Halong Bay

After getting in at 4:30 am from the night train from Sapa (again little sleep, but nice bunk mates from England, on our way up our bunk mates were from Switzerland and also very nice) we were picked up by our halongbaysapa tour people and taken to their home to sleep and shower.  We were picked up in a very nice van and taken 4 hours to Halong Bay City. Here we meet our boat the Indichina Junk Prince 4 a smaller junk that only has 3 berths so there was only 3 couples on board with a crew of 8.  Our berth was smaller but very nice with its own head (bathroom) and queen size bed, with portholes.  The guide and crew were very nice and helpful the 3 days and 2 night we were there.  We were served lunch shortly after boarding and it was the best lunch I have ever had, I think we had 5 courses of different seafoods (small portions) the young male chefs can really cook.  Our evening meals had at least 6 courses and our other lunches (the second lunch was on the beach)were large also, again all the food was excellent.  We motored out to the islands in Halong Bay (actually the Bia Tu Long Island, which are north of the Halong Bay islands and less used for tours) we did not see any other tour junks after we left the harbor area till we anchored ar night.  The islands are beautiful most sticking up straight out of the water with shear cliffs and some vegetation on them.  We did a short kayak the first day, the two more the second day. These were around the island and caves.  The only other people we saw on both the fist two days were subsistence fishermen in mostly small boats that they lived on.  At the end of the second day we moved over closer to Halong Bay and there were a lot of junks in this area.  We visited big island cave here and did a short kayak.  On the last day were visited a floating fishing village that had a ouster farm and then it was back to dry land and to Hianoi, with a stop at a Water Puppet show.  We returned to our tour guides home to await our night train (16 hour) ride to Danang the car to Hoi An.