To Ha Long Bay and Back Again

After a morning spent organizing Lao visas (delayed success) and Lao transportation (definite success, no hungry or angry women) we put our research to the test and headed off the guidebook path towards Luang Yen bus station. A bike rickshaw got us and our packs there relatively quickly, though it would have been faster if I had used the bike pump that Elyse was unable to convince me to bring on our trip. My mistake.

Once finished sweating through the bus ticket negotiation, we went in search of breakfast, which turned out to be a bowl of pho at a small roadside stand. Delicious. We watched the proprietors dump a cow skull into the pot for the next batch of broth. Elyse was unimpressed, but remained more or less unperturbed.

On the bus (which left half an hour early, unaccountably, and was thus probably not exactly our scheduled bus) we bopped along to the blaring and soppy Vietnamese pop, munched lychees, and tried not to be too curious about the woman across the aisle holding the heel of a baguette over her nose. All of a sudden we were told to get off the bus in the middle of Haiphong, at a room containing a desk, a table, and an unhelpful clerk, right next to a store selling light fixtures and bathtubs.

At this point we began to learn an important lesson about traveling in Vietnam. At least in our limited experience, the people we've met haven't been out to take advantage of us. But they also haven't been too keen on explaining anything to us either, even taking into account the rather large language barrier. So we've found that the best we can do is to stay calm (as anyone reading this knows, that is not really a strength for either of us), ask questions, try not to let anyone take our tickets too soon, and try to figure out what too soon means. This lesson really saved us down the road in Sa Pa.

It turned out we had another bus ride to get us to our boat, and eventually that bus turned up to deliver us to a small boat waiting along the coast amidst rice paddies and large shipping facilities. By 4pm we were ensconced in a tent on a hut on the beach near Cat Ba Town. Not too shabby, especially considering that Cat Ba Town is packed with Vietnamese tourists on the weekend and lodging is at a premium.

The sunrise from our tent:


We had traveled here to see the cliffs of Ha Long Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage site situated at the north end of the Gulf of Tonkin. We puttered around the next day on a small junk, stopping to see caves and kayaking through waters protected by the hundreds of islands that dot the bay. Amidst these cliffs are small floating fishing villages constructed out of bamboo, wood, and large styrofoam blocks. Amazing. We stopped at one for some tea and discovered that under the decks were nets filled with fish - aquaculture at its most basic.

A fishing village nestled against the cliffs:


The next morning our tent was of limited use in a torrential downpour that woke us up at 5 in the morning and sent us to huddle in a nearby cafe with the rest of the wet tent dwellers. Ah, monsoon season.

We departed in the rain for the return trip to Hanoi, where I ate the contents of the following picture. You do not want to know the details, and when I learned the details, after having consumed it with relish, I did not want to know them either. I'll leave it at that.