After spending several days in Hanoi, we took a short overnight detour to Ha Long Bay (after recommendations from several friends and colleagues in Sydney) which is where we celebrated Christmas Eve Day. Ha Long Bay is about a 3 hour drive east of Hanoi and is made up of thousands of tiny islands.

It was the first time many of us had taken an overnight cruise. The boat had 3 rooms that could sleep about 10 people + the crew – a bar tender, a chef, a captain and a tour guide. They certainly made us feel welcome by decorating the boat with Christmas trees and lights and, of course, a welcome beverage upon arrival (you’ll quickly learn that this is a common theme in this part of the world)!

The Christmas Eve dinner was spectacular! If I remember correctly, we had 9 courses with close to every type of seafood imaginable. The chef was even catching fish off the boat earlier that day – talk about fresh! Rob gave it a shot but never managed to catch anything.

Prior to serving each dish, our tour guide would introduce it as if it were the next person on stage at a concert. We would all applaud and laugh along. During one of the introductions the chef brought out a boat carved out from a watermelon (see picture below). He had spent the better part of the day carving it out – just for decoration!! He did something similar but carved it as an eagle… Pretty amazing work.

Fun Facts about Ha Long Bay:
– While we were there, 1 USD = 20,935 Vietnamese Dong
– Over 1,500 square km in size and has 2,000 tiny limestone islands created after 500 million years of erosion
– The bay is also home to around 1,600 fisherman than live permanently on floating villages. Most of these villagers live in extreme poverty, very small shack, no running water, illiterate and uneducated.
– Some have never set foot on dry land once in their life.
– We learned during the tour of the small village that most do not want to live there and hope to save enough money fishing to move to dry land someday.