While we were in Hanoi, we took an overnight cruise around Halong Bay. Halong Bay contains about 2000 limestone islands which have been washed away over time by tectonic and ocean movements. Our small boat had about 12 people on it.
Our suite on the boat.
We cruised out into the bay and stayed there overnight, before chugging back in the next day.
There were plenty of limestone cliffs to see, as you can tell.
A floating fishing village - plenty of people live out here on little boats. Apparently inside the limestone cliffs there are deposits of fresh water (something to do with how limestone works), and these people live off seafood and water from inside the limestone cliffs. Unfortunately, the water contains some sort of chemical that slowly poisons them, so they're banned from doing that now.
One of the locals, selling to tourists. The submerged buckets are full of crabs, fish, starfish, other things. The boat behind it is full of soft drinks and snacks.
The second day wasn't so bright and sunny. In the morning we climbed one of the cliffs to get a nice view of the bay - that's our boat you can see in the picture. Traditionally, the boats were all painted brown. Apparently, however, a new local government official has been appointed by the party. The new official decided after a trip to Greece that all of the boats should be painted white rather than brown and this would increase tourism. He banned all non-white tour boats from departing the harbour. So now, all of the tour boats that depart from the harbour we left from are white.
Occasionally you can still see some of the traditional brown boats, but they've come from another province further away. I wonder if the white paint will actually help tourism. There were a lot of upset people on our boat wanting pictures of brown boats next to the limestone cliffs.
After our time in Vietnam, we went for
A Day in Tokyo on the way home!
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