Zelma’s Trip

Having not made Halong Bay the previous day I re-booked a tour and also collected my passport which had an extremely pretty Laos visa in it!  The following day I arrived at the hotel at the crack of dawn where I was to be collected for the journey to Halong Bay.  I must say, although I have not been on a huge number of organised tours this was by far the least organised, infact I think that’s something of a misnomer!  When we eventually got to Halong Bay we waited for around an hour and a half to get on a boat.  They collected our passports which was slightly concerning as they kept being handed between various different people and I wasn’t entirely sure I would see my passport with its pretty holographic visa in again.  Eventually we did get a junk and the trip was amazing.  As soon as I got on the boat I went up to the top deck and opened my bag.  As I did so my lighter flew out bounced a couple of times, went overboard and plopped into the sea much to everyone’s amusement, other than mine of course.  It was quite a feat considering that I was sitting about 10 foot from the edge of the boat.  The scenery was enough of a distraction with karst rock formations dotted across the sea.  We stopped off at a cave and I managed to leave the ticket I had been given on the boat which promptly sailed off.  Everyone didn’t seem to understand how I had missed the numerous announcements as we pulled up to the shore.  I was listening to my Ipod okay?!  By this point I think that everyone on the boat thought I was a complete doofus especially when I had to pay again to go into the caves.

The caves themselves were very odd.  They had been trussed up Vietnamese style with coloured lighting to the extent that they had done things like putting red lights in holes to make a stalactite look like a ghost!  They also had strange sprinklers to make water effects and the like.  At one point I heard a group of people laughing and pointing to a rock which was shaped like a nipple.  Now, call me a cynic if you like but this "weird formation" did not bear any semblance to any other in the cave and almost looked like a different type of rock; I really couldn’t help but think that it had been planted.

After the cave we got back on the boat and made our way past more amazing scenery to Cat Ba Island.  There was a lot of confusion as to who was staying on the island and, having decided that a couple who had been ordered onto the bus were not meant to have been, I was whisked off the boat.  In the confusion I left my only really warm top behind but was assured that I would be able to collect it.  We took a minibus to the place we were staying which was not great to be fair.  The actual location was lovely though so I wasn’t too bothered.  The following day there was an ‘organised’ trek up some hill but I had had enough of the whole tour thing by this point and also woke up very stuffy because of my Sa Pa cold.  I asked when the bus back to the boat was and when told it was 3pm decided to head for the beach.  The beach was beautiful, relatively empty and the sea was lovely for swimming.  I also got talking to a very interesting Canadian guy after I rescued his bag from would be thieves posing as photographing tourists who were moving closer and closer to it whilst taking photos.  Actually Gabriel was one of the most interesting travelly type people I have met so far.  We had quite highbrow conversations about the death penalty, religion and the like which made a nice change from the, "where’ve you been, how long have you been traveling…" conversations you normally seem to have.

I left the beach and went back to the hotel where I was picked up by the bus and taken back to the boat.  A very kind lady showed me lots of amazing photos from the trek to let me know how much I had missed out on.  Once back on the boat there was a nice bunch of people.  There were two girls from London and a group of three Australians, amongst others.  It transpired that I was sharing a room with one of the Australians who I also ended up sharing a kayak with.  This was all fine apart from the fact that his friends had decided that they wanted to go to "party island".  I can only think that this was some strange travellers tale type place as I had never seen it and no-one seemed to know where it was.  All the route seemed to do was cross lots of shipping lines so we kept getting foghorned at and then being bounced about like mad on the wakes.  We did meet a nice lady in a boat though and I bought a couple of beers which we supped in the kayak.  I thought this was great but we were the last two back and the boat was waiting for us.

On the boat that evening we played cards and the Australian guys drunk vodka which they had to smuggle onboard (there was a ridiculous "service charge" for any beverages brought onboard).  Shortly after I got into bed there was a lot of banging in one of the other rooms.  I didn’t think too much of it until I heard, "Zelma, I’ve brought you a present".  Then into the room came the Australian guy presenting me with a painting from another room which apparently was much more aesthetcially pleasing than our picture of swans!

The following morning we collected the people who had been dropped off at the island and were taken back to Halong Bay.  The trip was amazing and I loved staying onboard overnight but if I had had more time I think it may have been preferable to go independently.  However having said that then I might not have seen the sight of a drunken Australian presenting me with a painting!

On the way back in the minibus we hit a traffic jam and as we got further up the road I could see hundreds of motorcyclists stopped on the other side looking across.  I commented that it was probably quite a serious accident and that maybe we shouldn’t look.  Unfortunately I did and I still haven’t got rid of the image from my head.  I’m not going to go into the details but it involved a lorry, motorbike and two people who were very clearly dead.  When I got back to Hanoi I was a bit wobbly about getting on the back of a bike.  I decided that it was like riding a horse and I should just get back on as soon as possible.  I did and needless to say it was fine, I’m still not a fan of people undertaking lorries with me on the back though!