Halong Bay

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Note: With time and internet access in Sydney, I've re-written this because my hurried first draft really didn't sufficiently describe the experience:

With a fixed amount of time in Vietnam, the one thing I really wanted to do was to visit Halong Bay, a chain of islands on the Northeastern Coast. They are not really islands, but moreso massive rocks with dense jungle jutting out from the water. There are so many of them, from a distance, they look like a mountain range. Up close, each one has it's own little unique features. Some have caves, some have Buddhist shrines, some have monkeys, some have un-touched beaches.

I spent a fair amount of time in Hanoi trying to find the right company to do the trip with; since I'd be stuck with the group for three days, I knew that the mix of people would be the make or break factor. I didn't want to be on a party boat, I didn't want to be with married couples (no offense married people). I just wanted some open-minded fellow travels. I finally settled on Kangaroo Tours, paid for my spot and said a little prayer that I would find myself in good company.

The next morning, the bus picked 15 of us up at our respective hotels and then we began the four hour journey to our boat. The boat is an old Chinese Junk ship, with 8 berths, a sun deck, and a dining area complete with Karaoke. Oh, and a very opportunistic cat. To my delight, the group turned out to be the most amazing part of this trip. There were 15 of us from all over the world: one Israelie guy, 2 Japanese, 2 French, 4 Spanish, 2 Brittish and 3 other Americans. We all just bonded immediately and became fast friends. Soon after we arrived on the boat, we dumped our bags in our rooms and headed to the "Amazing Cave" which is a giant cave on one of the islands in the bay. It was pretty huge, and mostly what I enjoyed about the experience was the fact that it was cool inside the cave and for a few precious moments, I was not drenched with sweat. And yes, it was "amazing", but ultimately, a cave is a cave and I spent most of the time inside just conversing with my fellow junk-team.

After the "amazing" cave, our next activity was kayaking, which was fun...just a few laps around the bay and back on the boat. I shared a kayak with the Israelie guy Adam, and we discovered another cave which we decided was "our" cave and we named it "Pamdam"; a combination of both of our names and very Vietnamese sounding, we thought. Unfortunately, our rights to the cave were only really in our imagination as others were soon invading the shores and calling it their own. Oh well, I guess that means that none of you can come visit.

After kayaking was the moment we were all waiting for, swimming! It was so hot and so sweaty, it was delicious to jump in the water. We swam for about 21 minutes (according to Swan, our tour guide) jumping off the top of the boat (I did not, as you all know, I just don't do this sort of thing due to my paralyzing fear of heights), then perched up on the sun deck to watch the sunset and get to know each other a bit. That night, we had dinner then returned to the deck to watch the stars and have a few drinks. I think we were supposed to do Karaoke, but were having such a good time talking and chilling out, it never happened.

The next morning, we began the journey by bus and then by boat to Cat Ba, a National nature reserve, and then Monkey Island, which is an island with seemingly no monkeys. We saw one and it wasn't even up close. I think we were all expecting to be surrounding by monkeys, to have to constantly shoo them away. But alas, we saw some monkey poo, but not a lot of monkeys. Fortunately, that isn't the only attraction there...the island itself is beautiful and very peaceful. We had a beach practically to ourselves and were sleeping in these little thatched roof bungalows. We spent most of that day napping, reading, chit-chatting and swimming on the beach.

That day happened to be Barbara, one of the Spanish girls, birthday, and our guide Phuk (yes, pronounced the way you think) made a special trip to town to buy cake and flowers for her (which, if you can picture how remote we were, was a pretty impressive accomplishment). After dinner, he brought out the cake, a bucket of some communal hodge-podge mixed drink, which we drank from with straws, Senior Frog style, and we proceded to get obliterated. Throughout the course of the night, I'd look at the faces of everyone in our group and see the biggest smiles. Everyone was having such a good time. Phuk was flirting with the Brittish girls, JB's dad was flirting with the Brittish girls, we were all dancing to Michael Jackson (the universal sign that it's time to dance), and buying more buckets of bucket-cocktail. What happens on Monkey Island, stays on Monkey Island.

The next morning, we assessed the damage. Helen seemed to have broken her nose but couldn't remember how. JB's parents were very quiet. Monica was not excited about the boat ride. Barbara looked a little green. Phuk woke us up early and in a military fashion made us eat breakfast and get the hell off the island. I guess we had worn out our welcome. We began our slow journey back to Hanoi, and while we were tired and groggy from the night before, our hearts were happy with the love of new friends and our heads happy with many new memories.

I spent yesterday tooling around Hanoi...went to the Women's Museum and the Temple of Literature. Ate some street food that has amazingly not destroyed my GI tract. Was shown how to eat it by a very sweet old lady who turned bitter when we wouldn't pay her the jacked up price she wanted us whiteys to pay. Tried to go see the Puppet Show but it was sold out. And just took in the city. Same thing today...starting with a tour of the cafes (I love the coffee here), the Hanoi Hilton (the prison where John McCain was held), and then to the airport.

Sad to have only seen one small part of Vietnam...phooey. I guess that means I will have to return some day. While Hanoi is the most chaotic city I have ever been in, there is a romance to it as well. Something sweaty and mysterious about it. As a Westerner, you can never really get a grasp of how things work or of what's really happening at any given moment. But if you just surrender to the chaos, somehow everything manages to eventually happen. Maybe not the way you thought it would.

On the night we returned from Halong Bay, those of us who were left met up for ice cream at Fanny's. We gorged on ice cream (we actually ordered 28 scoops amongst 8 of us and then went back for more), and when we walked back outside, there was some old Waltz music streaming onto the streets from a nearby shop. The scooters were whizzing by and in a few moments, I was sweating again. But that moment was pure Hanoi. And one that I will file away int he magical memories category.

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Comments

[Dani]

Amazing
Are you a writer?? Your story is great and we feel very flattered of your comments. It was the best moment of the trip for us. We have already arrived to Barcelona, and Halong's Bay trip was the best in 18 days! We hope we can be in touch in the future. Have a nice holiday in Australia!