Halong Bay
Trip Start
Sep 11, 2008
1
10
87
Trip End
Jun 05, 2009
Halong Bay,
Vietnam
Monday, October 13, 2008
We got a cab back to our hotel which unsurprisingly was closed with the shutters down. The whole of Hanoi was absolutely heaving though, like rush hour in London, the markets were rammed, thousnad of people doing Tai Chi and jogging round the lake. An old lady walked past, saw our predicament and started hammering on the shutters. The hotel staff woke up, she legged it round the corner and we stood there very embarrassed. The guys here are so friendly though , they gave us a room straight away.
We slept for a bit then got up and decided it was time to go to hospital again as I had felt so bad for the last few days. Went to the British Embassy who recommended an International SOS clinic. They quoted $127 to see a French doctor. He said the facilities in Vietnam aren't great, they did the usual tests and stuck me on a drip for a few hours. The tests all came out negative so their conclusion was that all the antibiotics may have destroyed my digestive system, to tell any more though I would have to go home or to Bangkok. They gave me some chalky stuff for babies with bad guts and told me to avoid milk, eggs, salad and fruit. I had over the last couple of weeks been munching anything I wanted figuring I couldn't get any worse. Phoned the insurance company who said after investigating the reports that I could go to Bangkok for massively expensive investigation and treatment if I didn't improve.
We booked an overnight cruise on a junk in Halong bay to get away from the city and see if I got any better. Went out there on Saturday, 3 hours in a bus on which we got to meet some travellers. Got on the junk and had a lovely seafood lunch, the courses just kept coming. Cruised through the beatiful bay for the day, over 1800 limestone karsts rise out of the bay like the back of a dragon from which the bay gets its Vietnamese name. We stopped at a cave where we had to walk up steep steps on one of the rocky islands into a small cave which opened into a larger chamber then a huge cavern with stalagtites over 20m floor to ceiling. We went sea kayaking round the islands, just us and a Canadian family, had a quick swim as it got dark, had another massive meal with more fresh seafood and in the evening did some squid fishing. I had been looking forward to it all day but we only saw two tiny squid in the spotlight and didn't catch any. There were only 20 people on board, all of whom were really nice, a mixture of old and young. After a good nights sleep in our nice room moored in a calm bay we had a huge brekkie at 7.30 then a huge seafood lunch at 10.30! We got off the boat onto a little bamboo boat and went through what looked like a low cave which opened into a lagoon completely sealed off apart from this small opening. It was like being in a lake in the crater of a volcano or something, no beaches just sheer rock faces, the squawking of the kites and eagles soaring high above and the rowing of the oars was all you could hear until another tourist boat with an outboard roared through and spoiled it.
Came back to Hanoi, feeling much better today although Lucys a bit sick now, feeling nauseous all the time. Told the insurance company we are gonna crack on rather than go to Bangkok, we gotta be there on the 30th anyway. Booked a flight to Nha Trang and gonna skip out the middle of the country, the night trains are a killer and the cost of a flight is about a tenner more than the total cost of the trains down there. Time is getting short and we just wanna go to the beach now after seeing the sea!
