Building Core Memories: Our Ha Long Bay Cruise Adventure

We arrived in Vietnam last week, and almost immediately after we landed we were on the move again, this time heading out toward Ha Long Bay, a massive body of water peppered with thousands of craggy limestone karsts and islets, each covered in thick jungle.

To experience this natural wonder and UNESCO World Heritage site properly, you need to do it from the water. We opted to take a 3-day, 2-night cruise on a traditional junk boat through Indochina Junk, which gave us the opportunity to sail out much farther than most tourist boats go, into a more secluded area known as Bai Tu Long Bay.

We spent three incredible days meandering through the labyrinth of karsts, completely disconnected from the rest of the world — not another ship in sight, and no internet, mobile, or TV service to distract us. Just us and the end of the world.

Along the way, we stopped here and there to explore the area in a more intimate way — in small bamboo rowboats helmed by local fisherpeople, in kayaks two-by-two, and on land as we scrambled through small caves and combed untouched beaches for rare shells. (We were even treated to a 5-star meal prepared by our ship’s chef directly on our very own tiny secluded beach, which was definitely a highlight of the trip.)

The whole voyage felt like a fantasy vacation-within-a-vacation, and we kept pinching ourselves to make sure it was real. It just didn’t seem possible in this day and age for anywhere in the world to be this naturally breathtaking while also remaining largely unsullied by man.

It was an experience I don’t think any of us will forget easily, and one that will most certainly be a core memory from our gap-year adventure.

To read about our Ha Long Bay cruise experience in more detail, click here.