From Hanoi city to Halong Bay is about 4 hours by car. One thing I decided to use driver instead taking public transport here and there is because I travel with my parents so is a lot easier to have a driver with us.
Ha Long Bay, on Vietnam’s northeastern seacoast, is often considered one of the world’s most beautiful bays. In 1994 and 2000, UNESCO recognized Ha Long Bay as a World Heritage site for its remarkable landscape and geomorphology. It was also listed as one of the New7Wonders of Nature in 2011.
We got to use these small boats to transfer us to our cruise. Due to low season in Hanoi (because it is summer) so we won't see much tourist.
When we booked the driver, the company help us book the cruise together as well. Per person per night is about USD 135 included 4 meals (lunch and dinner on boarding day), breakfast and brunch on check out day.
The cruise that we boarding name White Dolphin. There are so many cruises there, all by different different company. So when you google Cruise in Halong Bay, it will come out a lot of website for you to choose. Because this is our first time, so I let the person in charge to book whatever he think is nice for us.
When come to low season, one good thing is you be able to upgrade easily. I not sure what our room suppose it looks like, I just know our cabins is at downstair before upgrade, however due to low season, we can occupied the cabins upstairs which has own balcony itself(so I assume downstair is without balcony). The cruise has 10 cabins (cater for 20 people) and we have only 5 of us (my family with another couple), so it seems like a private cruise just for us !!! Awesome.
This is my first time stay in a room by myself !!! Is not scary and I feel the luxury, hahaha.....
Love the balcony because when the cruise cruising, I can see the beautiful scene from my room !! How nice is that !!!
If you have chance to go to Halong Bay, you must contact or book this tour guide name Tú. He really the best tour guide I had ever met. He is funny, his english is so so good (at least I can understand well). After I came back from Vietnam, they request me to do review on TripAdvisor only I saw so many good review about him !!! We are lucky to have him as our 2 days tour guide.
They did arranged some activities for us as well. The first day we visited the fishing village in Halong. To visit the fishing village, we have to use the small boat like sampan.
For the tipping, each person just give them USD 1 will do.
When we travel around the fashioning village, we can see the floating house over there. Nowadays there is no one live there for fishing, the people who left over and stay here is the people who rolling the boat. The rest of the people already moved to the city.
This is the formal primary school. Sadly they also need to move out as there is no teacher willing to come over here to teach them. But they still remain the classroom as museum for the tourist to visit.
We also pay a visit to the oyster farm. After visit the oyster farm and the good explanation from the tour guide, I finally know why pearl is so expensive. I am talking about good pearl real pearl.
The original pearl is super small, not like the one we see in the market, big and beautiful. They need to cultivate the pearl.
First, they need to take the pearl and put into the oyster, and they also need to put in the mama membrane into the oyster as well. After that, they will put all the oysters into the water to cultivate the pearl. After 3 years, the pearl will become big. However, only 30% successful because some of the pearl will come out from the oyster and the oysters will die. From the 30%, maybe 10-20% out of this "survival" pearls is good pearls. Therefore, the real good pearl is so expensive !!!!!
But of course a lot of business will fake the pearl, because I not really know how to see a real pearl, so end up we buy nothing. haha....
Capture the moment from the deck of the cruise. Love the sunshine over here !! It is so beautiful. The weather here in Halong Bay is not as hot as in Hanoi City.
Before dinner we had a learning session which is learn how to roll Vietnamese Spring Roll !! Is kinda fun to have traditional activities like this. The couple from Mexico are really nice as well !! (Thanks Tú help me capture the moment)
First time sleep alone in "hotel".
First time sleep on the cruise.
Hopefully won't have much sea motion ^^
Thanks for reading.
Xoxo
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