Trains, Planes and Automobiles

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This may be a little garbled as it’s 2 in the morning and I’m due to wake up at about 7 for the beginnings of another adventure.

We looked around all night for a good boat company in Halong Bay, but found nothing that inspired us. No one ever pays the same price for something in Vietnam and you don’t always get what was originally promised - so it’s best to have a good look around. This normally ends up in lots of frowning and failed haggles. In Cambodia everyone haggles, even if it’s just to make their day slightly more interesting. In Vietnam if you haggle badly, you get treat like a small piece of fecal matter on the less attractive end of a posh person’s shoe. Eventually we found a tour company on the internet (as human relations had failed) that had some fairly respectable reviews…and although it was slightly more expensive than we imagined, we figured it was better to pay more and get something out of it. We had some disappointments to our name and Halong Bay wasn’t going to be one of them.

I imagine it would be difficult to entirely ruin an experience a trip around Halong Bay. The main point of the tour is that the place is visually stunning with very little explanation or imagination required. It’s just beautiful - so you go and look at it and make wow sounds occasionally. We went to make the call in the local post office because the owner of the internet café wasn’t prepared to let us make a local phone call that we offered to pay for. It was perhaps fate that led us conveniently to this point…because as we finished the conversation arranging meeting points and prices, a strange and smart looking man seemed to materialize from somewhere amongst the postcards on the wall.

“You looking for a boat?”
“Erm…”
“On the phone just now, you go to see Halong Bay?”
“I thought that booth was soundproof…
“I offer cheap price for tour of Halong Bay.”
*PAUSE*
“How cheap?”

We were then quoted a price for the exact same tour as what we had just discussed…but for less than half the price. Obviously suspicious I asked the man to take us to his establishment and show us something about his company…and surprisingly it looked pretty legitimate. He had photos of the boat, a tour company name, a hotel, a restaurant. Slowly running out of cash we had no option but to accept the deal from this bizarre stranger. He wore a full suit in the full heat of the day and never seemed to stand in the same place for more than a couple of seconds.

“Okay - you meet here at 7am tomorrow morning.”

We nodded our heads, slightly dumfounded.

The next day we awoke at a decent enough time and sure enough the man was there to guide us to the boat. We lugged our heavy rucksacks and were driven down to the harbor where we had a good long look at the bay. We hadn’t had the opportunity to see it before this point because we had arrived in the dark. Huge towers of rocks now studded the horizon in every direction we looked. You can see from the beach the strange shapes created by the slow erosion of the tides and even the greenery which covers much of the tops of the formations. There are over a thousand tiny islands in the bay and it looks incredible.

For anyone who happened to catch the Top Gear - Vietnam episode, Halong Bay was their final destination. It’s absolutely incredible.

Our ship was a little Tug boat. It had about 9 or 10 small cabins, a main deck containing a lounge/dining area and an upper deck with sun loungers on. I immediately loved it. It was small but big enough to move around and not feel cramped. We spent awhile getting our sea legs and sorting stuff into our rooms. Me and Rich shared a twin room with our own bathroom…for $39 each for everything it was a pretty damn good deal.

The only real problem with the tour was our tour guide. He was an expressionless idiot with a serious attitude problem. I didn’t have any personal clashes with him, but the way he spoke to other people made me want to drop kick him in the neck off the side of the ship. Fortunately it didn’t come to this, because he was greatly overshadowed (sometimes literally) by the breathtaking scenery and the friends we met aboard the ship.

The first day we spent under a light mist and rain. For the first time since entering Asia we were actually quite cold. It was basically your average English set-up. Overcast skies, a bit of a breeze, a touch of rain and mist. That kind of thing. I felt it gave the place a little more character. In the distance I started to notice the faint outline of other rock formations which faded in and out of view. It made things a little more mysterious and edgy.

We passed around many of the islands on the way to a particular one containing a cave, fascinatingly named “Surprising Cave.” I find this to be a terrible name, but hopefully something has been lost in the translation. Our tour guide led the way, at one point stopping to humiliate an old, overweight French woman who was struggling with the steps to the top. He didn’t seem to notice that everyone hated having him around. I didn’t feel sorry for the French woman, because she should have known what she was signing up for… but she was having a go. Leave her to it.

The caves were interesting to see, but although I enjoy visiting caves I can’t usually find much to distinguish one from the other. The main difference between this one and others I have seen was (other than its location) we were being led by an idiot.

