Halong Bay was quite spectacular, though not quite as beautiful or isolated as ‘Indochine‘ had led us to believe. That may have had to do with the fact we were on a boat with 14 other people (the bay can only be visited with organised tours) and that there were about 50 other ‘same, same, but different’ three storey floating gin palaces most places we visited. It is the sort of place that would be absolutely magical to explore by kayak or small boat but it was not to be.
At the very least we had a great group of people to hang out with, which made life quite fun. The days were spent kayaking into hidden grottos, exploring caves and swimming in the milky green water (via the 3 storey roof of our boat), but it was after dark that things got a little bit crazy, possibly due the consumption by the rest of our group of cheap vodka peddled from little coracles that swarmed the boat whenever we stopped. It started off with a spot of nightswimming (still from 3 storeys up mind you), branched into pirate raids on neighbouring boats, took a strangely bizarre turn when we were visited by a bunch of naked americans (who joined us jumping off the roof – much to Chhay’s amusement) and finally decended into chaos as people hijacked a group of visiting night kayakers (who later staged a retaliatory raid).
Despite being herded like cattle for much of the trip, it was actually quite enjoyable and we met a few interesting people that we will be able to catch up with later in the UK.