The Travel Diaries: Halong Bay

After seeing some of the amazing sites of Ninh Binh, it was time to take to the seas and discover Halong Bay, or 'descending dragon bay'.  Legend has it that many years ago, the Gods sent a family of dragons to the Vietnamese people to help them defend Vietnam from invaders. These dragons spat many precocious jewels into the ocean and where these landed, great islands rose, forming a natural wall against the invaders who then became shipwrecked upon the rocks. The mother dragon decided to stay among the islands and so descended into the bay, which was then named 'Ha Long' Bay after her.

Halong Bay certainly looked magical. Everywhere you look, great sheer towers of limestone rise out of the water, covered in thick green vegetation. We took a boat trip from Ha Long City to see the islands close up and to visit the caves which tunnel through the rock formations.

We took a kayak to get a closer look at one of the islands. We paddled our way through a low rock tunnel, emerging into a hidden bay, surrounded by more sheer limestone cliffs. The scenery really was breathtaking!

We also delved into a huge cave network which bored through one of the islands. The rock formations were beautifully lit up by multicoloured lights, making the cave feel completely mystical!

Jossi and I both really enjoyed the boat trip. It was amazing to Halong Bay first hand and not just as a picture in a book. It was one of the places I had been looking forwards to visiting the most and the image I had held in my head of Vietnam while we'd been planning our trip.

However, a word of warning! The boat trips are great, but watch out for being ripped off when it comes to drinks! These were offered around as if free, but everyone was billed at the end of the trip! Bit of a nasty shock to everyone on board and the only downer on what had been an amazing trip.

Malta: Part Three

Day three's adventure saw us climbing onto a little speed boat and jetting off at top speeds to Comino Island. Comino Island is locally famed for its Blue Lagoon, where the sea is supposedly a stunning shade of aquamarine and the sandy bottom a glittering white. I was quite excited for spending a day sun bathing and soaking up the scenery. But first, the journey there and the caves!

We met at 10am outside our hotel and waited for the mini bus to come and collect us. It was late, but we were expecting this- one thing we've learnt out here is that everyone runs on 'Malta time' which is at least 10-15mins behind the rest of the world. However, it was worth the wait since we met the best bus driver we could have hoped for. He was friendly and determined to tell us everything about every place we passed- I felt we learned more from him in the 30min bus drive than I had from anything else so far!

My top five favourite facts were:

• Malta is teeny tiny at only about 17miles long and 9miles wide!
• Apparently, Malta was so heavily bombed in WWII that more bombs were dropped per day on the little island than on London in the entirety of the Blitz! 
• To escape this bombing, the island residents had retreated to the huge cave networks which run under the whole island.
• Malta has no naturally sandy beaches. At the end of the Cold War, Russia gifted Malta a load of sand and it has been imported from the Middle East ever since! 
• A large number of films have been shot on the tiny island, including Troy, The Da Vinci Code, Munich and Midnight Express.  

Don't we all feel more worldly now? 

Our driver stopped and let us all out at one point to see the Popeye film set which was visible from the road. We looked down this cliff and could see all the houses, set around a beautiful bay of some of the most strikingly coloured water I think I've ever seen! However, after our quick photo op, it was time to get back on the bus and trundle off towards our boat. 

Before long, we were clambering into the speed boat and skipping over the waves towards Comino. On the way, we pulled into some rocky areas and got to see some of Malta's dramatic sea caves. 

We then arrived on Comino and I was surprised by just how busy it was! The narrow area around the Blue Lagoon was covered in deck chairs, sharp rock and people- luckily we found a spot when we did- had we been any later, there wouldn't have been room to move! The bay was very pretty (the water a beautiful blue as promised) but the number of people there ruined it somewhat for me. At least the deck chairs were cheap, starting from 5euros for the entire day. However, we made the most of it and spent the day sunbathing and paddling in the crystal clear water. 

All in all, I had a lovely day and was very glad we'd gone on the trip, despite how busy Comino was.  We'd seen some very pretty scenery, the boat trip had been exciting and we'd learnt a lot about Malta. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that food, drinks and deck chairs on the island were cheap, despite the fact that you were trapped there until your boat came to get you and so they could have forced you to pay more for everything. I would definitely recommend visiting, but aim to get there as early as possible to beat the crowds!