Hello friends,
If you spend two minutes googling Vietnam travel itineraries, you will be flooded with pictures of Ha Long Bay. The striking limestone islands jut out of calm bay waters, begging for you to cruise on by and admire them.
Does the view live up to the hype? This week, we’re here to tell you all about our Ha Long Bay cruise experience (and spoiler: yes, it’s gorgeous).
One admin note before we dive in: All our past newsletters are now appearing on our website! If you need to get caught up – or if one of our emails never made it to you – they’re all there for ya.
Pete’s Travel Diary
Cruising Ha Long Bay
Ha Long bay was beautiful and kayaking around the multitude of islands was a blast. The cruise ship we used was enjoyable and very clean. The staff was courteous and ambitious to help.
We were upgraded to an excellent room on the ship. The bed was round which is visually appealing but only means one thing for the initiated tall person: one leg will hang off the bed further than the other leg hangs off the bed. My recommendation for overcoming this is to be so active that you will be tired enough to sleep anywhere comfortably. After our day of kayaking, swimming, and exploring I’d have been comfortable sleeping on the ground. The bed was still very comfortable albeit undersized. Perfect for the average-sized individual.
Once the boat took off, it was easy to enjoy a romantic sunset among the island spires from the deck of our cruise ship or up close on one of the excursions to various island caves or kayaking trips. Keeping a careful eye on the waters offered us opportunities to spot multiple species of jellyfish sauntering by. Ha Long Bay is an excellent location for bird watchers, butterfly enthusiasts, and naturalists as you can kayak around the islands and spot all manner of critters making their lives on the steep cliffs.
I saw my first jellyfish up close. I do not recommend getting close to a jellyfish but I am a rescue scuba diver, registered nurse, and a capable fool in my own right. It made for some neat footage which you can see on my Instagram. One of the gentlemen working on the ship had already been stung on the arm by a jellyfish and simply squeezed a lime wedge on the affected area and shrugged it off. He said it stung and burned but not badly, and he was still there the next morning at breakfast so all was well. No one offered to pee on his arm, nor would I suspect he would accept such strange kindness from strange people. (Editor’s note: The crew went out of their way to keep jellyfish away from swimmers who were not as crazy as Pete.)
This cruise was also my first attempt at squid fishing, offered after dinner on the first day. The crew lures squid in using lights shining on the water to attract the plankton and other food that squid enjoy. However, we were unsuccessful due to the full moon having the same effect all across the bay (not just at our boat), but as the phrase goes, “Good fishing, poor catching.” Given some of the litter floating by in the bay, I wouldn’t be too eager to eat what comes out of those waters.
On our second day, our itinerary included a tour of Bright Cave. We boarded the ferry boat which transported us to a series of islands inaccessible to the large ships. From the docks at this village, you board smaller row boats that hold 4-6 travelers and are then transported to the cave. Unfortunately, we could not enter the cave as planned due to a low tide. At times the tides may be too high, preventing clearance of the boats, and other times the tides are too low, preventing the boats from being able to row through the cave systems. Judging by the terrain at low tide, it is not terrain you would wish to explore on foot, and so the boats took us on a slight detour to show us more scenery to make the experience worthwhile.
A good rainstorm rolled in during our tour, so I was personally glad to be on the row boat. Make sure to bring your rain gear! The row boat operator provided guests with traditional hats as well as disposable ponchos. As the other tourists discarded their now-ruined rain gear in the boat, I snagged it up and stuffed it in a pocket to ensure it was disposed of on the ship and would not burden the locals or the waterways.
The only drawback to Ha Long bay is the way tourists have abused it. Trash floats in abundance in these waters. With a significant amount of the locals living at or beneath the poverty line, there is little chance anyone will be compensated to clean up the area. As such, and particularly in the moonlight, plastic bags, water bottles, and even styrofoam mock this gorgeous seascape. Nevertheless, the views and the sunset alone are enough to make the trip worthwhile. As I often do, I try to snag a handful of litter on my way out. We encourage you to do the same.
The food was enjoyable and often buffet style, with plenty of fresh fruit, bread, pastries, main dishes, etc. We used the bottled water and did not risk using the water filter on the ship as it was possible that the stored water could be brackish (a mix of salt and fresh water). Best to stick to bottled water, which is super cheap. Just make sure your plastic bottles don’t find their way into the Bay!
When the ship is anchored in the bay, you might notice row boats with folks selling snacks, beer, wine, and souvenirs. I did not conduct business (no one said it is against the rules but seemed like a conflict of interest as the ship sells its own beer and wine). Still, I was tempted to go and barter, just to say I did. The concept of conducting business on boats seemed oddly interesting.
Other cruise itineraries include a visit to a local fishing village and the opportunity to learn more about the indigenous people who operate these row boat-based businesses, but ours did not.
