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Hello!!!! And Merry Christmas to everyone. Just spending Christmas in Halong Bay!

So I arrived to Vietnam a few days ago, the 20th to be exact. I took a flight from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi. The airport in Vientiane has to be the smallest airport in a capital city anywhere! There were only 5 flights in and out all day long!!!! Anyway the flight was uneventful…thank goodness. And I arrived safetly at the airport. I had booked my tickets with two other Britts who I had been traveling with for a few days in Laos…so we took a taxi into the city. But then we went our seperate ways. I went to a guest house and checked in. Hanoi at first glance was nice….I thought I could live there…but after spending the next day walking around all day long, I was exhausted of navigating through the crowded streets, exhausted of hearing the never ending horns blaring in my ears, and scared to death that I would be knocked over by one of the motor bikes as it sailed past me! But other than the mere commotion that happens all the time there, it is a nice city. But I definately had to mentally prepair myself while on the plane to get ready to be ripped off or haggled at everystep of the way now that I am in Vietnam, as oppossed to clam and quite Laos.

The first night I was in Hanoi I went to a water puppet show. It was amazing! It was funny since the puppets immitate daily life, and they say that thousands of years ago this ancient form of entertainment was invented in the rice fields. I thought of this as the puppets were moving in the water, and it was hillarious! The way that they move and are coordinated with the other puppets it was amazing. A nice site to see in Hanoi.

Yesterday I took a (unfortunatley a small tour group) bus out to Halong Bay. Everyone said to take a small tour since it will cost about the same and the hassle can be massive it you try to organize and hire a boat by yourself once you get out here. But the “tour” hasn’t been that great so far, especially for what I paid for it! We got a bus out here yesterday. Then we got on a boat. We sailed through Halong Bay. It was a beautiful day yesterday, sunny and blue skies, so it was nice to sit up on top of the boat on the deck and just watch all the small mountains pass by as we sailed along. The Bay was beautiful. We entered a cave, it was huge…nothing like the small cave I entered in Thailand…this one was completely lit, lit even with colored lights! Nothing to be sweating over here. We got back on the boat and sailed around some more. One hour of kayaking was suppossed to be included in the package deal, but there were only two inflatable kayaks on board our boat. So the guide stopped the big boat and four people at a time could “kayak” around a rock and back. There was only one paddle for each kayak so controlling the kayak was incredibly difficult! But it was nice to do, since there was almost a full moon starting to rise and it lit the bay. Then we slept on the boat last night.

This morning we arrived to Cat Ba Island. Some people from our group stayed on the boat to return back to Hanoi, they only booked a one day tour. But some of us continued on to check into our hotel for tonight. Then we headed out for a short hike. The hike itself was good, but the company was better, hillarious in fact! Three Australian girls returned back to the road after hiking for about 10 minutes, granted one was pretty sick. (Uh oh…guess the rest of this got cut off…I’ll try to remember my train of thought!) Anyways, the guide left one girl to hike on her own…she ended up freaking out and screaming until we went to her rescue…don’t blame her, I think I would have freaked out too, if I thught the guide sent me on my way to find my way back to the bus! Spent the rest of the day just wondering around…not much to do on the island, and the weather wasn’t the greatest.

The next morning, Christmas moring we boarded our boat again, this time it was only me and two other people who had been with me the whole time on the boat. We pulled away from the dock and started sailing out…but 10 minutes later the captain got a call on his cell phone and we headed back to the dock to wait 30 more minutes for about 10 more people to come aboard. Same thing happened again once we got off the boat and back onto the bus….had been driving for 20 min and had to turn around to go back to pick up more passengers!

Lesson from this…I thought I paid a fair amount of money for this tour, but afterwards, having spoken with many other people, it turns out they paid much more for a different and better tour…so I guess the quality just all depends on how much money you fork out…guess I didn’t pay enough!

Posted by annawojo on December 24, 2007 02:00 PM

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Halong kayaking

Just got back from Halong Bay this afternoon and it was absolutely breathtakingly beautiful–even more than I expected. We left at around 8am from the hostel and were picked up by Active travel Vietnam _ the tour company that we’d booked with. We picked up 6 others, a Scottish couple living in Malaysia and a pair of couples from Spain. We then departed for Halong Bay, about a 3 and 1/2 hour drive. We also then met our tour guide Ngoan, a slim young woman who spoke pretty good English. She was no Wasa though! She briefed us on Hanoi and Halong Bay history and then told us about where to go in Hanoi to find good dog and cat meat. (We weren’t too interested). And she told us about how Vietnamese people like to string up live cobras from trees, skin them, and then drink their blood while it’s still hot from the dangling end, like some kind of bizarre tribal beer bong. Yummy.

