On our second day in Vietnam we traveled to Ha Long Bay. It is a beautiful place and well worth the visit. In fact it was to visit here that caused us to arrive when we did. We are actually on a Viking River Cruise Tour of Vietnam and Cambodia. For you movie buffs, the James Bond movie, “Tomorrow Never Dies”, was filmed in Ha Long Bay.
A picture is worth a thousand words, so let my camera do the talking.
During our bay cruise we stopped to explore a cave. Here are a few shots that I managed to take.
And a few more of the bay.
The rocks in the next photo have been designated a World Heritage Site and are the symbol for Ha Long Bay.
The following excerpt was taken from Wikipedia and provides a little insight into the story of the creation of the bay:
According to local legend, when Vietnam had just started to develop into a country, they had to fight against invaders. To assist the Vietnamese in defending their country, the gods sent a family of dragons as protectors. This family of dragons began spitting out jewels and jade. These jewels turned into the islands and islets dotting the bay, linking together to form a great wall against the invaders. Under magics, numerous rock mountains abruptly appeared on the sea, ahead of invaders’ ships; the forward ships struck the rocks and each other. After winning the battle, the dragons were interested in peaceful sightseeing of the Earth, and then decided to live in this bay. The place where the mother dragon descended was named Hạ Long, the place where the dragon’s children attended upon their mother was called Bái Tử Long island (Bái: attend upon, Tử: children, Long: dragon), and the place where the dragon’s children wriggled their tails violently was called Bạch Long Vĩ island (Bạch: white-color of the foam made when Dragon’s children wriggled, Long: dragon, Vĩ: tail), present-day Tra Co peninsula, Móng Cái.[11]
Tomorrow we head back to Hanoi.
All I cab say is WOW!! Can’t wait for more.
Unbelievable…so cool 😎