Merry Xmas on Halong Bay
Hello!!!! And Merry Christmas to everyone. Just spending Christmas in Halong Bay!
So I arrived to Vietnam a few days ago, the 20th
to be exact. I took a flight from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi. The airport
in Vientiane has to be the smallest airport in a capital city anywhere!
There were only 5 flights in and out all day long!!!! Anyway the flight
was uneventful…thank goodness. And I arrived safetly at the airport.
I had booked my tickets with two other Britts who I had been traveling
with for a few days in Laos…so we took a taxi into the city. But then
we went our seperate ways. I went to a guest house and checked in.
Hanoi at first glance was nice….I thought I could live there…but
after spending the next day walking around all day long, I was
exhausted of navigating through the crowded streets, exhausted of
hearing the never ending horns blaring in my ears, and scared to death
that I would be knocked over by one of the motor bikes as it sailed
past me! But other than the mere commotion that happens all the time
there, it is a nice city. But I definately had to mentally prepair
myself while on the plane to get ready to be ripped off or haggled at
everystep of the way now that I am in Vietnam, as oppossed to clam and
quite Laos.
The first night I was in Hanoi I went to a water puppet show. It was
amazing! It was funny since the puppets immitate daily life, and they
say that thousands of years ago this ancient form of entertainment was
invented in the rice fields. I thought of this as the puppets were
moving in the water, and it was hillarious! The way that they move and
are coordinated with the other puppets it was amazing. A nice site to
see in Hanoi.
Yesterday I took a (unfortunatley a small tour group) bus out to
Halong Bay. Everyone said to take a small tour since it will cost about
the same and the hassle can be massive it you try to organize and hire
a boat by yourself once you get out here. But the “tour” hasn’t been
that great so far, especially for what I paid for it! We got a bus out
here yesterday. Then we got on a boat. We sailed through Halong Bay. It
was a beautiful day yesterday, sunny and blue skies, so it was nice to
sit up on top of the boat on the deck and just watch all the small
mountains pass by as we sailed along. The Bay was beautiful. We entered
a cave, it was huge…nothing like the small cave I entered in
Thailand…this one was completely lit, lit even with colored lights!
Nothing to be sweating over here. We got back on the boat and sailed
around some more. One hour of kayaking was suppossed to be included in
the package deal, but there were only two inflatable kayaks on board
our boat. So the guide stopped the big boat and four people at a time
could “kayak” around a rock and back. There was only one paddle for
each kayak so controlling the kayak was incredibly difficult! But it
was nice to do, since there was almost a full moon starting to rise and
it lit the bay. Then we slept on the boat last night.
This morning we arrived to Cat Ba Island. Some people from our group
stayed on the boat to return back to Hanoi, they only booked a one day
tour. But some of us continued on to check into our hotel for tonight.
Then we headed out for a short hike. The hike itself was good, but the
company was better, hillarious in fact! Three Australian girls returned
back to the road after hiking for about 10 minutes, granted one was
pretty sick. (Uh oh…guess the rest of this got cut off…I’ll try to
remember my train of thought!) Anyways, the guide left one girl to hike
on her own…she ended up freaking out and screaming until we went to
her rescue…don’t blame her, I think I would have freaked out too, if
I thught the guide sent me on my way to find my way back to the bus!
Spent the rest of the day just wondering around…not much to do on the
island, and the weather wasn’t the greatest.
The next morning, Christmas moring we boarded our boat again, this
time it was only me and two other people who had been with me the whole
time on the boat. We pulled away from the dock and started sailing
out…but 10 minutes later the captain got a call on his cell phone and
we headed back to the dock to wait 30 more minutes for about 10 more
people to come aboard. Same thing happened again once we got off the
boat and back onto the bus….had been driving for 20 min and had to
turn around to go back to pick up more passengers!
Lesson from this…I thought I paid a fair amount of money for this
tour, but afterwards, having spoken with many other people, it turns
out they paid much more for a different and better tour…so I guess
the quality just all depends on how much money you fork out…guess I
didn’t pay enough!
Posted by annawojo on December 24, 2007 02:00 PM
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