“In the next room we see the symbol of love.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know what the symbol of love is?”
“A heart?”
“Yes…well I think this is more the symbol of love.”
“It’s a penis isn’t it?”

He didn’t reply. We walked through to the next cave section, and sure enough - there stood the phallic symbol. If caves are built to proportion it was a fairly embarrassing sight to be honest. I didn’t really know where to look.
From this point on our entire tour was a haven of sexual innuendo’s perpetuated forward by the cumbersome grace of our less than gifted tour guide. He inspired me about as much a moderately sized boulder of a dull gray, kind of common-man hue with no in. I didn’t learn his name in case I accidentally contacted him in the future.

Lunch on the ship was fantastic. The coastal towns of Vietnam had failed to fully satisfy our appetites and it was great to have some good cooking. Rich had previously ordered a chicken curry dish in Halong Bay town which was mainly bones and cartilage. It was pretty gross. We got to know a few people a little better and braced ourselves for kayaking in the cold.

Just as we got ready to go it started to rain. We decided to head out anyway, and manning a two man vessel we headed out into the busy seas, dominated by hundreds of tour boat tugs. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far. We headed quite far out from the boat and explored a few of the nearby formations. I occasionally whistled the theme music from Jurassic Park…and we couldn’t remember the music for King Kong but I’m sure we gave it a mention at some point.

After awhile rowing we arrived at a tunnel passing through the centre of an immense bulk of rock. We headed through the other side not really knowing what to expect. Behind us we could hear the constant engines of a hundred tugs and a few birds called from above us. We passed through the cave on the momentum of our rowing and just sat still for awhile, and then once we arrived at the other side there was complete silence. There was a small cove and behind us an enormous wall blocking out all the sounds of the engines and other disturbing noises. For a very rare moment in our lives we sat completely silent and listened to the nothingness around. I think we were both fairly sure a T-Rex was going to burst from the undergrowth at any second, or a ridiculously oversized gorilla would pop his head around the corner to say “hello.”…it never happened.

That night we played endless drinking games and avoided Karaoke at all costs. It was a quality night and we had run of the ship as the staff all got fed up and went to bed. The next day we made our travels back to Hanoi, boarded a flight to Bangkok and spent a day killing time.

Bangkok was incredible for a quick pass through. We had an overnight Sleeper Train (Oh Christ) booked at 7.30pm and we had arrived at about 1. Fortunately we managed to find a massive shopping arcade with entire floors dedicated to entertainment and about a million stalls crammed into every floor. After being able to find absolutely nothing we needed to buy in Vietnam (possibly looking in the wrong places) it was pretty much perfect for us. I re-stocked on t-shirts and underwear and made myself ready to board the night train.

Bangkok traffic is the worst I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. You can stand still for 15 minutes and go nowhere, and still the Taxi charges you. Bikers risk their lives every second trying to weave in and out of the order-less traffic and at one point our Taxi actually smashed into the back of a hard-breaking van. You couldn’t build up enough speed to do any damage if you tried. We arrived at great pain to the train station where a gargantuan sat on the tracks waiting for us to board.

I’ll not bore you with the details of the Sleeper Train. I’m happy to tell you that it was about a million times better than the Bus, no-one snored, I could fit in my bed AND I didn’t fear to be used as a projectile weapon at any point. Win-win.

After a final coach journey we arrived in Krabi, Thailand - today. Since that point we’ve checked into a fairly decent guesthouse in Ao Nang beachfront. The scenery is absolutely stunning here… the sky seems to change color constantly and there is always something to watch. This evening we watched a thunderstorm slowly develop, rage and then disperse in a couple of hours. Along the ground we saw thousands of hermit crabs running about frantically doing something. I’ve no idea what. There was a circle of them having a genuine crab-off. I ate my first Thai curry, played a game of pool literally surrounded by lady boys (a dangerous sport) and then took a long walk along the beachfront. It was at this point I decided to come here and get up to date with all our shenanigans.

The reason being this: From the 30th March we will be in a monastery retreat in complete silence for the period of 10 days. During this time we’ll be sleeping on wooden pillows, eating just two meals a day before 11am and attempting meditative techniques. I’ve know idea what to expect from this experience, or if I’ll manage the full 10 days. Many people choose to leave after 4 or 5 days.

This will be my last entry before we disappear for awhile. I’ll write about my experiences on the day of my leaving…simply because I’ll be desperate to speak, write, shout and just generally be very communicative the second I leave the building.

Wish us luck.

Chris

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