Day 33 Saturday June 6, 2009

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Day 33 Saturday June 6, 2009

We arrived in Hanoi at 5 am (too early) and exited the train station to a mob of taxi drivers (see a pattern here?). We felt like lambs in a pack of wolves. We told a cabbie we needed to go to My Dinh bus station and he said that it was too far and that he would take us to another one that would get us to our destination of Halong Bay, yeah right. We tried to shake him off and find another cabbie that would take us where we wanted to go but he kept following us saying the station he knew was the correct one (so why does it have a different name than the one in the guide book?!?!?!) So we stuck it out and found a cabbie that took us to the correct bus station for 90,000 VND. We got our bus tickets to Halong Bay for 60,000 VND (guidebook said 35,000 VND) from the ticket office, oh well! Win some, lose some. We were the only white people on this 4 hour bus trip and we stopped to pick up every Tom, Dick and Harry on the side of the road who wanted a ride....Someone in the brake business would make a lot of money here!!! Start and stop the whole trip! At our destination the bus litterally threw our bags on the side of the road and was moving as I was stepping off. So here we are on the side of a hot dusty highway like you see in the movies with our bags laying on the ground, we werent even sure we were at the right place but forntunately we were and sure enough a cabbie was right there. He took us to the Marina so we could get our tickets for a live abroad boat for one night. As soon as we get to the marina we had a guy following us around like a lost puppy touting in a boring monotone how great his boat was. He was like a broken record over and over. Camden left me with the luggage and went to buy the tickets from the office. The guy tried to give me his spill and I told him en espanol that I speak no english. (That works beautifully by the way!) After waiting around for 2-3 hours we were introduced to our tour guide and our captain and they asked us to not disclose the amount we were paying for our overnight trip ($90/each very high) saying that the other tourists paid $135/ night. We had a feeling we were the ones who paid too much, but we didn't bother to ask anyone else what they paid b/c we would just be upset if turned out to be true. We explored some caves in the bay area and went kayaking for while around the limestone structures. We also met a fabulous French couple who are living in Venezuela. He is a journalist by day and an author on the side. They were both really neat people and we had a lovely dinner with them.

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