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Published: August 27th 2008
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Travel curse arrives again. Our train journey to Hanoi was a write off. We arrive at the station in plenty of time, and when it comes to boarding we are told we are missing an important piece of our ticket and are given a cursory wave of the finger by the conductor as to where we should go to get it sorted. Walking around looking a bit lost and a guy comes over to me, taps me on the shoulder and points to another guy carrying a folder of sorts. He grabs my ticket, gives me another one, this time with the important missing piece, and tells me to hurry as the train is leaving (still 20 minutes before departure). Grab our bags, find our new carriage and find that our new ticket is one class lower. Smaller, tighter squeeze and we are shacking down with the locals on this night.
No worries - we moan a bit but in the end we reach our destination at 4:45am. We wander for a bit to find somewhere open to grab some breakfast then on our way by van to Halong city - 3 hours away but only 150km North-East from Hanoi.
We meet our guide for the coming 3 days/2nights tour of Halong Bay who has the uncanny ability to leave off the final few letter sounds of each word, making it difficult to understand what is he asking. (We have lun and go to the cah - meaning we will have lunch and go to the caves) We board our boat with a German family of 4 and an Australian couple and set off into the Bay where hundreds of ganite islands pop out of the sea.
We anchor around 3 and set off towards some caves on one of the islands. They were ok as far as caves go, proabably a geologists dream, but for us just a big hole. Our our exit, the heavens open up and that cans our idea of swimming and hanging out on the beach for the remainder of the afternoon.
Early night as we were still shattered from our train ride after the crew put on a bit of a skit of traditional vietnamese music.
Morning time and my birthday - shock turning the big 28!! After breakfast our guide in his unusual english told us that we won't we
going to stay on Cat Ba as there is a large Typhoon coming and we need to get out quick or we will be stuck here for 3 or 4 days. "Well then, lets not waste time" but oh no, we take on other passengers from another boat, and continue to wait around for an hour or so. Now it becomes too late and too dangerous to go back to Halong city. Now begins and epic journey back to the mainland. We leave our boat and go onto Cat Ba island - leaving behind our newly joined extras the our guide tells us "don no wha they going to d as no foo" (Translation - don't know what they are going to eat as there's no food) We take a 30 minute ride to the major town on the island where we wait, then have lunch, then wait, then board another bus to take us to the ferry at the other end of the island. We change buses again, we sit next to a teacher talking about teacher stuff, we reach the ferry where there are numerous tourists trying to do the same thing as us. We board a ferry,
no seats inside so we have to stand outside. The rain comes down, the sea is rough, the spray hits us and we are soaked to the bone along with our belongings.
We arrive on the mainland alive, no bus to pick us up. Wind howling, rain driving but finally on the bus and possibly the slowest driver in all of Vietnam.
Back in Hanoi where we get a refund of the remainder of our trip that we missed out on. The rain comes down, we wander to find some dinner, then board our train to Danang, 600 kilometres south of Hanoi. Long journey, and made it eventually to Danang where we bartered well again for a 30 kilometre ride to Hoi An.
A great little town where there are numerous tailors, painting and t-shirt shops beside a quiet river. Only a few kilometres from the beach (again without any sunshine) The four nights that we spent there we didn't do anything touristy - no sights, no history - we just relaxed, took in the town for what is was, got a few pieces of clothes tailored and that was pretty much it.
Watching the news
in our hotel we find out that there have been over 150 people killed due to mud slides and flooding in the north thanks to the Typhoon that we escaped from. Tourists were stranded on the trains as slips had taken out lines - the very train tracks that we rode only 2 days before! Maybe bad luck can in fact be good luck!
We flew from Hoi An to Saigon as it was only $10 more and 23 hours quicker than the train. In Saigon we visited the War Reminants Museum that documented the Vietnam War (or American War as it is known in Vietnam) through photographs by numerous journalists who were right in amongst it. A lot didn't make it and you could see the last photographs they took before they died. The museum was quite moving as it showed numerous atrocities by American soldiers, as well as the effects of Agent Orange and other chemicals used during the war have had on the Vietnamese people. Not an enjoyable afternoon but something everyone should see while in Saigon.
We also visited Cu Chi tunnels about 30 kilometres north of Saigon. Here is where the Viet Cong
dug in under a US military base and ambushed them during many nightime raids. There was approximately 200km of tunnels! We had the chance to go through some of the tunnels which had been made bigger for tourists, but even then it was still quite claustrophobic and amazing that these soldiers would remain underground for months at a time in cramped, dark conditions. Another thing that loads of people did here was buy real machine gun or rifle ammunition and go for gold shooting at barrels about 10 metres away. It made the whole expereience a bit more real as there was gunfire going off all the time, just like it would have been during the war.
Great time had, but back in Singapore for school.
Hope you are all well 😊
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