When I left off, we had just arrived in Hanoi. Apologies for the delay in the update, but I have been a tad busy lately.... but now, on with the show...
The first problem when we arrived at the crack of dawn o'clock in Hanoi was that our bus driver wasn't there. The second problem was that it was absolutely freezing. I put on everything I had that would provide any form of warmth, and still was cold. I don't know how Sophie coped though - she had on the shortest of shorts and a singlet top. Ridiculous! Anyway, seeing as we had nowhere to go, we sat down outside the station to wait. Even at that silly time of the morning there was a 'cafe' of sorts open - and we ordered a coffee. Mine was the most disgusting thing I have ever had. Just awful.
While we were waiting I decided to take advantage of the toilet. Oh my goodness, I have never seen anything more ridiculous in my life. Firstly, as I walked in (and bear in mind, they made me pay money to use this loo), the stench literally picked me up and carried me off. The second thing that struck me was the urinal - for that is what it was - a trough along the wall with two brick slats either side (obviously for your feet). There would have been about 4 or 5 of these. So essentially, the idea is that you drop your dacks and squat over this trough, in full view of everyone else (there's no door separating each one) - but not only that, its in complete full view of the doorway to the whole set up. So people walking past the loos on the railway concourse can see! How ridiculous is that? There is only one 'western' toilet, with a door - and that's what I was paying for the privilege of using, I guess. But it certainly was all just a bit too much.
When I returned to the group, the driver had arrived, so we headed off to the minibus. I tried to vie for a good position in the bus, which was quite squishy - but as the group had forgotten I was in the toilet, I was at the back of the line, and thus last in the bus. This meant that all the window seats were taken. I was stuck squished next to Shanty and Sophie, and with nothing to lean on, having had no sleep, and an hour and a half (or so) drive. I tried to sleep regardless, but blessed Sophie decided to listen to her iPod, at the level she usually listens to it - which meant that it was on full bore and I could hear everything. It was most annoying.
You can then imagine that by the time we arrived in Halong Bay I really was not in a very good mood. So it didn't help that our rooms were not available yet. We were able though to go have breakfast, which was a beautiful smorgasbord, and seeing as it was so terribly cold, I had to have the hottest things I could find. Alas I spilled my coffee!
Fortunately by the time we finished, the rooms were ready - and they really were worth the wait. The hotel was the Halong Bay Hotel, and it was directly opposite the bay, some 100m or so from the water's edge - and the view was just stunning. I took it all in for a bit, but really was more than just a bit irritable at this stage, so I decided to try to take a nap before our boat trip on the bay.
We left at about 12pm or something for our boat trip. Again I rugged up as much as I could - and was still cold - but Sophie comes down in barely anything! When we asked her about it, she said that she had gotten rid of all her winter clothes from her Kilimanjaro trek, and had no winter clothes with her. Come on? Not even a jumper? Fortunately Erik had a spare he could lend her.
The bus took us to the boat on the bay and we had a lovely cruise around the islands. The bay spans an area of around 1553 square kilometres and includes about 1,960 islets, most of which are limestone. It is just simply breathtaking. We were on a cute little junket that provided us with a gorgeous seafood lunch (Sophie however doesn't eat seafood and forgot to mention that when Vaughn asked for our dietary needs!) - just scrummy. And better still, we had the whole run of the boat ourselves. We visited firstly a fishing village, which was very interesting - it was essentially a large floating wooden jetty with lots of compartments cut into it where the fish were. You really had to watch your footing so you didn't fall in!
Our next stop was to the Thien Cung Grotto, which is a really large cave of stalagmites and stalactites, lit very beautifully (and probably to the detriment of the stalagmites etc), which has been forming for 700 000 to about 11 000 years. It was really beautiful, and I felt quite moved to let rip with a pretty impressive coo-ee (if I do say so myself), much to the amusement of the many Korean and Japanese tourists there.
Upon our return to the hotel, Francois, Shanty and I decided to do a bit of exploring of the town. We firstly made our way to the beach, where we were fortunate to see the sun set (our first really of this trip), and Francois encountered another French speaking person, so he enjoyed chatting away in French to him. We also came across a barbers, and Francois hada shave. But we didn't really see anything suitable for the evening meal (that didn't cost a fortune - although this is a good, cheap place for seafood - the price in comparison to that which we had been paying relatively for our evening meals was far above our budget, and we knew that especially Shanty and Sophie wouldn't be able to afford it). We did however happen across a night market setting up, and we had a bit of a browse around it. Every time we approached a stall the owners would get really excited and shove a load of tat under our noses. It wasn't really designed as a tourist market so I don't know why they thought we would want to buy these things.
Returning to the hotel, it was decided we'd eat there instead, which was quite nice (except that they ran out of the thing I wanted to order, so that I had to choose pho again or something). Then Beate and Erik wanted to have an explore, so Francois and I headed out with them again too.
All in all it had been a very enjoyable day - but I was oh so tired, and oh so ready for bed in my oh so lovely room!
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