Firstly I'd like to thank everyone who sent us a message checking that we were ok during Typhoon Mangkhut. Being so close to something that has destroyed and taken many peoples lives is very humbling. It makes you realise how lucky we are to have the lives we have. Our thoughts go out to all the people and families who were affected by the typhoon.
Because of the typhoon the government in Ha Long Bay banned all cruises from running tours. This meant instead of staying 1 night in Ha Long City (to climb poem mountain), we spent 2 nights. We booked our cruise with a company called Vega Travel. They're a family run business who do tours in the north of Vietnam. They provided us with free transportation to Ha Long on the 16/9. They were travelling down to pick up guests to take them back to Hanoi, because they weren't running cruises that day we were the only people travelling down on the bus. It was great, we could lie out on the chairs and have whole rows to ourselves.
We then hopped into a taxi and made our way to Ha Long city to go to our homestay. I found this homestay on Hostelworld. It's new so the price was really low, our host was really helpful and the room was so nice! Later we decided to climb up poem mountain.
Poem Mountain (Bai Tho Mountain) isn't known by a lot of people. It's a 45 minute hike to the top and once you're there you get the best view of Ha Long Bay. To enter the mountain you have to go through this alley way (which looks super dodgy) next to a garage (left image). But the gate was locked, the mountain was closed because it was a dangerous area. I was gutted at this point beucase we'd come all this way for the mountain and we couldn't get to it! Fortunately there was this traveller who also wanted to go up the mountain and showed us another way up. The entrance was through this ladies house (middle image).
She showed us this gate to the mountain that was also locked but there was this tiny gap between a tree that we could squeeze through. This gap was surrounded by barbed wire and there was a huge drop below it. There was no way we weren't going up that mountain so we had to squeeze through it. Below are some shots of us being pro climbers, as you can see it was elegantly done. Only bad bit was that I ripped my trousers and Pete cut a finger, but other then that it was a success.
The hike was super tough. It was really steep and we were climbing around rocks most of the time. We were both dripping with sweat because it was so hot. My legs were like jelly at the top, but I was so glad to see the finish line! I really hated the climb but once I was at the top I was not only proud of myself, but I was surrounded by the most beautiful views ever. It was 100% worth it. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.
Comments