Lan Ha Bay

Halong bay and it's extension, Lan Ha bay are extraordinary and magical places. The emerald sea here is punctuated with over 3000 limestone islands peppered with beaches, caves and hidden lagoons. Halong bay is the main attraction of northeast Vietnam and there are over 500 tourist boats. I wanted to avoid these crowded touristy places but still see the bay, that is why I came to Cat Ba. I joined an organized tour that would take in the less visited Lan Ha bay and the chance to kayak around the islands. The tour left in a minivan at 9am for a pier 10 minutes away. There were 16 people on the tour, mostly young backpackers like myself. Unfortunately at this time of year, the weather is a bit cooler and foggy. This can mystical quality to the place but I wanted the blue skies that I had seen in the photos. The sky never did clear but I was still happy I took the tour. After getting out into the bay, the boat anchored and we were free to kayak around the area. This was my first time in a kayak. These were big and stable 2 person kayaks. A Danish girl sat and I shared a kayak.

After some more touring and a varied and delicious lunch, the group split up. Most of the people were here to rock climb. There were only 5 of us left on the boat after lunch. We leisurely cruised around more of the islands and then stopped again. I shared another kayak to visit and small cave with lots of bats in it. We cruised slowly back to where we had lunch to pick up the climbers. There are many floating fish farms in the bay and we stopped at one of these on the way. This was really interesting. There were thousands of fish in some of the pens. We picked up the climbers and arrived back in Cat Ba around 6pm.