After a night of intermittent naps on the sleeper bus we were delivered into the hands of hungry guest house touts somewhere in central Ha Noi, from where we were driven (free of charge) to some of the properties the touts represented. Usually we don't take up the offers from the touts - the price will be inflated to compensate for the commission due - but on this occasion we got a reasonably priced, well furnished room right in the heart of Ha Noi's old quarter, with air conditioning to boot! Our first order of business in Vietnam's capital was to test the efficiency of the air con and the comfiness of the beds as we rested for a couple of hours to make up for the previous night's journey.Once we'd rested and the afternoon rains subsided we hit the streets, searching for a taste of Vietnam's administrative capital. Walking along the side of the road (pavements are reserved for motorbike parking and shop displays) we wandered the myriad specialty streets: you can find anything you want in Hanoi, as long as you find the right street. Once you've found the toy alley, you are presented with a never-ending row of shops selling similar merchandise at variously fluctuating prices. Great if you're looking for just one thing in particular, but I can't image the amount of walking you'd have to do if you set out for a morning's shopping with a wide range of items to buy! The juxtaposition of street specialties is also a bit perplexing: you go from the haberdasheries to hardware, from restaurants and cafes to repair garages, and from beauty therapists to hat shops.
When you do find the right street, getting from one side to the other is a whole new experience. No where in S.E. Asia have we seen such an organized, free flowing, ordered chaos! There are no tricks to crossing the street, it doesn't matter than fifty odd motorbikes and cars are headed your way - just step off the pavement and into the flow. Walk straight ahead at a normal pace, and whatever you do, don't stop! Accidents seem to happen when people (read tourists) hesitate - if you keep walking, the bikers and cars flow around you as easily as fish in coral. I think there's no better way of describing being the pedestrian experience in Ha Noi than "Live Action Frogger".
The Old Quarter expands in a spider's web of diagonally connecting alleys with a great lake at its heart. This is where the action happens in the evening - expat joggers, courting Vietnamese couples, families out for an evening stroll, and plenty of traffic. The lake is home to Ngoc Son, or the Jade Mountain Temple, where one can see the embalmed remains of a giant turtle from the lake. There supposedly still are some giant turtles living in the lake, but the last documented sighting was in 2006.
Ha Noi is a good place to catch a Water Puppet performance in Vietnam - the Municipal Water Puppet Theatre has several shows each day at an affordable $2. The Water Puppetry stage is a large pond with a traditional Vietnamese orchestra to the right of the stage and a Pagoda as backdrop - the puppeteers hide in the pagoda. Puppets are mounted on wooden platforms either individually or in groups of up to 10 puppets. The puppets are controlled with a complex series of strings and sticks to recreate aspects of Vietnamese village life or to perform legends and dances. The show is presented entirely in Vietnamese, but the English program gives the titles of the various acts makes understanding the performance easier.
On our second day in Ha Noi we braved the public transport system to get to the Museum of Ethnology. Public buses in Ha Noi are very cheap ($0.16), air-conditioned, and efficient, but without a helping hand from an English-speaking Vietnamese its hard to get around. For starters, the listings are all in Vietnamese. Once you figure out which bus you must catch you have to keep your eyes on the busses rolling past the stop: the buses don't stop, they slow down to jogging pace. Once your has arrived, you have to run and join the jogging, jostling crowd trying to get on. We eventually got to our destination (a couple of blocks away from the bus stop) and ventured into the museum. It provides a very interesting and surprisingly detailed account of the various hill tribes that populate Vietnam, and we spent a good two hours soaking up the culture. The museum is well worth a visit, and braving the bus to get to it makes the visit feel like a great achievement.
From the museum we caught a tùk-tùk to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum complex hoping to catch a glimpse of the embalmed remains of dear Uncle Ho. When we got there we discovered that the mausoleum is only open till 11am (we neglected to check the times in our guide book!); and to add insult to injury the museum and other exhibits had closed for lunch, and wouldn't open for another hour and a half! With a bruised morale we set off on the 3km slog back to central Ha Noi, passing many more specialty streets along the way, among them what seemed to be "garish evening gowns street"!
