Flashback to Halong Bay

Some people don’t mind running through huge wads of cash on holiday. I am not one of those people, probably because I only have piddling amounts of cash; not a sufficient amount to be considered a “wad”. We got a slew of recommendations for Halong Bay tours, but most of the recommendations were obscenely expensive. So we chanced it on a 3 day/2 night thirty-five dollar trip. It was money well spent.

The bus ride to Halong was long and, our guide kept shoving a suitcase in Jon’s lap. Jon did not like that very much, so he slugged the guy squarely in the jaw. (No, not really. Jon said a lot of very polite ‘Excuse me’s, but that's not an interesting story, is it?) I can’t quite remember, but I think I slept, because that is the thing I seem to do on most every vehicular trip in Southeast Asia. After a bit of chaos on the pier, we hopped on the boat for lunch. (Not as much food for the herbivores, but that was fine by me. It’d help me be skinny and glamorous when I returned to the United States. Well, if only I could keep away from the ice cream.)

For the next hour, we cruised through some astoundingly beautiful scenery. Halong Bay is a giant pool of crystal blue water speckled with jagged rocks of magnificent size. To put it succinctly, it will awe even the most jaded traveler.

After a bit, we stopped at a fish farm, which was more interesting than the fish farm in Chau Doc. However, there was fish-clubbing going on, which freaked me out, and I flung myself back aboard the boat. (You know, I probably would have been exiled from a hunter-gather society. I’m just not good with that sort of thing.)

Our boat then stopped at this little cave, which was a nice little excursion, but heavily trafficked. The lighting was spectacular, and Jon and I both got some really excellent photos. We got back on the boat before docking for swimming and self-directed kayaking excursions. Jon and I kayaked for a bit, but we spent too much time dawdling around and had to paddle like mad to get back to the boat before it left without us.

After another buffet lunch on the boat, we chilled out on the top deck with the other people on our tour. The night was totally clear, and I felt like I could see every star in the Milky Way Galaxy. While our boat drifted lazily in circles, we all swapped stories and jokes while counting the number of shooting stars that passed by. It was one of the best nights of the trip.

The next day we got some breakfast on the boat before docking at the main tourist island for some trekking. It was hot. I sweated so much it looked like I had showered. I became ferociously red. It was not attractive. Oddly enough, it was the first time my pelvis hurt while I was doing something. Well, it didn’t really hurt, it was just fairly uncomfortable.

The views at the top were pretty nice, but to be honest, the views from the bay are prettier from the boat. On the way back down the hill, I tripped over some loose rocks and cut my leg. It wasn’t a bad cut, but it bled a lot. I was just going to wait for a stopping point, rinse my leg off and worry about it later. Unfortunately, the guide decided to give me some first aid. The first aid consisted of grinding a (random) leaf up and sticking it to the cut. Of course, little bits of leaf got stuck in the cut, which he picked out with his (dirty) fingernail. I was protesting vehemently against this treatment, but he had me pretty much pinned to the ground, and he wasn’t taking ‘No’ for an answer. He then tried to stick the adhesive part of the band-aid over the wound, and I finally slapped his hand away. You better believe I coated that cut with anti-biotic cream when I got back to my guesthouse.

After the trek, we headed off to Monkey Island, a place that was swarming with SE Asian tourists. All the women, who were fully clothed, gathered together in water, and made loud and continuous squealing sounds. There were monkeys on the island, which we viewed from inside a screened shelter. (Monkeys bite and they can be a bit vicious.) I still can never get over the remarkable similarity between human infants and baby monkeys. If you put a baby monkey in a little pink dress and slapped a bow on its head, nobody would be the wiser. In fact, I would wager scads of people would comment on your daughter’s beauty, and how much she takes after you. After the monkey viewing, I swam for a bit, then held onto a buoy and floated in the water. I got an ice cream, and as soon as I unwrapped it, half of it fell off into the sand. I felt like a sad little kid. I bought another ice cream. I was happy again.

I spent this evening in a hotel on the main tourist Island of Cat Ba. There wasn’t much to do aside from drink and socialize with the people on our tour. I was pretty tired, so I enjoyed the downtime.

The next morning we had breakfast on the boat and headed back in. I soaked up the scenery from the top deck, while alternately reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. (I loved loved loved that book.) Almost as soon as we docked, it began to rain, and the weather was bad for the next few days. Apparently we picked the perfect time for our trip. Lucky us.