Halong Bay

Asia
October 15th 2009

Published: October 15th 2009

Halong Bay. What an Experience that was.
Now this place is supposed to be Vietnam's most beatiful, natural, unspoilt spot. A piece of paradise that you catch a classic chinese junk boat out to and marvel at the beautiful cliffs, sleep on board and then next day spend the night on an island paradise called cat ba island. The Vietnamese Government is even trying to get it officially recognised as one of the next 7 natural wonders of the world (something like that). That'll never happen in the state it's in now. It IS a beautiful quiet place, but its absolutely FILTHY. The seawater is disgusting, oil slicks everywhere, rubbish floating everywhere, SMOG even makes it out here I couldnt believe it (we almost saw the sun). Then there are the boat people who live out in this picturesque place in their little floating houses (you can only guess what they do with their waste). Cat Ba island is a cool place too, windy mountain roads and little island schools and villages dotted around. but it to was littered with rubbish! everywhere! rusted old cars, everything.

Anyway, we booked our tour out there through our hotel and that was all fine, met a few people on the bus that were doing the same tour as us blah blah. Our guide Bac told us halfway out there (its a 4hr drive from Hanoi) that we could sleep on the boat because of a typhoon! Then 5 mins later said the typhoon was coming anymore so we could sleep on the boat phew. Bac did a bit of stuffing around and we finally got on the boat. It was SWEET. Rooms on the bottom deck, dining room in the middle (our room was also on this floor) and a sun deck on top. The food served on board was fantastic (this would later be my downfall) and we had lunch with a nice irish couple rich and jennie who would become good friends of ours. After lunch we went to check out one of Halong Bays famous caves, it was massive! cavern upon cavern kept opening up before us! looked quite pretty all lit up with coloured lights they had put in. You follow this little path all the way around it, it goes for about a km and you see rock formations of an emu, standing budha, sitting buddha, happy buddha (looks like sitting buddha with a massive boner)! crowd favourite.

After the caving we got a chance to go kayaking in the dirty water. Gem and I went on a massive adventure following a group that we thought was ours. they led us to a cool tunnel though that we paddled through and into a massive crater only accessible by that tunnel. very cool. It was a mammoth paddle back, and gem was getting paranoid that we were lost but i knew where we were going. sweet as.

As we cruised to our anchorage for the night our party boat was cranking the techno, seriously its all the locals listen too. We chilled out on the sun deck and chatted to some french and dutch girls. as we passed about 20 other junk boats they were all pumping out the techno beats too. The real fun started after dinner though. still sitting at our table having some beers, Bac turned up the volume and started belting out some terrible vietnamese kareoke! needless to say we bolted to the sundeck to find some refuge to finish our beers. Bac and the rest of the crew sang kareoke for about 1 1/2 hours straight! to nobody except themselves! They finally stopped and we could hear other junk boats belting out kareoke as well, classic. but the silence was short lived, Bac and his boys started up a rave with the 4 italians that were on the boat - made the trip down stairs for more bia ha-noi awkward.

1am. I wake up shivering. 20 mins later am racked by stomach cramps and vomiting. food poisoning has struck! i suspect the fish i had for lunch was a dodgy one. We didnt get any sleep that night.

The next day we got to cat ba island. We were meant to trek to the top of a hill, and go to Monkey Island but I was in no state to do anything and gem wasnt much better. Turns out the hill trek was ok and Monkey Island got cancelled because of the bad weather. Bac put us on a bus straight to our hotel. we checked in and limped about in agony. Bac came and checked on us about lunchtime and decided we should go to the hospital. It was a scary place. if it was in some european mountains frankenstein couldve been made there. the doctors saw us, yabbered away in vietnamese for a while then gave us a drip and a few injections (painkillers and diarrhea inducer i think). Let me tell you induced diarrhea is not a nice way to be introduced to squat toilets! The rest of our day (and night) was spent running relays to our hotel room toilet, not a squat phew)

By this time the typhoon had struck with full force! it was hammering down with rain and we had to spend an extra night on the island. turned out to be a blessing in diguise because there was no way we could have travelled anywhere. We could hardly even move. at the end of our second day of torture we felt we could go out for a small meal with our friends which was nice. Today we made it back to Hanoi at about lunchtime and we had our appetites back big time - pizza and spring rolls! (we actually had the same thing for dinner too but at a different place).

The end of a serious adventure.

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