Halong Bay - What a Day

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Hey All,

Just a quick update to say all is well,

Just been to a fasinating part of world. A world heritage listed area, Halong Bay is a majestic group of 2000 odd islands all jutting up out of the calm sea.

Any James Bond fans will know what I'm talking about, Huge limestone islands that erupt up out of the sea like termite mounds in the outback. (Used in many JB films)

Another early morning start, this is Day 16 and I think we have only had one sleep in. I'll definatly need a holiday from this holiday, wonder what the Bahama's are like... hehehe

Actually on that note, we have decided to try and have around 4-5 days in Phuket before the end of the trip, so we don't feel as stuffed as we are right now when we return home to OZ.

If anyone is planning a similar trip to what we have done in the timeframe we are doing it, I would suggest taking south east Asia in two hits, use a month for Cambodia and Vietnam, and then another month for Laos and Thailand. We were definatly kidding ourselves on trying to hit Malaysia as well.

Interesting fact : You see the picture of the buildings (first pic above), during our stay in Vietnam we have notice nearly every building is built like a 4 storey townhouse in the middle of Sydney. Even when theres no other buildings around in the country side, u'll see a 4 storey building with a width of 2 meters and a length of 100 meters.

we just found out the reason is TAXES. Vietnamese pay land tax only on the frontage, not the area of the land, so every building is long and tall but very narrow.

Anyways, back to Halong Bay. An early morning rise (again) as we sit round the hotel waiting for a guy to come pick us up. 7.30am was the pick up time, and around 8.15 he arrives. 3.5 hrs out to Halong City, where we had a great communal Vietnamese meal with the 11 people to be on our Chinese Junk boat.

Halong bay actually reminded me alot of our House boat adventures on the Hawksbury river. Except the Islands are a little more excotic I would say.

It was great to get out of the city, and breath a little fresh air for once in a few days. Hanoi is polluted and by my account is nuthing compared to Saigon. There is no comparison, Saigon rocks, Hanoi... well lets say minimise your time here.

A night on the Junk boats are well worth it, the coupla of brit gals we met were so worried as some guy had told them the boats were full of rats, and they were jumping at leafs moving on deck. (was quite amusing)

Our room was great, was much nicer than I was expecting. Actually the accomodation we have had to date has been much better than I expected, and the cost has been quite low. On adverage, we have been paying 10-15 bucks a night for the room. (And all the real backpackers out there will say that is expensive and we should have been getting it for $ 4-5 a night, I say we are here for 4 weeks and we can afford the extra 5-10 a night thank you very much) :>

Dinner on board was exellent, seafood, veggies, rice etc... everyone on board was friendly and it's such a great way to meet people and find out all about the countires and areas they come from. So comparisons were done all night.

Once very interseting comparison, was the staff were watching "Who wants to be a millionare" on local TV. As every country had the show, we worked out the prize money :

As follows in order from least amount of prize money to the most.

In Australian dollars to an approx:

Vietnam = $ 8000
Norway = $ 400,000
Singapore = $ 700,000
Australia = $1,000,000
USA = $ 1,200,000
England = $ 2,500,000

Nice facts hey.. Poor Vietnamese get the blunt end of the stick tho.

Camo and I seem to be repeating ourselves alot in our blogs and I know most of you are reading both our journals, So I have put heaps of piccys up today so the piccys can speak the words of Halong Bay,

check out camos at

http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Vietnam/Hanoi/blog-24761.html

to read a bit more into our Halong bay experience.

Well, I'm off to bed, another arly rise for tomorrow's flight to Laos.

Night all.

Rohan

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Photos

Waiting
5 mins we were told to wait for the boat, 1.5 hours later....

white
I've been here nearly 3 weeks and I'm still white as a ghost.

Comments

[Daz]

JB Island
Hey mate, I loved JB island, except for the part where I was walking from the main pier to the markets in the middle of the island, and smashed my head on a massive tree. It was was horizontal and head height across the track. That was my last vivid memory of the island. It was lights out after that ! I do remember the canoe ride through the caves, where you end up in a beautiful oasis in the middle of an island. Now that was somthing. Daz (Holiday'n in Aus =D )

[trace]

crazy times!
These updates are great - keep it up! I must say that it seems that you guys are spending half of this trip on trains and buses. Glad you finally worked in a new mode of transportation. The boat looks amazing, and nice to see you so relaxed. Keep making the most of these adventures. T xx