Tuan Chau
My arrival in Halong Bay begins with an anecdote that illustrates the difficulties of communication one can have when travelling:
I booked a hotel on Booking (although you can hardly call it a hotel) in the port of Tuan Chau. This is the main starting point for tours of the bay. It is located on a peninsula which is reached by a long bridge.
The minibus that brings me from Ninh Bình drops me off near the pier, the hotel is supposed to be very close. So I walk to the hotel; the problem is that Google Maps doesn’t locate it very well, and starts by suggesting that I climb a long road that will get lost in the hills. I take the route but after a few minutes I hesitate to continue because it doesn’t seem very logical. A scooter stops. The not very young Vietnamese man who drives it seems to really want to help me. He tells me that he can see where the hotel is by looking at the map and offers me a ride on his scooter which I refuse at first. But he insists, telling me that he doesn’t want money, that he’s only doing this as a favour to me. I finally accept and he leaves for the mainland, crossing the bridge again. I try in vain to explain to him that he is wrong but he is very happy with himself. Finally, after much insistence, he agrees to stop on the other side of the bridge.
He leaves me there, after having vigorously shaken my hand and tried to insist on taking me to the hotel, which he is convinced is even further away. So here I am, more than 3 km from the supposed hotel and I don’t want to cross the bridge again with my bag on my back. The only solution is to take a taxi to get back to my starting point. Fortunately the taxi knows where the hotel is. This one is about 100 m from where the bus left me more than an hour before!
The lady who welcomes me at the hotel is incredibly kind. She doesn’t speak English but makes every effort to use her translator and communicate with me. I talk for a few moments with her father, a very old man who is very happy to speak a few words of French. He explains to me that he learned French until 1954, but that since then he has hardly spoken it and has forgotten it. A very nice meeting.
Unfortunately I will have to give a bad review to what can’t really be called a hotel. It is rather a single room on the ground floor of a very damp building that smells musty and is almost unhealthy. The price is prohibitive but it is only 50 metres from the pier. This is its only interest.
I spend the afternoon walking around Tuan Chau, which is a really nice place with a beautiful beach but there is absolutely no one there.
According to a Vietnamese woman who runs a bar on the beach, this is because people are working today. But if you dig a little deeper, it’s because the tourists haven’t come back en masse since the Covid. It’s a pity because this little town is perfectly developed, with a brand new street along the pier, very nice hotels and restaurants. Everything is empty.
Obviously, as everywhere in the world, as soon as one passes a little behind the beautiful landscaped corners, one finds traces of the formidable collective consciousness concerning waste and nature protection.
I eat alone in a very nice restaurant on the beach. Unfortunately again the food is not very good.
I book a cruise for the next day. Someone will pick me up at 11am at the hotel.
Meetings
So here I am, waiting with dozens of other people in the large Tuan Chau ferry terminal.
The guide (Henrik, very very nice and competent) arrives, takes care of the tickets, and takes us to one of those boats pompously called “junks”. It’s actually a large restaurant boat with a terrace for great views of the bay.
Some of these boats are really full. There are different standing which I guess also correspond to the quality of the meals. I have the impression that the four and five star boats are fuller. This time I am very lucky with my booking: there are very few of us on this boat which could easily accommodate 50 people. Only about fifteen passengers. The cruise starts as soon as we leave the harbour, by offering us to sit at the table to enjoy lunch. Drinks are not included, and our crew insists heavily that we consume them.
The extremely copious meal (we barely eat half of it) is unfortunately not of an extraordinary quality. But that is not very important, the interest of this day is elsewhere.
I’m at a really nice table with a rather old couple (on second thought maybe not so much more than me, I don’t see myself getting old) composed of an English gentleman and his Thai wife, a young Swiss man, Mathias, a young Filipino woman, Cynthia, and a young Turkish woman, Bella, all of them very, very nice.
It will be a day of meetings, dialogues and really enriching exchanges. For the moment the best day of my trip in Asia.
The couple is retired and travels a lot. The 2 girls are students and have decided to take several weeks to visit various Asian countries. I talk mainly to Bella, who apparently comes from a fairly well-to-do family based in London, but prefers to live in Turkey. She tells me that she has a lot of trouble with the food in Vietnam. She is wary of it because she is afraid of the animals she might be made to eat. So she eats very little, mainly fruit.
Mathias, with whom I will share the kayaking activity, explains that he can travel on a long term basis because he made his fortune with Bitcoin. He quit his job a few years ago and followed a training to manage Bitcoin and became a millionaire in a short time. Now he manages his capital, continues to invest in Bitcoin which he believes is the future; he uses his money to spend his life travelling.
The Bay
Halong Bay lives up to its reputation. It is an absolutely beautiful, magical place. 
The islands follow one another, like pieces of a building set put there by a giant hand. 
Each one has its specificity. No doubt to appreciate their variety would require a cruise of several days. During the long half day we will spend in the bay, we will have the opportunity to stop and visit a cave with immense proportions, then on another island we will take a kayak ride that will allow us to discover an interior valley that is accessed by a passage under the rock, finally on the third island, a magnificent beach of fine sand will allow us to swim in the waters of the bay. 
The return to the port in the setting sun is at the height of romance.
The only downside: since the beginning of my trip I have been waiting for the turquoise waters promised in all the guidebooks. The water in Halong Bay is green, and far from transparent. I also regret that in this extraordinary natural site listed as a Unesco heritage site, all the “junks” are motor boats. The trip would be much more beautiful and ecological if we were on sailing boats.
Nevertheless, it is an extraordinary site that you really have to see once in your life and I will return there with pleasure.
