Vietnam Follow-Up

HA LONG BAY

After spending one night in Hanoi at the Rising Dragon Hotel we left the next morning for 3 days/2 nights in Ha Long Bay, an anticipated highlight of the trip. The process of getting to our boat bound for Ha Long from our hotel was quite the complicated mess. The travel agency we were with booked through our hotel was friendly, but seemingly unorganized. The entire three day trip would be no different, with many boat, tour guide, and bus transfers, we never seemed to be with the same group of tourists the entire time...I guess a good way to meet lots of people though huh?

Once aboard our Junk, the Vietnamese version of a cruise ship, we sailed out into the geologic wonder that is the islands of Ha Long Bay. The scene is spectacular, with limestone islands shooting straight out of the jade water. The bay is vast and most of the trip involves steaming around and taking it all in. At least while on the boat you don't have to worry about being sorted like cattle. While the food was sub par, we were able to buy as many Oreos as we wanted from the floating concession stand ladies who rowed around the different inlets intercepting Junks as they stopped. We read, played Bananagrams and enjoyed some people watching, a group of loud and often intoxicated Malaysians were also on our boat. One day I took up the crews offer to go swimming and did a few back flips off the top level of the Junk into the cloudy, somewhat fuel stained ocean, entertaining the Malaysians and others on the boat, mostly because it was actually pretty chilly and high.

We did have two off boat excursions, one to a cement laden cave and the other to the largest island of Ha Long, Cat Ba. The cave was really impressive, well lit with multi-colored lights and sprinkled with penguin shaped garbage dispensers made it look a little silly, but what was most disappointing was the strange texture of the ceiling and other parts of the walls which we later found out to be sprayed cement, not natural as our guide had told us. Lacking authenticity would be a trend for the remainder of our time in Vietnam. Outside the cave was a beautiful bay, minus the collections of floating garbage and sickly water, wasn't this place supposed to be a national treasure/preserve? The Junks and their unique sails did however provide the imagery we had hoped for, even if it wasn't really that pristine. Cat Ba was bigger than I expected, taking about an hour on a bus to drive from one side to the other. In the middle of the island we stopped to climb to a highpoint and get some great views along with a few hundred other tourists. Later we had lunch and some time in Cat Ba city, nothing special, more greasy food and no Monkey Island for us, something we had hoped for but weren't going to see because we booked two nights on the boat instead of one night in the city in a hotel. Back to the boat, but not our boat first, a different Junk that would take us to our boat, we hoped. An hour later we boarded another junk and were met by a new tour guide and new passengers, but yes it was in fact our boat and our rooms still held our belongings. In the morning we headed back to port and more bus travel, bad restaurants and confusing organization in order to return to our hotel in Hanoi. Some sunny weather would have been nice on the trip to Ha Long, as well as clear and clean water.