear that we should not miss this. We, as absolute tour haters, even booked a guided tour including an overnight boat stay. But there is no other way to reach Halong Bay properly.

However, the tour organization made it a little bit complicated at first. We were not picked up from our hostel in the early morning as agreed. Also all our calls on the various mobile phone numbers which we found on their company website were not answered. We were convinced that we were being ripped off, and the travel company was laughing up their sleeve. But when we stomped through Hanoi to her office, it turned out that everything was just an embarrassing mistake of one of their employees, and our tour was simply postponed by one day with an appropriate discount. So it's was not that bad. After all, there is no German bureaucracy and accuracy here.

A little boating

After all that trouble we started our way to the bay the next day. This time we were actually picked up, and after about a 4 hour bus ride we were in the bay and boarded a small ship. In our tour we were 16 persons in total, so it was not too overcrowded at the boat. Quickly we went out to sea. For me, that meant pulling out the camera and taking pictures. During the two days we stopped at three different islands. Once for kayaking, once for a huge cave and once for a great viewpoint and swimming. But I'll just let the photos speak:

Background information

First of all: I don't think the pictures pay tribute to this special place. I was there for a too short time and the weather was also too foggy. For all those who want some information about the pictures, I will write a few lines based on a mixture of Wikipedia and the explanations of our guide.

The name Ha Long Bay means "descending dragon". The legend says that the exciting geology was created by a dragon that came to earth and spat through its mouth over thousands of other small dragons. There are 1969 limestone rocks scattered over an area of 1553km². After all, 775 of these islands, or an area of 434km², are protected as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Some islands are named after the most obvious objects/animals they display. For example, there is the turtle island and the parrot island. On this screenshot you can see the exact position of the bay:

I can only recommend this bay to everyone, if you are in the area or are planning a Vietnam trip, to visit this special place. It's definitely worth it.

If you liked this contribution then I would be very pleased about a comment. If you are interested in more posts about my Vietnam trip you can just follow me. The next article about Hanoi will be the complete opposite, I can promise you! For more pictures, just check out my Instagram account.

For my next article about Vietnam click here: HANOI