Advertisement
Published: September 6th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Aug 11 - arrive in Hanoi, Evie left to fly back to Bangkok and back home
Aug 12 - 14 Halong bay tour and back to Hanoi
Aug 15 16 back in Hanoi
From Hue, Evie, Jen and I got on another night bus up to Hanoi. It was a bit difficult falling asleep that night as we were forced to overhear true love sparking between a young guy from Israel who pretended to know everything and some ditsy young Canadian girl sitting behind us, with the most high pitch, irritating giggle you've ever heard. They continued for nearly 4 hours chatting away in the bus while everyone else was trying to get some sleep. We wished we didn't have to listen in on this inane conversation. Later in the evening, one of the bus drivers sets up a hammock in the aisle of the bus and some old Vietnamese man, who was probably drunk, started a scene, screaming at everyone in Vietnamese, until they kicked him off the bus in the next town. We eventually got some sleep and arrived early in the morning. Evie needed to catch her flight back to Bangkok and back the states. It was
sad to see her leave after too short a holiday. But we had had so much fun!
Later, Jen and I went to find a tour to Halong bay and left the next day. That is another MAJOR problem with Vietnam - We bought a tour to Halong bay, promising us kayaking, swimming, a night on a boat, another night on an island, etc, etc. But when we got there, NOTHING, was what we were promised and no one seemed to be responsible. The people running the tours could never give us a straight answer- and it's not even one company - everything was outsourced to someone else, contracted to yet another company until there's no one responsible.
It's really a pity because the landscape of Halong bay is absolutely beautiful, but it was tainted by dealing with rude and aggressive Vietnamese tour operators. They successfully irritated our whole group, and again, it did feel like they were treating us like walking ATMs, constantly trying to scam us in one way or another. No one would tell us what was going on most of the time and we didn't end up doing all the things we were promised.
We did get to go kayaking for 40 minutes at one point but weren't allowed to swim. Unfortunately, dealing with them was a huge headache, but I tried to enjoy the trip anyway.
It's also unfortunate that with a beautiful bay with over 3000 islands jetting up out of the sea that all the junk boats only see one little part of it. Most of the time we were right on top of all the other boats. All in all, we were quite disappointed with the tour and didn't appreciate being lied to. At one point, our boat was about to leave Cat Ba island. We had waited around all morning for the pick up to the port - we had already all been checked out of the hotel for a couple hours and made the hour trip down to the boats. Finally, when the boat was about to leave, some guy from the hotel came running down, boarded the boat and singled out one couple on the boat - conveniently, he selected people who didn't speak English very well - the sweet Korean couple. (I guess it was either them or the big Russian guy, and he wasn't
about to mess with him.) He demanded they pay way too much money for some lost hotel key (we all had just left the keys in the room) or the boat wasn't going to leave. A screaming match ensued, as everyone realized, it was everyone's problem - and it was so clearly a scam. In the midst of all this, we overheard another screaming match happening on the adjacent boat. As the two Canadian guys told us later, their situation was even worse than ours. They got on their boat to find that not only was there no beer or soda on board, but no water either! And, to make matters worse, when they would bring their own water aboard, the tour operators were trying to charge them a fee!
There were countless other annoying situations during this two night/three day trip, (which for me also included a night of wicked food poisoning from the included meal at the hotel). Sure, we've met some who said they had no problems in Halong bay, but for every one who had a pleasant trip, we've met 3 or 4 who had similar problems. I would definitely give Halong bay a miss
cave
One of the stops on our Halong bay adventure... - or, if booking from Hanoi, insist on paying only part of it up front. They really need to be held accountable - but no one is regulating any of it, so it's easy to fall prey to dishonest Vietnamese tour operators. (We actually went to complain when we were back in Hanoi. The 'Sinh Cafe' travel agent became very hostile with us, but we remained calm. Eventually we got some money back, but that's not really the point. I'm not sure how many tourists they need to piss off before people just stop coming here.)
We got back to Hanoi in the afternoon and went back to our friendly guesthouse Binh Minh II- these guys were really sweet - not everyone in Vietnam is an asshole! We headed over to our favorite little corner of Luong Ngoc Quyen and Ta Hien to a hole in the wall beer shop for a 2000 dong draft (about 12 cents!) It's fresh, not too bad, but will give you a head ache the next day. But this is a great corner for watching the motorbikes whizzing by and especially for people watching! Sometimes, it's like a train wreck, but you gotta
watch - we saw this aging asian woman in tight cut off shirt, extremely short hot pants and high heels. Of course, she was with some older white guy as can be seen all over southeast asia. I hate to be cynical, but it's just been too in your face in this part of the world. Occasionally at our favorite little Bia Hoi shop, they would tell everyone the police were coming and that we had to get up from our plastic chairs and get back onto the 'sidewalk.' There were never any issues though. We met a lot of friendly travelers around here too!
Other highlights of Hanoi - we went to see the water puppets. That was very cool! It is a traditional artform that began in the flooded rice fields of northern Vietnam. We were very impressed. We also went to see Ho Chi Minh's tomb. It was interesting to see all the crowds waiting to briefly walk around the perfectly preserved body. They really love this guy here.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.285s; Tpl: 0.047s; cc: 14; qc: 75; dbt: 0.119s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.2mb