Ha Long Bay

Ha Long Bay has been one of the places that's been on my Asia Bucket List to visit since I've been here.  It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that sits off the east coast of Vietnam.  It features thousands of limestone pillars and islands coming out of the sea which is what I wanted to see!

Thanks Instagram for making my picture look even better!

The trip from Hanoi was a 3 hour long ride in a van (with no shocks) over incredibly bumpy roads.  If you ever go, pay the extra money and take a private car out there, not the van that the boat provides!  Once we got there, we boarded our Junk Boat and took off for a night.  There are hundreds of junk boats (some better than others) and I think we got a pretty good one!

Picture of our boat

We motored around Ha Long Bay to an island which we climbed to the top of and had an amazing view of Ha Long Bay.

From there we went to a fishing village and had a local lady row us around in a boat.  It was amazing to see how these people lived.  They definitely used all of the resources they had available and lived off of the ocean.  It was interesting but also a bit sad knowing that this was all that they had.  It made me very grateful!

Floating houses

The village and our row boats

The local school

The next morning the boat took us to 'Surprise Cave' which was in one of the limestone pillars.  It was a huge cave with three chambers and the last one looked like we were on the moon or something.  The cave was discovered in the early 1900s by the local people.  The Vietnamese then used the cave to store ammunition in the cave during the war because they didn't think that it would be found!  

A few more pictures:

Sunset