The task for the afternoon was to book ourselves onto a Ha Long Bay cruise. The word "task" hardly does the effort justice - ordeal comes closer to describing our actions! The Ha Long Bay boat trip market is over-saturated with bad businesses, impostors, sharks preying on unsuspecting tourists. Everyone is out to make big bucks from Vietnam's most beautiful natural features, often at the cost of the enjoyment of visitors. Our Lonely Planet guide book warned us to seek out reputable tour operators like Sinh Cafe - the problem with that was to identify the REAL Sinh Cafe, as one out of every two travel agencies in Ha Noi sports the Sinh Cafe logo! Apparently Vietnam has no laws governing copyright infringement and abusive naming of businesses. To add to our confusion, our guide book has misprints in the Ha Noi chapter - every business listed has the same address! We decided to shop around and ask various operators for their prices and details about their boat. All the travel desks we visited had the same trio of leaflets, offering three tiers of boat - standard, superior and luxury. The prices quoted ranged from $28 for the cheapest, to somewhere in the region of $250 for the top notch boat. Since we are traveling on a tight budget, our option was limited to either the cheapest, standard boat with standard room (just a fan), or a superior room on a standard boat (meaning the room had air-conditioning). Since we only had to spend one night on the boat we opted to save ourselves $14 between us and book the standard room/standard boat option. We'd read online that people opting for the cheapest cruise often come away disappointed, so we approached our trip knowing that the accommodation would not be great, but after all, you don't visit Ha Long Bay for the boats, you visit for the stunning scenery!
Ha Long Bay
I've seen many great sights during my travels this year, but when it comes to Ha Long Bay I feel that my humble blog will struggle to convey the sheer beauty of this natural landscape. The bay is dotted with some two thousand island-mountains covered in lush green forest and imposing cliffs. The islands range in size from tiny islets to the largest, Cat Ba Island, that has a town and several resorts as well as a national park! The lush green and grey karst islands are complemented by a turquoise green sea, and the sheer scale of the bay means that throwing your gaze in any direction will provide a vista of distant islands fading gradually into the haze.
Some of the islands are home to impressive caves, but the South East Asian style of cave decoration puts a touch of kitsch in the natural wonders. Whereas in Europe a similar natural wonder would be adorned with subdued, almost natural looking lights, here in Vietnam the caves get the reverse treatment. No holes are barred when it comes to colours and creative application. Pinks, purples, greens and blues are everywhere, and a dragon shaped rock even gets a suggestive pair of eyes to help those with a sluggish imagination. I guess this is one of the great joys of traveling - to experience new ways of seeing the world, no matter how far removed from "the norm".
Between islands, whole floating communities have developed. These communities used to be only interested in fishing, but with the advent of mass tourism in the '90s they have expanded their area of interest to make a living off the visiting hordes. The people inhabiting the floating villages generally spend all their life on the water - they are born on the water, attend a floating school, earn their living on the water, and die on the water. All the amenities of a land-fast town can be found on the waters of Ha Long Bay - bank, post office, school, grocery shop, bar, restaurant - you name it, they've got it!
Now that I've attempted to describe the beauty of Ha Long Bay, I'll move on to the reality of life on the standard boat, and issue a warning to all would be travelers!
Our trip cost us a grand total of $27, which isn't much considering this included two days and one night on the boat, four meals, transfers to and from Ha Long, as well as entrance fees for the bay itself, the caves, and an hour of canoeing.
Our group of 20 (on booking we were told there would be no more than 16, maybe 18 passengers on the boat) was left sitting by the side of the road for a good hour or so after we were dropped of in Ha Long Bay, waiting to be herded onto a boat. Once we got onto the boat we spent a good hour moored no more than 50m from the shores of Ha Long City while we were served an underwhelming lunch of muddy river fish and steamed rice, but like I said before, we'd only paid $27 so we knew the food would be just bearable.
A pleasant surprise came when we were shown to our quarters, as we were given a room with air-conditioning (though this would only be turned on after dinner), so if we had indeed paid those $7 extra they would just have been more commission for the travel agency!
As we got to talking to our fellow travelers it quickly emerged that we had paid the least for the tour, and in some cases by many miles. A middle aged Australian couple out to celebrate the lady's birthday had paid for a superior suite and boat, somewhere in the region of $70, only to be put onto the boat with the rest of us. Another couple of Aussie ladies must have paid much more than that - they didn't outright say how much they paid for their trip, but I think they had requested the deluxe boat. Even among the other backpackers we had come out with the sweetest deal - the other "young" passengers had paid somewhere in the mid $30s for their trip.
