Day 72 - Hanoi/Halong Bay
Friday, October 22, 2010
Tuesday 19th October
I'd been advised by my travel agent that I would be picked up between 8am and 8:20am for the trip to Halong Bay, so I checked out by 7:30am to ensure I had time for breakfast before departing. However, as I checked out of the room, the tour driver arrived to pick me up!
I was the first one on the bus, and we wound through the streets of the Old Quarter to pick up 20 other guests, before departing for our 3.5 trip north to Halong Bay. (A weird sight along the way: there are shops selling gravestones, with pictures and details of the dead inscribed on then. There was one with Britney Spears on it, with a death date of 2001!) We stopped briefly for 'breakfast', except the emporium which was stopped at really only had crackers and biscuits, not actual breakfast to eat (I ended up scoffing a packet of cheese biscuits I'd taken with me).
On arriving at Halong Bay, the group was split up from those who were doing the day-trip only, and I met my fellow passengers for the first time. Our small group consisted of Adam, Scott, Nick and Jordan, 4 brothers from Canada (extremely cute and extraordinarily well mannered); Abigal, an English girl working in Nha Trang; and a mixed group of young girls from Australia, England, and Sweden. We checked out our rooms (quite good quality, given the price!) and then headed into the 'restaurant' for lunch. It mostly consisted of seafood - including prawns and whole fish - with a few extra dishes for me as the token vegetarian.
On completion of our meal, we all headed to the roof of the boat, lounging about on the sundecks and getting to know one another. We had fun comparing the other boats cruising on the harbour with ours - there seems to be a direct relationship between the age of the passengers and the quality of the boat.
After a brief sail, we docked at a cave for some sightseeing, along with numerous other boats. The caves were cool but everything here is reminding me of other parts of Asia - Halong Bay is like Ko Phi Phi; the caves were like Niah Caves in Malaysia etc. Back on board, our boat driver (who I caught steering with his feet - no wonder we crashed into other boats several times!) ferried us to a floating kayaking station, where I spent half an hour paddling around the 'islands' with Abi. It was quite hard work, and we were happy to return to the boat for some relaxation on the sun decks.
The boat then cruised into some open water, and the boys (and some of the girls) started jumping off the top of the boat into the ocean water (the South China Sea). Women dressed in the traditional Vietnamese hat paddled their boats in the water, trying to sell us beer and chips (they were even there well into the night!) Dinner was at 6:30pm and must better than lunch, and then we all migrated back to the roof for a night of fun. The drinks were cracked open and we begun to play some drinking games (using my headlamp as the only source of light), before some of us ventured downstairs to join the crew in karaoke. I even managed to catch a squid at the back of the boat whilst randomly swinging a fishing rod in the water - I didn't realise at the time it was an actual rod!!
I made my way to bed at about midnight, and was asleep before I even touched the pillow - not even turning the fan or air conditioning on in my single room.
I'd been advised by my travel agent that I would be picked up between 8am and 8:20am for the trip to Halong Bay, so I checked out by 7:30am to ensure I had time for breakfast before departing. However, as I checked out of the room, the tour driver arrived to pick me up!
I was the first one on the bus, and we wound through the streets of the Old Quarter to pick up 20 other guests, before departing for our 3.5 trip north to Halong Bay. (A weird sight along the way: there are shops selling gravestones, with pictures and details of the dead inscribed on then. There was one with Britney Spears on it, with a death date of 2001!) We stopped briefly for 'breakfast', except the emporium which was stopped at really only had crackers and biscuits, not actual breakfast to eat (I ended up scoffing a packet of cheese biscuits I'd taken with me).
On arriving at Halong Bay, the group was split up from those who were doing the day-trip only, and I met my fellow passengers for the first time. Our small group consisted of Adam, Scott, Nick and Jordan, 4 brothers from Canada (extremely cute and extraordinarily well mannered); Abigal, an English girl working in Nha Trang; and a mixed group of young girls from Australia, England, and Sweden. We checked out our rooms (quite good quality, given the price!) and then headed into the 'restaurant' for lunch. It mostly consisted of seafood - including prawns and whole fish - with a few extra dishes for me as the token vegetarian.
On completion of our meal, we all headed to the roof of the boat, lounging about on the sundecks and getting to know one another. We had fun comparing the other boats cruising on the harbour with ours - there seems to be a direct relationship between the age of the passengers and the quality of the boat.
After a brief sail, we docked at a cave for some sightseeing, along with numerous other boats. The caves were cool but everything here is reminding me of other parts of Asia - Halong Bay is like Ko Phi Phi; the caves were like Niah Caves in Malaysia etc. Back on board, our boat driver (who I caught steering with his feet - no wonder we crashed into other boats several times!) ferried us to a floating kayaking station, where I spent half an hour paddling around the 'islands' with Abi. It was quite hard work, and we were happy to return to the boat for some relaxation on the sun decks.
The boat then cruised into some open water, and the boys (and some of the girls) started jumping off the top of the boat into the ocean water (the South China Sea). Women dressed in the traditional Vietnamese hat paddled their boats in the water, trying to sell us beer and chips (they were even there well into the night!) Dinner was at 6:30pm and must better than lunch, and then we all migrated back to the roof for a night of fun. The drinks were cracked open and we begun to play some drinking games (using my headlamp as the only source of light), before some of us ventured downstairs to join the crew in karaoke. I even managed to catch a squid at the back of the boat whilst randomly swinging a fishing rod in the water - I didn't realise at the time it was an actual rod!!
I made my way to bed at about midnight, and was asleep before I even touched the pillow - not even turning the fan or air conditioning on in my single room.
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