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Published: July 13th 2006
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When our bus pulled up in Hue we thought we were in heaven... brand new bus, free bottle of water, blanket included and A/C that really worked. I was so happy, SO happy .... until 1am. Suddenly the bus stops and on come about 10 extra people... hmmm...the bus was already full. But the asians know how to pack things to the max, so on come the plastic chairs in the aisles. I slowly drift back to sleep very aware of the man sitting right next to me now. I wake up about an hour later with him snoring, asleep on my shoulder. Great. As much as I love cuddling with random vietnamese men I decided to shove the complimentary blanket between us and attempt to get some sleep. Luckily the 2 gravol kicked in and I woke up in the middle of Hanoi!
Hanoi is CRAZY! I was warned it was pretty nutty here, but I figured it couldn't be any worse than Saigon... well yes it could. Crossing the street is suicide if you don't do it right. You have to walk slowly and steadily otherwise you WILL get hit. I don't think any of us were really feeling
up for a big crazy city, so we only stayed in Hanoi one night and the next day headed for a 3 day tour of Halong Bay.
I have seen tons of photos of Halong Bay, but you really have to see it in person. It's stunning. The three day tour starts on a junk boat which I thought from its name would be a really shitty boat (okay, if that is really stupid please don't make fun of me, I don't know boats). Anyways, it was a nice boat with nice rooms and a nice big dining room... I was pleasantly surprised! We settled ourselves into some deck chairs and just enjoyed the scenery for the first couple of hours and wow it was really stunning. You could just look around for hours taking it in. The first stop was a giant cave. I really was like, awww this sucks if we're in for a bunch of cheezy tourist stops, but again, I was pleasantly surprised. The caves were impressive. There were two big ones and they were massive. The second one was especially impressive because it had a giant penis. ha! Jim DAW! that means big penis in
Vietnamese (blame the guys for teaching me bad words). But seriously, even our guide pointed it out, it's famous (even listed in the lonely planet). The photo isn't very good but hopefully you can spot it. Anyways, once we got over taking crude photos we finished up the tour of the caves and got back onto the boat. Next stop, 427 stairs. That's what I remember about it anyways. Phew. Waaay too hot to be doing anything active in my opinion! But wow, it was definitely worth the view. You can see the little gazebo we climbed up to in one of the photos. Afterwards the boat sailed into the middle of the bay and we got to jump off the top of the boat and swim for a little while. So refreshing in the intense humid heat!
This was followed by dinner and drinks... We thought we'd make nice vodka sodas with lime and we were all so excited for it... until we realized that we'd bought sticky rice vodka, which coincidentally tastes EXACTLY like sticky rice. Prrrretty disgusting. Jonatan almost refused to drink it and Sophie couldn't get through the first glass, but Lasse and I soon discovered
that if you EAT lots of rice with it then you don't taste it so much! Brilliant! The food on the boat was also really quite good. A LOT of seafood but it was so fresh it was really nice. I ate more fresh squid and shrimps on that tour than I have in my entire life.
The next day we sailed to Cat Ba Island where we were going to spend the night. We started the morning off with a hike up into Cat Ba National Park. The hike was over an hour, 45 minutes straight up. 45 minutes dripping sweat non stop. Okay, NOW I can honestly say I have never sweat so much in my life. It was like I took a sip of water and then it was flushed through my system and out every pore of my body - instantly! And no, I am not some disgusting beast, everyone was the same. It was so incredibly humid and hot. Unbelievable. Once at the top there was a really dodgy looking tower we climbed up and quickly climbed down! The view was the same at the base!!!! That's what I told myself. I won't be surprised
to read that that thing collapses and kills a group of tourists. Hopefully they do some maintenance.
We next checked into our hotel and had "free time". I love how tours can make you feel as though you're 8 years old. In our "free time", Sophie and I went out in search of the beaches, found some crazy waves to play in and ate leechies.
The following day we got back onto our junk boat and sailed for a couple of hours back to Halong City and then returned to Hanoi. Ughhh... I still wasn't ready for that city so that evening we decided to take the night train to Sapa. So with 5 hours to spare we booked our tickets and somehow got ripped off yet again... by our Halong Bay tour guide who we spent 3 whole days with! This super friendly guide (whom we all tipped generously after the tour) was nice enough to book us soft sleepers with A/C when, as he said, it was very last minute to be doing this (ahem, bullshit). When we boarded the train to find 6 planks of wood packed in a compartment like sardines with a fan we were
not happy campers. We still managed a laugh but the lying and scamming was definitely wearing on us. We were both very excited to wake up in beautiful Sapa where it would be cooler, calmer and very far from Hanoi.
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