Berry's SEAJ trip Day 14: Ha long Bay and Castaway Island Day 1 (6/19/15)

Gather in the hostel lobby until they shuttle us to the bus to take us down to Ha Long bay. After a series of boats and buses, we approach the castaway island which is beautiful; a bunch of huts on the sand on this private island in the middle of the fourth world heritage site of this Vietnam trip (Phong Nha was the third).

Berry ready to explore the bay. 

Berry looking at all these house boats chilling in the bay and thinking "this is not a bad place to live". I tend to agree.

Berry trying to go up the stairs to get a better view on the boat. 

Panoramic shot on the side of the boat. 

Berry was pointing out that there was a beach on the island in the distance. That is seclusion.

Berry taking in the view of the bay and desperately wanting to go be on his own private beach.

I told Berry that is our private island beach for the next 2 nights. He seems happy with this news. So am I for the record.

We get onto the beach and instantly just start taking in the amazing views.

We go up to the cabana and Berry wanted another picture of our beautiful surroundings.

Walkway down to the sleeping cabins and a volleyball pit on the beach.

The bay itself is beautiful but the water is much dirtier then I expected; still swam in it and what not but I expected clear blue water like in the Caribbean As we get on the island, we are introduced to the rules of the island and have lunch. After lunch, we did our activity, mine was tubing. So the boat whipped us around on that tube and the time I wiped out my earring fell out and was lost.

We get to do one action sport, Berry chose tubing. I wound up losing my earring on one of the wipeouts from this thing. Berry seemed to enjoy it though. 

Berry survived the boating and saw all the people swimming in the water so he wanted to go. Also notice the pier? It would be partially submerged periodically due to the tide.

Berry taking a dip in the water to cool off from the heat. Such a great view for swimming I must say.

Berry was done and wanted a picture of the sky over the bay. Pure bliss!

Sun setting over the rocks in the distance.

Fish boat strolling on by.

Berry wanted to traverse the submerged (and pretty slippery) pier so we went for it.

Home for the next few days. Berry likes it. Later this night, we noticed there were cats that lived up in the rock and would come down to get food and then scale the mountain back up to their nests. Was interesting.

We get back and the group from the previous night gets in on the cruise boat. After a few drinks, we have dinner. One of the rules of the island is that if someone rings the gong, they are buying everyone a drink. We met a guy (Adam) who loved ringing this gong. However, he would say you have to shotgun the beer; so we shotgunned many a beers on this trip thanks to him.

Berry ready for the stars to come out as people are enjoying a twilight swim.

Just another picture of dusk in this amazing place.

And another. I was thoroughly enjoying being in this environment. 

Tried taking a long exposure to get the moon and other bright lights in the sky to come through. That rope to the left was to help people getting out to the pier end not slip and fall walking on the first part of the pier .

After dinner, the main area turns into a club which is annoying as I thought it would be more drinking games and bar scene, but no. The bay has bio-luminescent plankton so I went for a swim to enjoy them. After enjoying the night sky from the water and getting my fill of the plankton, I head to bed. My bed was unmade and full of sand. Was not happy with that or the fact that there were random fans here and there but not enough for comfortable sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating profusely and made a fan focus on me in order to manage not dying in my sleep of dehydration.