The first phase of my trip when smoothly; I arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare and had no problems with the chinese officials except when they pointed out that I had stayed 12 hours over my alloted 60 day period, but luckily the man was in a good mood and I only got a light reprimand, not forced labor - how magnanimous.
I boarded the airplane, settled into my nice exit row seat which fortune had granted me, and made a little small talk with the girls seated next to me who were from Belgium and Austria. So far, this trip was going awesomely well, much better than my usual sprint-through-the-airport-and-almost-miss-the-plane-only-to-be-crammed-into-the-back-near-the-WC-and-screaming-children. Oh how wrong I was.
About 3 hours into the flight to GuangZhou there was an announcement on the loudspeaker in chinese. Suddenly the entire plane erupted into pandemonium. None of the stewardesses spoke english so it took us far too long to figure out what was going on, but from all the annoyed yells it was apparent that it was not good, so at least we could be sure doom was imminent even without knowing what fate awaited us.
Turns out Tropical Storm Hagiput had settled itself down for the night directly over GuangZhou so there was no way we could land there, instead we would be landing in a tiny little airport somewhere else in the south and then staying there until the storm had passed. We landed, and waited, and waited. We had already cleared customs to they would not let us off the plane - it was me and the two european girls and 100 old chinese people talking on their cell phones at the top of their lungs. Sidenote: it always baffles me that old people think they need to speak extremely loud on cell phones as though they are shouting down a tube and not into a phone.
After about an hour of this I got really fed up and thirsty and asked the stewardess if we could get free beer since our lives sucked. She agreed and so from this point on the five hour wait got much more agreeable; we even made a beer tower at our seats and convinced a few of the younger chinese men to drink with us.
Got to the Hostel at 4 AM, only to leave again at 7:30, so not the greatest night of sleep I have ever had. Drove to Halong Bay - 3 hours and arrived at about noon, boarded the boat and set out.
Two things became immediately apparent: 1) Halong bay is ridiculously gorgeous, and 2) I was the only non-couple on my boat.
The boat was a very pretty old Chinese Junk, like the rest of the boats in the bay, and probably wasn't old at all, but they did a good job of making it look authentic. I had paid more for my cruise than the hostel sponsored cruise and by the end I regretted this because all the boats I think are pretty much the same, just different in price. Also, I'm sure the hostel cruise had more non-couples. Despite this, I had an amazing two days.
The Krast formation are what is left after the erosion of the soft limestone that origonaly surrounded them. The area was submerged under water various times since the way back when, and it was during these time periods the limestone was swept away to leave only the harder rock which jutted up into the pinnacles that you can see below in the pictures. The Vietnamese story is that a Dragon swooped down from the hills and plunged into the water, scattering the rocks into the formations that they are. I think my story is more likely.
The first day we went to the more touristy section of the bay, because it is easier to reach from Halong city. You can see the huge amount of boats in the picture above. Despite the numbers though, the boats are so pretty that it almost adds to the scenery, not detracts from it. The Vietnamese people who live in the area make a living fishing or selling goods to the tourists on the boats. I was followed while I was swimming even though it was quite obvious I would not have a wallet on me.
The Vietnamese live in floating villages, which were one of the most interesting things I saw in the country. They are collections of houses on floats tied together so that the inhabitants can walk back and forth between. I was there on a Sunday so I got to watch all of the people lolling in their hammocks, fixing their fishing nets, and generally enjoying their day off from work. One of the main reasons that I found these villages so interesting is because of their beauty and picturesque-ness (new word), for a while I only thought of that and failed to see that despite the fact they looked good from the outside most of the children still did not go to school, a large portion of their income came from selling tourists things, and living must be miserable in the cold and rainy months. If things are "quaint" and "pretty" we tend to only see that side and not think about the problems.
Below are some more pictures of the Fishing Villages / People:
The first night we came back and did Karaoke on the boat. There were two young couples that I made friends with so it was really just the five of us singing and the rest of the boat listening to our amazing vocal skills. We did manage to get a few of the others involved; my favorite was a little old man that kept putting Sanatra songs on. He and I sang Piano Man together - it was Awesome.
The second day most of the people went home and I went kayaking for the entire day, a little more than I expected when I signed up for the kayaking option. Despite the fact that my arms felt like jelly afterwards, it was worth it because we got to go to the other less touristy bay and see a different fishing village, which was much more interesting since it was more authentic and the people here still made their living solely off of fishing. We also went to a sweet cave, below, with lots of signs in really badly translated english.
Upon returning to the boat that night we got a free cocktail and watched the sunset from the top deck, which was beautiful, but was kind of marred by the fact that everyone around me was being all smarmy and whispering sweet nothings into each other's ears. I must have looked a little pitiful all by myself. To make this worse the crew started calling me "the single".. to be fair I actually think they only did this once or twice... buuut it was really depressing. The young ppl I had made friends with the first day were now gone so I had a pretty boring last night. OOo except for, (I almost forgot), the Mail Order Bride / Prostitute!!!
They were sitting at my table so I was forced into awkward small talk with them, and it became obvious within about 5 minutes that something was very odd with their relationship. The guy was a middle aged, not very attractive Norwegian guy, and the girl was a stunningly hot Vietnamese girl probably no more than 22 years old. So already I had huge doubts about the credibility of the whole thing. Then I found out that he had only been in Vietnam for 5 days, and her english wasn't very good so there is no way they could have known each other for more than a few days. I'm pretty sure she was a prostitute...which I guess is very common in both Vietnam and Thailand. I do have to say though, Vietnamese are by far the most attractive asians I've ever seen so I guess I don't blame him....but it was still VERY weird.
Then I went back to Hanoi and had an awesome two days there, coming in tomorrows installment.
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