Coming to Vietnam, we couldn’t not come to Halong Bay… but we wanted to avoid the crowds and have some quiet time away from the busy streets of Halong city. We found the perfect place on Quan Lan Island.
To get there, we had to take the local boat and go through Halong Bay for a two hours ride.
Beautiful scenery from our porthole…
Once disembarked, we rented a scooter to go around the island. We visited the harbour and stopped there for a while, getting more and more surprised by the load of things little boats bring from the mainland: construction materials, trees, huge bottles of gaz, wood to build floors, flower pots… a real Ali Baba’s cave for Quan Lan islanders! Everybody’s here to see the unloading, from the sea or from the ground…
After the harbour, we wander along Quan Lan beautiful beaches and get intrigued by a group of women who seems to “fish” in the sand… It’s like a contemporary ballet: walking quietly on the beach like dancers on their toes, in every directions, women suddenly stop and hit the ground with a thin shovel. With all their strength, with all their weight, they dig a hole in the sand to drag hidden sea worms up. It goes on and on, they repeat the exact same movements for hours, silently…
After a while, it starts to be too hot for them and they leave as quietly as they came.
Time for us to relax on desert beaches… it’s low season and tourists are away, we’ve got the beaches for ourselves, lucky us…