About halfway through the trip and after a much needed nap, we stopped for a break at a place that sold local handicrafts made by handicapped children. I bought a very cool picture done in embroidery of a Vietnamese woman carrying some mangos on those balancy things that Blake carried in the infamous pineapple fiasco. I talked the price down from $68 to $58 which was fair especially because as the 4 foot tall salesman kept reminding me ‘made by handicap’ children’. no word if the kids get any of the profit though.

After the break we piled back into the van and about an hour later we arrived in Halong Bay City. We jumped out and headed straight to our boat, the Halong Bay Dream and man was it ever. It was soooo nice. A new boat with space for 14 and just beautiful on the inside. Lauren and I shared a room with two big windows (for a boat) and Blake got his own room since there were just 9 of us total. After we set down our belongings, we headed up to the main deck to the open dining area for our seafood lunch. And it was incredible. They just kept bringing out dish after dish! We had the freshed squid salad, huge shrimp, lovely vegetables, rice, noodles, a whole grilled fish, fruit… the food just didn’t stop coming!

Fully stuffed to the gills, we slathered on some sunscreen, threw on our bathing suits and went up to the top deck. By then we were really getting out into the bay amidst the nearly 2000 islands there and it was incredibly beautiful. The islands are all made out of limestone from decayed oysters, clams, etc from the past 350 million years that grew to form a mountain range because of the pacific rim tetonic plates shifting. Eventually the mountain range was eroded by the water and the islands formed. Now they are all protected by Unesco which is fortunate because the only one that can be inhabited is the national park on Cat Ba island. Just beautiful!

Sunset on Indochina Sails

After sunning ourselves we then docked briefly to visit the Amazing Cave which is the biggest of the 8 or so caves that have been discovered so far in Halong Bay. And it really was amazing. Especially interesting though were the trashcans inside in the shape of dolphins and penguins which gave the weird sensation that we were at an amusement park of sorts.

From the cave, we moved onward to an island with a lookout pagoda at the very top. One 10 minute very vertical climb later we were super sweaty but enjoying the wonderful view. Blake showed me how to do a stitch assist too on my camera so I think I should be able to join several of the photos together to make a nice panoramic. Next, we returned to the boat and then jumped off from the top of the boat into the water. I was quite scared at first seeing as I’d really never done a high dive before, but it was worth it and then it was great! And the water was wonderful, just warm enough to be enjoyable but not so warm that you feel like the person next to you just ‘relieved’ themselves in the water.

After the swim we towelled off and then were fed another enormous and delicious seafood dinner. Dinner was followed by a great conversation with the Scottish couple that had been living in Malaysia the past 2 years, a little bit of World Cup viewing, and then Blake and I laying out on the top deck to look at the stars. It was the perfect day and we didn’t go to sleep until after midnight when we pried ourselves away from the night sky.

The next morning, Blake woke me up early to have a look at the sunrise, but at 5:15 am it was already up. So we went back to bed and then got back up in time for a 7am breakfast (also way too much food). Breakfast was followed by kayaking which was incredibly fun. We paddled around for about an hour and a half, with 2 people in each kayak. Lauren and I paddled together, and with her excellent instruction I eventually got the hang of it. It was difficult though because even though the water was pretty calm, the current was really strong. We all paddled together into these beautiful lagoons by Cat Ba island which was just such a peaceful experience (aside from the aching arms) that made me feel like we were in the movie “the beach” (which I am appropriately reading at the moment).

After kayaking, Lauren and I had another swim, then it was time to pack our bags… but not without yet another inordinately huge seafood meal that we could hardly finish! It really was the perfect get away. And amazingly enough, it only costs $2000 to rent out the boat per week, including food. So I’m thinking, grab a group of 14 and come back sometime in the future for some R&R.

Well I’m back in Hanoi though, wearing my new Halong Bay pearl necklace (they do a lot of pearls there) and getting very excited about tomorrow’s trips to Hanoi’s museums and then the following day at China beach between Da Nang and Hoi An! It’s going to be great!

Source: SMU

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