Halong Bay Day 2
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
46
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Halong Bay,
Vietnam
Thursday, October 30, 2008
A couple of hours more kayaking, we passed some of the floating villages that the 1,600 people living in the bay reside in. We stopped off at one and had a look at the various fish, squid and small sharks that they farm there. Each village, or even single floating house, has at least a couple of dogs that get fairly hyperactive whenever anyone passes.
Following this we landed on a small island, a Vietnamese National Park. It was thick with vegetation, and the paths we had to follow were thin, winding and sometimes quite difficult to negotiate. Nam, our guide, stopped us after five minutes to give us a bit of a briefing. He explained that there are many, many snakes on the island. We shouldn't worry though, as long as we make lots of noise the snakes will "run away". Then he told us about the exception to this rule. The "green snake" is as thin as your middle finger, but several feet long. A kind of viper, it has a diamond-shaped head. It sleeps during the day, so it won't "run away" if we make noise. If we are near one, it will try to bite us. If it bites us, in Nam's words, "you walk three steps, then you are in a coma, then you die."
"Are they uncommon?" I asked him.
Halong Bay
"No, they are very common. Last week I saw two on the same day."
Well, it would have been great, just great, if he'd explained all of this when we were still on the bloody boat. As it was the boat had left to meet us on the other side of the island. The other side of thousands of green bloody snakes.
I was second in the line as we made our way through the forest, only Nam ahead of me. Probably not the best place to be. He walked slowly, carefully surveying all around an in front of him. About ten minutes in he stopped. He had seen a thin, pale green shape draped over a rock about two feet ahead of us. He told us to stop, and tip-toed over to it. He had a frown on his face as he prodded at it.
"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!" he yelled with delight, as he realised it was a vine and not a snake. I never managed to clarify why on God's earth he had approached and prodded the object he had apparently assumed to be a very deadly animal. It became obvious why all the guides were so young. The rest of the walk went without much incident, but when the boat arrived we were happy to be back off solid land.
We went to a hotel on Cat Ba Island for the night. Impressed. We were getting used to the whole concept of tour operators bigging up their offerings which turn out to be less than salubrious once you've parted with your cash, and we expected a crap hotel. What we got was very good, not superb, but head and shoulders above anywhere we've stayed since we left home in September.
Out for a few beers with the group from the boat and a fairly late night, all things considered.
