This video is about why I recommend visiting Lan Ha Bay over the more
popular Halong bay. In northeastern Vietnam there's a place like no other on
earth it's like something out of a CS Lewis novel or James Cameron film it's a
cross between Narnia and avatars Pandora it's a mystical place that almost seems
fake when you see pictures of it but it's not it's real and it's even more
beautiful than the pictures I'm talking about halong bay and halong bay is
lesser-known neighbor Lan Ha Bay. They're both beautiful but we'll talk about why
I prefer Lan Ha Bay over Ha Long bay in a moment. Ok, so before we dive into my trip
to halong bay and lan ha bay i want to familiarize you with the area so this
video makes more sense so here is hanoi where most people start their halong bay
journey let me zoom in a little here and show you the whole long area so right
here you have this city of halong and just to the south of it you have a
bridge that goes to the island of Tuan Chau and then right here you have the
larger island of cat ba I'll talk more about these two islands in a moment and
lastly you have halong bay here and it's neighbor lan ha bay over here now that
you're familiar with the area let's talk about my trip down to halong bay and lan
ha bay when most people visit halong bay they go on a two-day one-night type of
cruise I don't think that's enough time to truly appreciate this place and the
tour boat companies packed so much into those 48 hours that you don't really get
to enjoy the beauty of this place so no matter where you decide to go in this
area I'd stay a few more days than the two day one an option that most people
choose I traveled with six of my friends and we stayed for five days and even
that didn't seem like enough time to really explore the area so like most
people we made our way to the halong area from annoy for about $15 round-trip
we took a luxury van to halong city the approximately 3 hour drive was very
comfortable and scenic once we got to halong city instead of jumping on a
cruise boat and heading straight to halong bay we decided to spend a couple
days on Tuan Chou Island like I showed you before Tuan Chou Island is just off
the coast of halong city and you can take a short cab ride to get
we stated a pretty inexpensive resort called La Paz Resort
it was $80 a night but it was tutor room so it was really only 40 dollars for
each individual we actually got pretty lucky on the two days we were on Tuan
cha Island a huge storm rolled in a halong bay and all the cruises were
canceled but we were already at this resort so we just got the chill and hang
out in the pool and there's also a great beach right by the resort as well that
has a view of the halong bay islands often a distance and we could see those
even though it was cloudy most of the time we were there so after relaxing a
couple days on Tuan cha Island we headed to LAN hobby in order to get to our boat
that would take a salon Hebei we had to take a water taxi to cat ba island so
we've been dropped off at a beach with some abash ships reminds me of like a
ship graveyard it's a bunch of old rusty ships which makes me a little nostalgic
as a former Navy sailor I guess we're gonna jump on a nicer little small boat
to go out to the boat we're gonna be ready to along bay it started off a
little sketchy but I think it's gonna be okay like I mentioned before I went with
six of my buddies and we rented three cabins on the boat so there had to be
three of us in one room I was in that room but it wasn't that big a deal
because we didn't spend much time in the room anyway when you go to the halong
area there are many different cruise ship options there are the luxury cruise
ships the ones that are huge all the way down to the smaller more rustic type
cruise boats like the one I was on I personally prefer the smaller boats
there were no more than 15 of us on there at a time
so it felt less like a touristy group tour type of thing okay so while on hob
Bay over the more famous halong bay the reason is pretty simple that the exact
same place with the exact same scenery the only difference is halong bay is
saturated with tourists and that's just not what I like you can get the exact
same experience in scenery as halong bay only a few kilometers away in lan ha bay
like i showed you earlier Lana ha Bay is located just off the
coast of Kappa island just south of halong bay halong bay is much bigger and
covers an area of 1,500 kilometers and has a
1,900 small islands lan ha bay is much smaller and is 76 kilometers with over
400 islands while lan ha bay is much smaller they're actually more islands
per square kilometer than in halong bay so it seems bigger lana Hebei also feels
bigger because there are far less tourist boats than in halong bay there
were many times i felt like we were the only boat in the entire barrier we were
able to explore secluded beaches and coves where it was just the group I was
traveling with and some local fishermen
so here are a couple things that I definitely recommend doing whether
you're in halong bay or a lot out there number one is kayak kayaking around the
islands is the must I had an absolute amazing time kayaking
I was lucky we actually had an odd number of people like I told you earlier
we had seven so I got my own kayak and if you can do that I highly recommend it
because then you kind of control your own adventure and where you go so the
next is a cooking class if you go on any kind of cruise in halong bay or a lan ha
bay they're going to offer a cooking class but it's really not a cooking
class you're actually gonna be making Vietnamese spring rolls if you've
watched any of my videos in the past you know that I don't cook I'm probably one
of the worst cooks in the world and even I was able to make a semi passable and
delicious spring rolls so in my opinion you should definitely not skip out on
the cooking class so next is bike riding around cat ba island I really loved
getting off the boat and bicycling around cat ba island for a while it
reminded me of a lot of the rural areas in Hawaii it's definitely a relaxing way
to spend a few hours so if your cruise offers a bicycling tour I would
definitely do it so the next thing to do is probably my favorite to do in a lot
ha Bay and that's swimming one of the great things about being on a smaller
cruise boat is that your group kind of gets to dictate the agenda and my group
just wanted to relax and swim so that's what we did most of the time whether it
was jumping off the boat in the middle of the day or finding a secluded
beach on a deserted island this was one of my most favorite swimming experiences
in my retirement life the water in the bay is the perfect temperature and you
cannot beat the scenery that you're surrounded by so definitely take
advantage of the opportunities to go swimming in the bay and the last thing I
would recommend doing is just relaxing and enjoying the beauty of this place
that's why you go there lots of cruises try to jam activities into every second
you're on the boat and while activities are great the main attraction is the
beauty of the area so just relax and take it all in okay so that's some of
the things I recommend doing if you've ever been to the halong area please
comment below what your favorite activity was if you enjoyed this video
please hit the like button it helps more people find it I'll be in hanoi vietnam
for another two weeks and then I head off to Chiang Mai
Thailand so I'm really excited about that I put out a travel video every
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thanks for watching