Day 20 - Hanoi to Ha Long Bay

  Halong Bay, Vietnam
Saturday, September 22, 2007

We were up at 7am to pack for our tour to Ha Long Bay, which we were really looking forward to.

We'd been promised an "08:00 - 08:30" collection from our hotel, so by now we should have known that they'd arrive at 08:29 and we could stayed in bed for another 20 minutes! At least they weren't late I guess.

Just before we went up to the room last night we heard a tourist asked by our hotel staff ask if she had enjoyed her tour to Ha Long Bay, from where she'd just returned. Her reply was "the place was lovely, but the tour was terrible".

Hmmmm....

The last 'tour' we'd been on was in Laos, and that was pretty relaxed, with genuinely nice people running it.

So it was a bit of a shock to have today's van rock up, and our Vietnamese guide jump out and shout "get in the van, put bags in the back, hurry up!"

Even more so because Katie was in the hotel loo at the time, which made him shout even more. Whatever mate, chill out, we're on holiday you know ;)

For the best part of the next hour we sped round Hanoi collecting other tourists, until the mini-bus was packed full, and the guide finally stopped snarling like a caged animal on crack.

It was a 3 hour drive east to the port (Ha Long City), with a stop halfway for the usual handmade/crafty/blind-school/hill-tribe tourist crap, where everyone gets off the bus, goes to the loo and then sits around for 15 minutes, buys absurdly priced soft drink, before finally being allowed back on the bus again.

On arrival at the port it really confirmed all our worst fears, there must have been about 50 almost identical mini-buses lined-up, all stuffed with backpackers & tourists.

The junks (wooden boats) looked cool, even if they predictably looked NOTHING like the glamorous ones we were shown in the tour agent's office!



Naturally the only local Vietnamese lurking around the port area were the guides, who were doing as little as physically possible. It was all a bit frustrating, our only consolation was that at least we'd probably paid less than most of the others thanks to our hard work haggling yesterday.

I'd love to say that we relaxed and basked in the glorious sunshine, but sadly the weather was grey and boring, much like our experience so far!

About 45 minutes later, after doing precisely nothing but sitting on some steps, we were allowed on the junk. We were hurried onto the boat, where we promptly sat for another hour! At least it gave us some time to meet the other poor souls on our boat.

We had 3 young blonde Swedish girls (funny that I remember them first?!), 2 cool young Dutch guys, quite a few older French tourists, a couple of nice Ozzies and a few other randoms.

FINALLY we set sail, leaving the docks behind and sailing off towards the islands ahead of us on the horizon... or so we thought.

About 15 minutes later our captain swung the boat around and we were heading back to the docks... I must admit it entered my head at the time that we had just experienced the biggest rip-off the world had ever known!

It because obvious later that the U-turn was necessary because they managed to leave our passports in the office... THE MUPPETS!

A short while later we finally started closing in on some of the famous islands!



Thanks to our diversion we were already miles behind schedule when we arrived at stop one, some local caves.



I think we both expected them to be pretty awful, but were pleasantly surprised. They'd made the caves a bit more interesting by using lots of coloured lightbulbs inside, so it looked quite atmospheric and dare I say... interesting.



In a perfect world I would have prefered to be there with Katie rather than with another 150 tourists, but the walk through the caves was over fairly quickly and we were soon back on the boat.



Next stop was a 'floating village' which sounded horendous and was indeed pretty lame.

Apparently the people that live on this small network of boats and floating buildings rarely if ever set foot on the mainland, they have everything they need in the bay.



We were offered the chance (for an extra charge of course!) to get onto another small boat to visit some more caves which featured in the Bond film 'Die Another Day' I think they said, but we decided to stay on the boat because it was clearly a bit of a rip-off and besides, the sun had FINALLY poked through the clouds, at about 4pm! Better late than never ;)

While we were 'floating' in the 'village' we looked up to see a veritable armada of row boats approaching us at record speed. This sort of effort in Vietnam can mean only one thing... they were trying to sell us something!



When they pulled up alongside us we could see they were carrying all sorts of weird stuff and some pretty good looking fruit.

I'm not sure that Tescos have too much to worry about, but it made a nice photo!



As you can imagine, the bay looked much nicer in sunlight, in fact it's safe to say that it looked absolutely stunning. We couldn't wait to get moving again to explore the islands around us.



FINALLY the excursion returned from the other cave, so we headed off west towards the sun, this was officially more like it!



Finally we could see why everyone raves about this place, it was absolutely beautiful. It would even have been tranquil if it wasn't for the dulcet tones of our diesel engine!



We were all up on the top deck by now, LOVING the views all around us...



We sailed past some of the 300 islands before stopping at a place called 'Cat Ba' island, the only one that the Vietnamese government allow to be inhabited.

At this point roughly half the boat got off to stay at a hotel on land, while the rest of us stayed on board as we'd booked the "romantic boat stay" tour. I was intrigued to see what (if anything) they would do in the way of romance!

After unloading the others we set off again, with the sun falling below the mountains, it really looked fabulous all around us.



The boat bizarely then took EXACTLY the same route back through the same islands again (like deja vu in reverse) before mooring in a nice quiet bay ready to do some kayaking, which I hope is how you spell it!



Of course, the "2 hours" kayaking that we'd been promised in the Hanoi office turned out to be about 20 minutes, mainly because we didn't drop anchor until 5:40pm and the sun went down at 6pm! Rather predictable I guess...

I was really looking forward to this part of the tour so I rushed downstairs to lock my camera away in our allocated cabin and it was at this moment that I realised the door was completely knackered because the lock had been kicked in.

I decided that there was no way I was leaving all our camera stuff, iPods, wallets etc in an unlocked cabin while we went off kayaking because I didn't trust the crew one little bit; they all looked really shifty.

Katie offered to stay in the room because she wasn't feeling great, but as only two person kayaks were available I thought that maybe fate was intervening and as my ear is still in quite a bit of discomfort after the white water rafting I decided to sit and watch the others paddling around instead.



To be fair, after the usual pointless safety briefing the guys who did go out were probably only left with a rather pathetic 15 minutes on the water, but it looked really cool out there. I was a bit gutted to miss out, but I was also sure that there would be other chances to get in a kayak before we go home next May!

Food was included on the tour and to be honest we didn't expect much, but it was surprisingly good and there was loads of it. Lots of fish, squid, vegetables, rice, and apples for desert.

You had to buy your own drinks, which were obviously ridiculously priced, but we did have the odd beer, it would be rude not to while 'en vacance', right?!

After dinner most of our group went back onto the roof to chill out, which we did for a while but soon got tired and went to bed. I guess we're a bit old for all that young backpacker craziness ;)

The last view we had before getting in the room was lovely, with the whole bay in pitch blackness except for the lights on the other junks around us, and the outlines of the islands. It was really cool, even if the boat didn't stay still long enough for me to get a good photo!

We slept ok despite the grim bed, and drifted off to the sounds of water lapping against the boat outside our window, which was really relaxing, especially for a Piscean like me.

It had been a funny old day, but the frustrations were only minor compared to the majesty of these beautiful islands. It was amazing what a difference the sun made, suddenly it transformed the bay from a pleasant boat ride into a really stunning experience.


lots of love,


Al & Katie xx