Yesterday my wife and I went to the wedding of her cousin Kari to Alex.

It was a perfect day at a beautiful venue.

Before I went to Vietnam last year, everyone I know who had been there said that Ha Long Bay with it’s fantastically shaped limestone islands is a must see destination. Usually such recommendations leave me with visions of some tourist trap crawling with tourists and the predators that prey on them.

My preconceptions of what Ha Long Bay would be like were basically correct but for the fact that it wasn’t a hell.  Yes there are a lot of tourists but there wasn’t a hassle with local touts.

Most people going to Ha Long bay have bought tickets on package tours on the junks that tour the bay, from one of the many hole-in-the-wall travel agents one sees all over Vietnam.

 I don’t usually like to go on tours and I tend to avoid them but I’d been warned by the lady (Meng Kee) we were staying with in Hanoi that it’s better to buy the boat tickets in Hanoi because it takes the hassle out of finding transportation to the coast and it works out cheaper to buy it as a package.

We were picked up from where we were staying in Hanoi by a minibus and driven to the coast with about 12 other people. Interestingly there were a group of five Spanish people (of whom four didn’t speak English), who my wife and I struck up friendships with. I was quite amazed at how much Spanish I’d retained from my trips to Spain and Mexico over the years and we were to make ourselves understood to them. The Spanish were really lovely people who were full of life and we spent two wonderful days having a great time laughing and joking around in one of the most amazing landscapes I’ve ever seen. It was quite surreal speaking broken Spanish whilst floating through a landscape that looked like a Chinese painting.

We spent two very comfortable days on the junk which was more like a floating lounge room come restaurant. The staff were very friendly and relaxed as can been seen from the photo below of our captain.

The food was pretty good and plentiful but it was the company that really made the trip for us. My only regret was that I didn’t take any photos of the Spanish people with my camera (I took a few for them with their camera though).

Most of our trip was spent on the roof of the junk so we could see the scenery more clearly. It doesn’t get much better than kicking back with a cold drink in the tropics and watching amazing scenery go by while hanging out with good people. I’ve always found that while the landscape can be beautiful, it’s always the people that make a place.

Part of our package included kayaking so we had a chance to explore a little on our own which was fun. The water was so warm that when we were offered an opportunity to go swimming we didn’t bother as it wouldn’t have given any relief to the muggy heat at all. Whereas the beer was very good and cold.

On the last day it was very hazy and were taken to the place in the photo below

to see the caves.

One other thing that was good about the Ha Long Bay trip was that the staff on the junk didn’t constantly try to sell us things. We later took a boat trip in Hue the see the emporer’s tombs and during whole trip of about seven hours we were constantly being pressured to buy things and it was a real drag.

After such enjoyable experience Ha Long Bay, I know I will be another one of those people suggesting to anyone who is going to visit Vietnam that they would do well to go on a boat trip there.