We Were Sailing Along on Halong Bay…
Ha Long, Vietnam - December 2025
After two days of walking around Hanoi, I was really looking forward to Halong Bay. We would have nearly two days on a boat, spending the night on “an authentic Chinese Junk.”
Just before getting to the marina, we stopped at Legend Pearl to see a demo of how pearls are grown and harvested. It was a big operation, with lots of tour buses. We walked through a well-organized tour, stopping at different stations to hear about each step in the harvesting process. At the end of the tour, we were directed into a large, I mean HUGE, jewelry showroom. Our guide said we should meet back at the van in 15 minutes.
If you read reviews for Halong Bay pearls, they will be mixed. It makes sense that any place that pushes hundreds of tourists through its doors every day may be an overpriced tourist trap. Reviews caution visitors to inspect carefully. I’ve mostly stopped worrying about being taken advantage of. I bought a beautiful pair of pearl earrings. Maybe I could have found equivalents somewhere for a lower price, maybe not. But I didn’t have time for comparison shopping and now I have jewelry that will always remind me of my trip.
I was happy to board the boat. The cabins were large, comfortable, and had windows that opened to the beautiful bay. I was getting a full-blown cold by the time I settled in. I scheduled a massage before dinner and spent all my time on the boat.
We were with MILA Cruises.
My brother Jamie took full advantage of the excursions and took the tender to the island to hike around. He said there were a lot of people there, with all the other boats sending their tenders to the same point, but he saw some other-worldly caves. After dinner, we spent a few futile minutes fishing off the back of the boat for squid. We were out of season, but it was fun.
The next morning, Jamie got up early to explore another island and climb to the peak. The early morning photos give a good sense of why they call the bay “descending dragon.” Maybe the mystical mists helped me recover from my cold in record time. Or maybe it was the massage and the extra sleep. Either way, I enjoyed it.
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Tips & Recommendations
Halong Bay is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has thousands of limestone karsts and islets. Wikipedia says prehistoric human beings were present tens of thousands of years ago. I’m sure there are areas in the bay where you can sense the ancient history, but not in the heavy-traffic tourist routes.
This guide provides tips for first-time visitors and suggests alternative, less crowed bay: Bai Tu Long Bay and Lan Ha Bay.
We cruised with MILA Cruises. Service, accommodations, and food were very good and I’d recommend them.
I went down a rabbit trail when I wrote the title for this post. Have you heard of the old movie “On Moonlight Bay”? “We were sailing along, on Moonlight Bay” got stuck in my head and I was surprised to learn that Doris Day wrote the lyrics to the song.