Ha Long Bay

Today I am on mood of writing my trip to Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

Ha Long is a bay located in the north of Vietnam (Quang Ninh province). It's 170km far from Ha Noi capital. From Ha Noi, you can take a bus to Ha Long (Hoang Long express) with a cheap price (about $3). You better travel to Ha Long from March to May or August to October, and should avoid June-July because there are many storms in this time . At that time, I went on business trip so I took a chance of weekend staying there and visited Ha Long bay with another colleague. It's very kind of my boss to arrange my business trip to Ha Long intentionally before she left us. By the way I would like to say thank you to my boss.
When we came to Ha Long we stayed in Bai Chay Union Hotel Ha Long (Khach San Cong Doan Bai Chay), it's a good 3 star hotel with big space room. The price was around $25/night included breakfast. However it's a bit far from the beach (1.5km). Ha Long has 2 areas for tourist, you should stay in Bai Chay area because it's more crowded than Hon Gai area.
In order to discover Ha Long, we asked hotel to book a cruise tour visiting Ha Long bay with the price of $12/person including pick up and drop at hotel. However I recommend that you should not book tour through hotel because the price is more expensive. You totally can go to the pier and buy ticket by yourself. In the morning they picked us at 8 am at hotel by a small bus and go to Ha Long pier. Here we were transferred to boat to visit Ha Long bay. We went with Ha Binh boat and think that it's a good boat to go with. The ticket price of you buy directly with boat service is around $7 depend on time of service (4hrs or 6hrs)
Firstly the boat stopped at Dong Thien Cung for us to discover. It's a long and beautiful cave with stalactite. Especially it's created by nature. The cave was lightened up by colorful neon lights making it even more magical. Also the tourist was crowded so it's very fun.
After that, as scheduled the boat continued its journey to another side of Ha Long bay where have a lot of small islands and islets in the middle of ocean. According to a legend, these islands in Ha Long bay allegedly were gems conjured by Dragon. Hon Trong Mai (The Kissing Rocks), is one of the islands which is printed in Vietnamese bill note. We also travelled to Ngu Hanh Son which included 5 small mountains standing in ocean. At this area, we was dropped at a fishing village. It's a small community living on the ocean. They also have house and school here. We bought tour from local people to visit Hang Luon (a very strange cave just like a huge hole) by small boat. It costs $5 per person. It's an incredible feeling when we were drifting on a boat under superb and beautiful mountains. Because I don't have much time to stay here, I didn't go all places in Ha Long bay such as Titov island, Surprised Cave, Tuan Chau island... if you have time, you should stay 1 night in Tuan Chau island or 4-5star boat. It must be a cool experience.

Finish a day of discovering Ha Long bay, we came back to hotel and checked out because our budget did not allow us to stay there. We moved to another small hotel with $10 (paid by us not by company). In the afternoon we had a walk along Bai Chay beach, it's not a beautiful beach with white sand as Phu Quoc but it's crowded and many interesting activities such as surfing, drifting Cano... In the next morning, before leaving Ha Long, we tried and bought Cha Muc, it's the famous food here.

To me, Ha Long is a beautiful bay with hiden charms that I haven't discovered yet. One day I will come back and discover it's beauty.