The frustrations didn't cease with the boat's operation and catering - we spent a good hour moored at the canoeing pontoon absorbing the scenery before we were allowed off, only to be told that there weren't enough paddles, and we would have to wait a further 40 minutes for canoeists from other boats to return. By the time everyone returned to the boat the sun was nearing the horizon, meaning we only had a few minutes for a quick dip in the cool waters, as no one is allowed to swim at night. If the crew had planned things better we could have got the swimming done before canoeing, instead of sitting around for two whole hours observing the same stretch of (admittedly stunning) scenery.
In the evening there was no sign of the promised squid fishing, but the crew did make a half-heated attempt at getting us to join in the karaoke. We were more interested in idle chatting with our fellow travelers, most of whom were headed to the south of Vietnam, having done the S.E. Asian loop in the opposite direction to us. The evening was spent trading helpful hints about prospective travel destinations and drinking beers. It seems that we needn't have worried about missing out on the karaoke - passengers from other boats told us that when they tried to join in they were told that the only videos at their disposal were in Vietnamese!
We eventually retired to our room where we discovered that the air-con was only working half-heartedly, but since we got it for "free" we didn't really mind. What did bother me was that I had to repeatedly go to the galley to ask the crew to turn down the volume of the TV - they were all sound asleep on chairs and tables with the volume turned all the way up, and after a few minutes they would crank the nob right back up. It took me three trips before they finally gave in and left the volume down. I have noticed that the Vietnamese have an amazing ability to fall asleep no matter what sort of cacophony is surrounding them, unfortunately our crew seemed to think that we shared their same ability!
In the morning we woke to a basic breakfast of bread and eggs - some of us were served stale bread that the crew begrudgingly replaced after repeated protests. I was quite looking forward to a morning spent sailing the waters of Ha Long Bay, admiring more of the innumerable islands that dot the bay, but this was not to be. We spent most of the morning moored in the same place where we spent the night. We were given the option of swimming, but no one dived in as one of the crew retreated from the ocean with a great jellyfish sting. When we did eventually set sail the boat kept to open waters, making for an uneventful sailing with the islands tantalizingly shrouded by haze, but not near enough for us to appreciate their beauty.
Here's the wall of shame moment: our (heap of) junk was the Ha Long Party Cruiser - ask for it by name at your Ha Noi travel agent, and say you don't want to go within a hundred yards of that boat!
I can't emphasize strongly enough that we set out expecting rudimentary hospitality which would be amply compensated for by the natural beauty of Ha Long Bay, yet all we caught was a tiny glimpse of the wonders it has to offer, even though we spent such a long time on the water. Had I paid any more money for the trip I would have gone away from the experience with bitter resentment towards the whole Vietnamese travel industry, as I'm sure some of our fellow passengers were feeling by the end of the day. As things stand I came away from the experience relieved that for once my tight budget was an advantage to me!
I can live with the bad food, the noisy TV at night, even the fact that we were again left waiting for an hour for our transfer back to Ha Noi when we disembarked. The thing that I disliked most about the experience was the fact that we spent more time in Ha Long harbour and at our night anchorage than exploring the bay. My advice to anyone considering a trip to Ha Long Bay is to carry out as much research as possible, stick with reputable travel agencies, and book your trip directly in Ha Noi - that way you can go back to the office at the end of the trip if you've had a sour experience. Writing a letter to the Vietnamese Tourism body (and copying your travel agent in on it) is also a good way of making sure renegades are made to toe the line.
A better way to experience Ha Long Bay, and one that I would have considered given more time, would be to go to Cat Ba island for a couple of days and arrange day trips from there. Not all travel agencies in Ha Noi are run by crooks, and not everyone is out to rip off the unwary traveler, but among the sheep there are many wolves out for a quick kill.
Not wanting to end my notes on Vietnam on a sour note, I'll impart some advice that worked wonders for me: when the rats in your room are clawing at the partitions, when you see the crew of 6 share the same amount of food you shared with 16 others, or when you're charged at an extortionate rate of exchange for the already overpriced drinks, take a deep breath or two. Count to ten, and get your heart beating normally again. Then look out the window. Take in the scenery. Remind yourself that you're in Ha Long Bay, one of the greatest natural wonders Vietnam has to offer. Don't let the shoddy service get in the way of your enjoyment of this gem mother nature has created.
Photos will soon be on my Picasa web album!
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