Cut Short

Photos: Vietnam: Halong Bay and Cat Ba Island Trip

After my last post, I went to bed and slept the whole night through. I had set my alarm to see sunrise, but after a cursory look and a few clicks of the camera, I went back to sleep. The morning brought some beautiful weather and a breakfast of white bread, jam, eggs and bananas. Then it was up to the sun deck for some morning views, which were fantastic!

A bit later, we headed back to Cat Ba Island and were bussed with some other tourists to  Cat Ba National Park. There we did a trek that I hadn’t really expected. It took about two hours and we basically clambered up stone steps for thirty minutes, then climbed rocks for another thirty minutes, waited for people coming down, climbed rusted out ladders, clambered over more rocks… and made it to a rusted out tower. We climbed the steps that wrapped around the tower to look out over Cat Ba National Park, but the wind was strong enough to send the few remaining flaps of aluminum that served as a roof a-clanging, and that sent me across the loose wooden floorboards to hurry back down to the base of the tower. Scary!

Our guide on the way down hated our little group of four, because we weren’t going fast enough. He would periodically disappear and then reappear with a really impatient, annoyed look on his face. Fortunately, he didn’t speak English and none of our little group spoke Vietnamese.

After the trek, we were bussed to three different hotels: I went to the Sunflower One, which was billed as a three star hotel but was quite a walk from any of the beaches, didn’t have working AC in the rooms and served mediocre food. It wasn’t bad, but it just wasn’t all that exciting. At lunch, I had lunch with another couple staying at my hotel: Judy and Dan. They’re Americans from Vermont who are really into biking in different countries. They’re in southeast Asia for five months to bicycle around! They’d just started in Vietnam, but they’ve been rained out in the south and so they decided to take the Halong Bay trip to relax and then try again from Hanoi. They’re really nice folks and we instantly connected.

After lunch, I went up to my room and relaxed, playing on my computer, reading and eventually falling asleep for about an hour. I decided to head to the beach, which I’d heard was just an incredible beach. Unfortunately, it was cloudy and windy out, so although the beach was pretty, and the water was a nice temperature, I can’t say that I found it incredible. Judy and Dan were there, however, and we ended up sitting and chatting for quite some time. They hung out while I went for a quick swim and then we walked back to our hotel together.

I showered and relaxed some more in my hotel room, then met up with the Italian couple (Yana and Stefan) and the Vermont couple to go out for a local dinner. We ended up at a place called the Green Mango. It was nice but took over an hour to get us our food: a pizza and two desserts. We all got along great and told travel stories and exchanged thoughts on various world issues. Finally, we all headed our separate ways and I once again slept like a baby (albeit a hot one, with no AC!).

Today, we were bussed from Cat Ba Island to the Halong Bay harbor, got back on our boat (yay!) and had about an hour to enjoy the sunshine. We were all surprised that the sun had come out, since the morning had been fairly gray until we got to the bay. I spent about fifteen minutes on the top deck getting sun, then headed down to sit at the front of the boat and just watch the scenery go by. At one point I noticed some little white fish, long and skinny, that would swim along and jump out of the water, much like dolphins keeping pace with a boat but on a much, much smaller scale. I spent the rest of the trip alternately watching the water for these fish and watching the sky and karsts. It was very peaceful!

We arrived at Halong Bay City, disembarked, waited for a bus and headed for lunch. Unfortunately, we didn’t get lunch on the boat, which would have been far better than the mass-feed we experienced in the city. After lunch, we piled on a bus (I avoided the wheel-well seat this time) and started our four hour trip back to Hanoi.

In Hanoi, I arranged my bus ticket for tomorrow and then headed for my hotel. They promptly showed me to my room, but it was not the room I’d booked. In fact, they had shown me two when I made my reservation and the one I picked was more expensive ($18 vs $15USD). They were going to give me the smaller, cheaper one, though, and I insisted that I wanted the room I’d been shown. They walked me back downstairs (we’d climbed three flights of stairs to this wrong room) and tried to talk me into taking the smaller, windowless room, which I firmly declined. Then they informed me that they could give me a room like the one I’d reserved, but on a different floor and it wouldn’t be ready for thirty minutes or more.

All I wanted was to put my stuff down and maybe shower! It was not to be, however, so I called Yana and Stefan and Dan and Judy and we all decided to meet for dinner. That was fun and we all said our good-byes (Yana and Stefan head home tomorrow evening and I head to Hue). Then we headed back, I checked in to my room (which is just fine) and now I’m ready for bed once again.

Some thoughts and impressions:

• Cat Ba Island was completely overrated, in my opinion. Granted, there’s no helping weather, but the town isn’t interesting (only hotels next to hotels next to karaoke bars, with a restaurant or street vendor every now and then on the street). The one beach I went to was pretty but not incredible and my hotel was disappointing. And on the way to the beach, I walked past some bored men in hammocks hung from trees along the sidewalk, one man peeing off the side of the road, and bored shop vendors. I’m not sure why everyone howls about how wonderful it is!
• I would come back to Vietnam purely for Halong Bay. I DO understand why people rave about it. If I were to do this trip over again, I would book several days on a boat in the bay, with opportunities to swim and kayak each day. It was just absolutely fabulous – the views, the rooms, the food and the swimming and kayaking. Awesome!
• Everything feels a bit like a fight in Vietnam. I mean, the motorbikes overcharging me by five times; food vendors overcharging me by twenty times; taxis taking the longest possible windy route to destinations; and hotels not giving me the room they expressly promised me. It is detracting from my experience and I’m trying to figure out how to not give up on the country! As I head south, I’ll be hitting touristy areas, which will probably promise me more of the same.
• I was commenting to Megan on the bus ride home today that Vietnam gives me the impression of a place that is in the middle of reconstruction, but have left their projects half done. We drove past several areas that looked like hotels, homes and stores were being built… but the half-built structures were rusting, crumbling and flooded as if they hadn’t been worked on in a long time. The people also seem stuck in a weird transition: barefoot in streets, cooking street food with dirty hands and utensils and serving it on stuff that’s washed with dirty water, but talking on cell phones and watching televisions. Megan said, “I guess that’s why they call it a ‘developing counry.’” Is that really what it is? I’m not convinced, but I also don’t think I really considered Vietnam a developing country. Perhaps I need to adjust my understanding of where the country is at.

--Z