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Published: March 17th 2009
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Another day, another long journey ahead of us; this time we're leaving Hanoi for Halong Bay. We decide against taking an organised tour as we want to go at our own pace, basing ourselves on Cat Ba island, the only inhabited island in the bay. So we steel ourselves for the chaos of the bus station. The plan sounded simple...Hoang Long bus company supposedly sell a bus/private fast boat/bus combo ticket that takes you all the way to Cat Ba, no messing. But of course it's not going to be that easy!
It starts badly when we get totally ripped by the taxi driver; we'd been chuffed when we easily convinced him to use the meter for the 5km journey to the bus station. It shouldn't have cost more than VND50,000 (two pounds) but we watch with mounting concern as the clearly tampered with meter goes up as fast as a stopwatch...that doesn't stop. I am royally pissed off when the final total is VND180,000 and pointlessly argue for a bit, before leaving him with VND150,000 which is not much of a victory and feels like highway robbery.
Then it gets worse when the ladies at the Hoang Long
desk seem completely unaware of the combination ticket they sell. Ritch patiently explains (impressively...my patience has already left an overpriced taxi) that the discounted ticket is promoted all over their website, and suddenly the woman 'remembers' but is unable to sell us this deal because it's Tet. (We'll find that this excuse for massive price hikes will be wheeled out for many more weeks to come.) Instead we have to buy the more expensive bus ticket to the port of Haiphong where we know we're likely to miss the last ferry of the day which leaves at 1pm.
The bus drops us miles from the port so it's onto a motorbike taxi (complete with almost 20kilos of rucksack strapped to my back...mmm safe) to the ferry dock where, as suspected, we've just missed the boat. A tout trys to sell us tickets for a private speed boat that leaves in an hour, but it's 4 times the price of tomorrow morning's public ferry so it's cheaper to find a hotel and leave in the morning. The old 'walk away trick' (even though it's not a trick this time) works a treat and the price goes tumbling with every step.
It ends way cheaper than a night in a hotel and ferry would be and we'll be on Cat Ba in time for tea!
With the absolute nonsense that you go through to get from A to B, I can understand why people go for the organised tours, but despite the hassle and even including being ripped off in a taxi, it always works out cheaper doing it yourself. Plus we get to spend as long as we like in a place and not feel like you're on a tourist converyor belt.
In this case it's more than worth the hassle; Cat Ba is really pretty and we virtually have it to ourselves. There's a strip of hotels facing west out over the limestone rock formations rising out of Halong Bay, and they're all empty! We manage to get a sea facing room for just $6 and the view, complete with sunset, from our 4th floor panoramic windows is stunning.
I've said before that the weather in North Vietnam has been pretty awful up to now and we'd been preparing ourselves for another boat trip in feezing wind and drizzly rain. But the weather gods are smiling
on us once again and we wake to a warm, sunny day which we spend exploring the beaches Cat Ba has to offer. The bays are simply numbered Cat Ba 1, 2 and 3; there are wooden walkways built around the rocky headlands that separate the 3. We pass the big fancy resorts that have been built on 1 and 2, but number 3 remains undeveloped and is the prettiest. We spend most of the day there; it's warm enough for bikinis (Ritch looks so pretty in his) but not for swimming - the water is colder than Cornwall.
The good weather lasts for us, and the next day we board an old junk boat for a day on Halong bay. We're joined by a young Aussie couple, Courtney and Shuin, and a French Canadian called Francois. We hit it off with the Aussies straight away and the conversation flows free and easy. Francois is a bit more hardwork, I don't know if I've ever met a less enthusiastic person. He's lucky enough to be travelling the world, but ask him about anywhere he's been and anything he's done and you get his standard response "it was ok". When
he declares that he's bored halfway through the day I'm tempted to push him overboard. How you can be bored sailing through this unique landscape is beyond me.
We pass isolated floating villages; the houses all have their own fish pens, some with huge catfish and each property is guarded by barking, frustrated dogs. The limestone rock formations are huge, the skyline dramatic, and the water is clean and green. It's actually much more unspoiled than I'd expected; I'd been told that the water was filthy with rubbish and plastic bags, but the stretches we sail through were really clean. The entryway to and from the port was a bit polluted but nothing like I'd feared.
The trip is a bit disorganised, but it's good fun, even when the guide's torch, then backup torch fail when we're deep in a cavern. We inch back slowly, the inky darkness only illuminated by our camera flashes. Then the little boat he rows back to the big boat is clearly not built for 6, and if it weren't for our efforts bailing, then we would've been swimming. Still, he makes a fantastic lunch...with seafood salad, steamed clams, grilled fish, stirfried greens,
rice and fish soup. Our fellow travellers do not each fish or seafood...bad for them, good for me and Ritch and we eat at least two meals in one. Which is a good thing as the 5 of us end up in a bar after the boat trip for a liquid dinner.
The hangover from Vietnamese rum is as bad as you might imagine. Still, it's Sunday, we've got a plush hotel room and a full schedule of football and movies on the TV to keep us amused. The weather has turned again too, so we feel no guilt for our lazy day. We spoil ourselves with a posh breakfast at the fanciest restaurant in town, the Green Mango, which is so good that we decide to go back there for dinner too.
We soak up our day of rest as tomorrow and beyond will be spent in transit. Heading back to the mainland there are loads of agents offering the combined bus/boat/bus ticket...in theory. In practice, once you have established they sell the route you need, and proceed to "two tickets please!", the agent suffers amnesia and the price either quadruples or is suddenly no longer possible.
After a few completely baffling negotiations along these lines, we manage to buy passage off the island and to our destination of Hoi An. It's going to take 29 hours including waiting for connections; a bus, a boat, a minibus, then finally an overnight coach...sounds fun!
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