It is quite difficult and no less expensive to get yourself to Halong Bay and navigate the islands on your own, so we booked one of those "somebody does everything for you" tours for 2 nights. I am usually skeptical of such tours - they make me think of old people and a guide with a flag leading helpless tourists around - but we didn't really have a choice and we picked an awesome tour. We stayed the first night on a boat with with about 12 other people after kayaking amidst the islands and floating villages around them and checking out a huge cave during the day. They even let is jump from the top deck of the boat (see pictures below), which added another notch to our list of "things they let you do in Vietnam that they would never let you do in the US". The evening ended with dinner and forced kareoke - apparently this is the main form of entertainment in Vietnam . Luckily we had a crazy Russian couple on our boat that had drank several bottles of wine and vodka throughout the day and they broke the ice by being the first singers. Here are the pcis from the first night on the boat:
The second day we left the boat and went to Cat Ba Island, one of the islands in Halong Bay, and did a two hour hikei in the National Park there in which we were promised that we would get views of all of Halong Bay from the top which we did not but oh well. Then we headed to our own private island - Monkey Island - where the 30 or people on the tour had the whole island to ourselves and bungalows on the beach. Truly paradise. A few of us went exploring the island to find monkeys and we discovered that the monkeys on this island have drinking problems. They would attack at the sight of a beer can and when they got their hands on one...well, you can see the pictures below.
The beach on Monkey Island.
Moonlight over Halong Bay.
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