Perry’s Travel Diary
A modern-day ghost town?
On our journey to and from Ha Long Bay, we passed through the town of Tuan Chau. That said, it’s not really a town – it’s a mostly abandoned resort and housing complex.
I love ghost towns, so I was both fascinated and disturbed as we drove by entire neighborhoods of incomplete McMansions that were obviously not under construction. It seemed like there weren’t any people anywhere. And the stucco buildings looked like they belonged in an early-2000s California housing development, not Vietnam.
Who was buying these things? Who was building them? Why did they suddenly stop?
Abandoned buildings were frequent throughout Vietnam, and by frequent, I mean that there was one on every block without exaggeration. In fact, here’s a photo essay with some of Ho Chi Minh City’s abandoned buildings.
But the density of incomplete construction in Tuan Chau was next-level.
What’s even weirder is that googling Tuan Chau results in a host of travel websites touting Tuan Chau as a resort town, including headlines like, “A Perfect Nature Retreat,” and, “Halong Bay’s Beach Break Alternative.” Only by adding the word “abandoned” do I find this single (and creepy) review of its abandoned amusement park, written by a travel blogger in 2018.
The fact that the all-knowing internet has no real explanation for this place is perhaps the creepiest part of all.
I can’t figure out exactly what happened from a reputable source. When broadening my search to more generally understand why there is so much abandoned real estate in Vietnam, the best explanation is that there was a real estate bubble in the early 2000s that popped sometime around the 2011 financial crisis. Tuan Chau is probably a case of the developer going bankrupt, and maybe there was insufficient demand (and therefore preorders) for their properties.
A couple of days after I started to write about Tuan Chau, I came across this Reddit thread and video of Chinese-funded skyscrapers being demolished – a not-so-subtle reminder of the current Chinese real estate crisis. (If you’ve been living under a rock, Graham Stephan’s recent newsletter summarized major news stories on the issue.) Those crumbling skyscrapers looked an awful lot like the ones we had been walking past daily.
And not long after that, a Thai restaurant owner asked us during our dinner conversation about the Chinese-funded construction in Phnom Penh. (He wanted to know whether Phnom Penh was starting to “look like Las Vegas,” and let us assure you that comparison was laughable.)
I began to wonder what the relationship was between China’s and Vietnam’s real estate woes, and as it turns out, so did this reporter at Bloomberg. The conclusion is that the two are very, very similar if nothing else.
What we took away – and hope you will, too – is that the Chinese real estate crisis is a much larger international problem than we realized even with the current abundance of news coverage. And we won’t be pre-ordering a condo in Vietnam (nor China, nor Cambodia, nor Southeast Asia in general) anytime soon.
Itinerary
- We booked a 2 day/1 night Ha Long Bay cruise with Era Cruises via Ha Long Bay Tours.
- Our booking included round-trip transportation from our hotel in Hanoi in a comfortable seven-passenger van.
- Our driver took the toll road, making it a 2-hour journey one way from Hanoi to Ha Long Bay. (Some budget cruise operators do not use the toll road and take a 4-hour journey instead.)
- The van dropped us off at the dock, where we waited underneath an outdoor awning to take a smaller boat to our cruise ship. Other cruise companies offer air-conditioned waiting rooms.
- The waiting area was chaotic, but welcome to Southeast Asia. Era Cruises had a number of attendants to guide you and ensure you weren’t lost.
- Exact itineraries are set based on the weather conditions the day of your cruise, but they may include swimming, kayaking, a visit to a fishing village, squid fishing, and/or a cave visit.
- Lunch, dinner, a light breakfast, and brunch were all included. Alcohol is not.
- While many of the cruise companies offer a 3 day/2 night cruise, they essentially repeat the same itinerary for your second day – so no one does this, nor is it recommended.
Perry’s Travel Tip of the Week
Keep track of your stuff
We’re team carry-on only, but there have been multiple times during our travels when we can’t carry on (*cough* budget airlines *cough*) or are otherwise separated from our luggage.
This summer, checked baggage has been a nightmare. At one point, 16,000 bags were lost and waiting to be returned to their owners at Amersterdam’s Schipol Airport.
We did not want to deal with losing everything we own when there might be a significant language and cultural barrier, so we threw an Apple Airtag in each of our bags.
AirTags allow you to track your items in any location around the world. We’re able to check whether our bags were loaded on the plane, if they’re still sitting in the hotel room, or if they’ve grown legs and taken off on their own adventure.
You’ll receive notifications if your bag is left behind – including a somewhat amusing notification during our Ha Long Bay cruise stating that our bags were “last seen in the Gulf of Tonkin.”
At $29 each (or $25 each in a pack of 4), we find that they’re well worth the peace of mind and would highly recommend getting a couple for your 2022 travels, near or far.
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Until next time,
Pete and Perry