Monday 20th October...
Went on a 2 day/1 night boat trip to Halong Bay yesterday, arriving back today, which was amazing. It consists of hundreds of islands and caves in emerald waters and is a UNESCO world heritage site.
We booked the trip through our hotel eventually, despite the fact the price went from $16 then to $30 then to $18. Apparently the $16 was the price for sleeping in a hotel, not on the boat, and I'm not too sure where the $30 came from! Anyway seeing as everyone in Asia lies to us permanently, Janine made the receptionist write "sleep on boat" on the ticket, and said she'd punch him if it wasn't like it was in the pictures. He agreed and said if it wasn't right then she could come back and bomb his hotel.
They told us we would get picked up from our hotel so we waited for the bus to arrive but instead were greeted by a Vietnamese girl who led us about a mile down the road to the "bus station" which was really just a place in the road where buses stopped to let people on and off. Well so we thought. Until we saw a local bus pull over slightly, and while moving at about 10km/h, practically throw an old Vietnamese guy (who must have been close to 80y/o) off the bus. Sounds mean but we found it really funny.
Thankfully when our minibus finally arrived, it did come to a complete halt before we got aboard.
The journey to Halong Bay was about 4 hours and we stopped halfway at about 9:30 for the usual drink/toilet stop. There was a Vietnamese guy and his girlfriend with us and he decided it would be a nice idea to start drinking beer at 9:30am. We soon suspected this guy might be a bit of an alcoholic as he was drinking at every available opportunity.
We stopped again for a fairly nasty lunch at a hotel then boarded our boat at about 12. First we went to a couple of caves which were nice, although the neon lights and penguin shaped dustbins placed at 50m intervals detracted from the beauty of the caves somewhat.
We then sailed about 4 hours to Cat Ba island, stopping at 2 floating fish farms on the way which sold everything from normal looking fish to prawns, tortoise, sharks, and these big weird crab things with huge shells the size of dinner plates. Alcoholic Vietnamese guy got off the boat to go and look at all the fish and we were really hoping that he might fall into one of the pools, or something equally as funny, but we were sadly disappointed, as he didn't lose his footing.
When we reached Cat Ba island most people from the boat left to go and stay in the hotel. There were about 9 of us left - me, Janine, a couple Denmark, a couple from France, and 3 from England - Neil, Sara and Matt.
We sailed back out into the bay and stopped in a sort of cove which Matt discovered had a great echo and spent ages testing it out with various shouts and monkey noises.
We soon realised that all the Vietnamese staff from the boat had vanished and it was now pitch black on the boat. Nice.
Eventually one of them returned and we managed to convince him to turn a light on, although he needn't have bothered as it was the dimmest light in the world!
We also requested some music, so they pulled up alongside another boat which had music facilities and played us a remix of Wham's "Careless Whisper". And that was it.
Luckily Neil, Sara and Matt had brought along one and a half litres of vodka which they kindly shared with us all the the evening was pretty much just spent drinking, as there wasn't a lot else to do but it was entertaining as Matt was such a funny guy.
Woke up to a lovely sunrise this morning although it was at some stupid hour like 5:45am. The others all went onto the island after breakfast as they were on a 3 day trip, and the people who stayed in the hotel came back on the boat and we set off back to Halong Bay harbour.
Got back to Hanoi about 4pm and have just had timeto have a quick shower, dinner and write this before we get on our 22 hour bus trip to Laos. I think I'm gonna need a few drinks...
xxx
15 votes 
This is a top pick!
