On the 24th of September I made a boating trip to Ha Long Bay(Vietnam). The day before I arrived in Ha Long after a 6 hour trip on my Motorbike. I went swimming that evening That plus the long ride made me very tired. I didn't sleep very well in the hostel, so I was still very sleepy the next day.
As I was sitting there waiting for the boat to arrive half asleep half meditating a group of German people came to the same waiting area. Among them was a girl in a beautiful black Summer dress. I took away my backpack from the seat to my left and she sat down next to me. We started talking and she told me I look enlightened. The conversation was nice and I was happy to have an interesting companion for the trip.
Soon after the "Captain" arrived, gave us our tickets and walked with us to our boat. He talked about Ha Long Bay in Vietnamese and English, but his English was bad so it was hard for me to listen to him. The only interesting thing I remember is how Ha Long Bay got it's name: Ha Long means Ascending(Ha) Dragon(Long) and it says that a Dragon ascended from heaven and he liked it here so much so he decided to stay. It refers to the shape of the mountains.
After a while we were allowed to get on the upper floor of the Cruise Boat and watched the beautiful scenery. It reminded me a lot about Guilin, but with water. The mountains had a similar shape, but were far enough apart so the boat could sail through them. We got to two small rocks about 5-7 meters tall which were very close to each other. Their name is "kissing couple" or "fighting cocks(roosters)".
From there we went to a small island with a beautiful cave inside. It was the biggest I have seen in my life so far, but Caro said it is small compared to the biggest cave in the world which is also in Vietnam: Hang Son Doong. I will go there in a few weeks.
We walked around and took some pictures. We had a time limit and there were a lot of other people so we couldn't enjoy it to the fullest, bit it was still a nice experience. About half an hour later we got back on the boat and went to a place where we could kayak. Me and Caro got in one of the Kayaks and enjoyed our trip. We went to a small Bay and then back to the boat. The scenery was amazing. Our last stop was a small island with a beach where we could go swimming, but there were a lot of tourists and the place where you could swim was quite restricted so it was not a special event. The water was warm the sun was shining and it had around 34 degrees so we were just sun drying after we got out. After 40 minutes we got back on the boat and went to our starting point.
We exchanged Facebook and met again a few hours later. The conversation we had was quite deep and I found out she is 19 and travels alone for the first time. Her next destination is China and I gave her a few advice together with some warnings.
Altogether I enjoyed the trip a lot even if I could have gotten it cheaper(the travel agency charged 150,000 Dong about 5€), but the view was amazing, the weather was good, the food was acceptable and the only down part was the feeling of light torture of having to listen to the bad English of the "Captain" and a little too many people.
I give this day 27 /10 Points