Lan Ha Bay & Cat Ba island

We had a tour booked to explore the Lan-Ha bay, a less touristy version of the famous Ha Long bay. Same views of the limestone formations in the sea but with much less tourists. That went (almost) as planned, we saw the floating fishing villages, our tour guide then told us that he came from one of these fishing villages and that, unfortunately, people who live there are very poor and have no money and the education in Vietnam is paid and if you could afford the education you still have to find a way to get on the mainland every day to go to school. That was very sad. It was also quite dirty around the beaches, full of litter, we had a tour with a kayak around the rocks and to a nice, remote beach, but the beach was very dirty. We went swimming and it was just pristine view and everything, but at the very shallow part of the water there were corals or some sort of very sharp rocks and me and one of the ladies there both got cut on our feet and legs, it wasn’t exactly the experience we expected. We were supposed to sail on a board for a few days around different part of the bay, however our boat’s engine had some sort of problems, so instead, we used it as a stationary hotel basically and just slept there. There were several young boys taking care of us and cooking for us and we ate all together on the boat, the food was really, really great, not only tasty, but also presented very well and they really put a lot of effort, but ofc there was always this one tourist who complained about everything and tried to light the fire in everyone about how we weren’t moving with the board when we should’ve. But we did move, every day they came with another boat, we hopped on it and went to explore.

Yes, it wasn’t amazing that we didn’t get to wake up at a different location every day and see the sunset over different scenery, but it was ok. Our cabin was suuuuper hot but nothing we could’ve done, unfortunately. But we, or at least I, did have a lot of fun. We even managed to go and jump from the board with one of the girls and swam in the sea right next to the boat at sunset. This was really amazing, so refreshing and so beautiful, one of the strongest memories for me from the bay. The guys on the boat showed us how they catch squid, well.. luckily for me they didn’t manage to catch any when they tried to show us, but they did explain how they catch the squid – they throw the bait and shine a torch directly at the water, this attracts the squid and it’s supposed to catch on the bait which looks like a little shrimp. A few funny facts from our tour guide: He told us about their “Happy Water” which is rice wine, but they “put many things inside, sometimes a snake, sometimes a woman” 😀 hahaahahah well we did see the Happy Water in many places and it was indeed with snakes and all sorts of other creatures inside, including a scorpion and other non-distinguishable things.. I didn’t try it. Anyway, Ha Long Bay’s area is around 1553 km2, on Cat Ba there is the endemic, critically endangered, Cat Ba langur monkey, looks like the black monkey we saw in Indonesia, but has blond (ok, yellow..) hair on top of the head. (we didn’t see them, unfortunately). So how did Ha Ling bay came to existence? Fiest off, “Long” means “dragon”, “Ha” is “descending”, so Ha Long translates to “Descending dragon”. The legend goes that back in the days when Vietnam fought a lot with Chinese people, Vietnam was very weak and couldn’t defeat the Chinese army. According to ancient legends, Vietnamese people were descendants of dragons themselves, so when they couldn’t defeat the Chinese, they called upon the Mother dragon to send her children to help them win the invasion. When they came down, they did defeat the enemy and giant emeralds appeared and scattered along the bay. These emeralds were the teeth of the dragons and they were spread in order to deter any future attacks in the area. And that’s how the 1969 islands of limestone came to be.