The Bay of Descending Dragon

Halong Bay - 07.10.2006

After repeated dreams of being left behind by the tour, I did finally managed to wake up, take breakfast, checked out and get to the Handspan tour office on time, with making some stop at the Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake. Hanoi was not as crowded and crazy as the night before, and the lake was beautiful, with people doing taichi and also sitting around. It was a relaxing moment. Now that it’s clear day, it’s easily to spot that French influences are quite strong in the architecture style. Hanoi has also, other than people sitting by the street eating, some baguettes seller by the street.

After registering, we departed at 8.30 with comfortable van and the trip to the boat marina lasted around 3.30 hours. Then here we are departing to the Magnificent bay of Halong. The Dragon Pearl boat (the biggest of its kind) sailed while they served us the lunch on board. The lunch was quality satisfying but quantitatively disappointing. There were just too little. I didn’t really full after the meal. After that we were just relaxing, doing nothing, and enjoying the very beautiful scenery.

Talking about view, Halong bay is a very, very beautiful.. It's one of the Unesco's World Heritage Site in Vietnam and there were like thousands of islands and almost all of them are karst mountain with high peaks majestically standing above an emerald sea..

At 4pm we swam!!! The water was not very cold and overall very good..
Before dinner, we were relaxing again, watching the sunset.. Dinner, as the lunch, was just too little. Maybe it was just me because other people said that there were enough, ok… One special thing about this trip: It was full moon night! We had this bright illuminated sea..
At 11pm we all retired to our cabin….