We woke up real early, and we'd packed all our things the night before, so we had time to eat breakfast. We left our big backpacks in the hotel for safekeeping. The tour bus arrived while we were on our last bites of breakfast. The bus picked up more tourists on its way. Some of the travelers they picked up turned out to be the wrong ones, which made the bus turn around to drop back off the wrong tourists and pick up some other ones that looked just the same. We understood their mistake. This was a stupid ordeal which made us lose time.
In the 15 minute break we had on the 4 hour long ride the bus stopped in a staggeringly overpriced store selling ugly statues, ugly fake Chinese vases, and ugly silk clothes. All for only 25 times what they are worth! That was a another waste of time. On that break we got to see the tour bus of the other cruise company we considered, which was way nicer than ours.
We got to Halong bay with our confused tour guide and boarded the sea tuk-tuk that took us to the cruise ship. The cruise ship was exactly as pictured in the brochure. It was pretty old and icky but in working condition. There's a shower adjoining the room but its floor is rotting wood, and air conditioning that's full of mold and they only turn on at night with a generator.
There were 9 of us on the ship. A couple from Korea, a couple from Russia, 3 european girls on vacation and us. Guy and I agreed before embarking that even if not all goes according to plan- we will try to have fun and enjoy the scenery. The Halong bay area is made of many tall mountain-like islands protruding out of the water. It was very unique and beautiful to see.
We had a "welcome drink" (of gross powdered orange juice) and some fruit and then a nice lunch including good seafood. This is one of the main differences between differently priced cruises on these old boats. We were supposed to visit a (fake) floating fishing village but we think we missed it on account of the wrong bus passenger SNAFU - no great loss, we feel.
Our first destination was the "surprising cave" and view point. It is a nice cave but not very impressive compared to other caves we have seen. The tour guide had a very active imagination to point out rock formations that look like monkeys, buddhas, or pe- sorry, fingers. Then we went to a view point on another island that also had a beach, so we went for a short dip after visiting the view point. Climbing to the top of the island we were eye-level with some swooping hawks.
The last interesting activity of the day was kayaking, but before that our guide boarded another vessel - we thought he would come out with another kayak but he returned with a cabbage and some herbs. It was great fun. We kayaked for about an hour between the smaller islands. The views were breathtaking. It was my first time kayaking but we quickly learned to stroke in sync. We were tired and took a shower as soon as we got back on the boat.
The guide was concerned we would miss the "sunset party" and free wine but we still got to see the sunset. Then we rolled some spring rolls. Most of the tourists were too timid to roll any so Guy had to roll two or three to warm them up. Then most people had a go. The Korean couple were the most serious and professional at it. The crew fried them up and we had them with dinner, along with whole shrimp and more seafood.
The last activities of the day were squid fishing and karaoke. Karaoke was cancelled due to lack of interest and squid fishing should have been cancelled due to lack of squid, though some of the people gave it a halfhearted try. It also wasn't interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment