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Day Thirty-Eight
Hanoi to Ha Long Bay Boat Trip
Extremely early start to the day. We had been told that we will be collected from the hostel between 7am & 7.30am so we were up at 6.30am so we could get washed & changed & sort out what we were taking for the next couple of days. We had decided that because we needed to return to Hanoi then we would pack our small rucksacks for the next couple of days & leave our big heavy backpacks at the hostel to collect when we come back as Ana had planned to stay in the Hanoi hostel for longer anyway so it seemed like a feasible plan.
All sorted we said goodbye to our new German pal Richard as we closed the door of our dorm room & headed down stairs to reception for breakfast. Breakfast was eggs yet again, anymore eggs & we will turn in to one. It was now just a case of hanging around & waiting to be picked up. As the clock struck 8am I started to get annoyed, why had they told us to be ready for 7am - I could have easily had an extra hour of sleep. Finally a little man came in to the hostel & took us outside to a tiny mini bus. You have to be joking the bus was really small & there was loads of us on it. We managed to squeeze on to the back seat.
The bus took off & we prepared for the 3 hour journey stuck on the smallest bus in the world. The mini bus stopped at a few more hotels & more & more people got on. A few Australians that had got on were shouting at the tour guide because we were all crammed in like sardines. To pass the time away I had my Spanish book out & I was trying to learn Ana about the sounds & groupings of English words until we stopped at a service station type of place. After the toilet break we sat down on the tables & chairs in the restaurant & started to munch our supplies. Out came the yoghurts & the biscuits as breakfast had now seemed so far away.
Back on the bus & the journey continued & throughout all you could hear was moans of cramp from other people on the bus but unfortunately we all had to just get on with it. The bus finally came to a stop & we had arrived at a busy harbour. There was lots of tour buses & tourists all getting ready to board on the boats & that's when we met our tour guide. Our guide looked like a complete wally, he had a big bubble leather jacket on & some Magnum PI glasses, he was walking around thinking he was the top dog. I couldn't believe he actually thought he looked great.
We got shown to a crummy old looking boat & we were ushered on quite quickly & told leave out bags to one side & sit down ready for lunch. The boat had a funny smell & it looked very dirty.I was a bit dubious & was hoping that we swapped boats to sleep. With everyone on board (about 20 of us) the boat set sail away from the harbour & towards the beautiful mountains of Ha Long Bay. Shortly after leaving the harbour our tour guide turned in to a proper ding bat & he started being horrible. He was bossing us around & trying to get us move tables & in the end he made some excuse so we had to. I didn't like him from the start.
The food started to come up on deck & we soon realised that the Vietnamese family that was on board could have anything they wanted but all the western people on board had to have what we were given. I hate the way they have one rule for one & then one rule for the others - I was seething inside. The table we got put on was next to 2 lads, one was Irish & the other was from down south & we soon got chatting to them. There was a big notice on the table to say that there would be a service charge on the boat if you wanted to consume your own drinks. We thought, yeah right! You just try & stop us drinking our vodka. The notice also said that there was to be no drinking in the rooms either - we just laughed.
As we were all eating & chatting there was really cheesy love songs being played in the background - it was just all wrong! I then turned the whole cheesy love song situation in to a massive joke by singing the Top Gun movie theme & calling the horrible nasty tour guide Tom Bruise as he is trying to be Tom Cruise but he is a fake...hahaha everybody on the boat was laughing.
After food we just sat around & tried to chill out & relax till we seen a Vietnamese woman standing & climbing over the bags to get a look out if the window. I was fuming & started to shout at her. She was proper stupid because a few of us had laptops in our bags & she was going to just trample all over them. We soon got told that we would be getting off the boat to take a look around some caves so we prepared to get off. As the boat pulled up there was lots of other tourists & other boats so we guessed this was the typical route that all the tours take.
We all jumped off the bus & we had to follow Tom Bruise. Inside the cave there was lots of natural stalagmites but they had ruined all the natural beauty by putting stupid coloured lights along the walls which made the whole place look really stupid. As the tour guide pulled our group to one side he said that we had a choice, we could spend all our time looking around one cave or we could spend less time & look around two caves. We thought that for the money we have spent we wanted to get our monies worth & look around the two caves.
Tom Bruise started to talk to us in really bad English about all the story of the mountains & how Ha Long Bay was meant to have been created. He told how a dragon came from the sky & blew it's smoke over the water & when the smoke cleared the mountains where left. All the westerners looked at each other as if to say we are not five mate!!! The next thing he went on to say was about the tours they offer where you can fly over the mountains & he was trying to sell tours. I was getting angry & I had to walk away from him chattering utter rubbish. We soon just wondered off & went to look around on our own. We walked through the caves & looked around but it didn't really interest us very much.
The next cave was better & there was a lot more natural light being let in so it looked better & the views were really nice. We walked all around the caves & when we followed it through it lead back out on to the harbour & what do you know, it also lead us past lots of gift shops - it's funny that isn't it?! Everyone there was selling pearls but they weren't real proper cultured pearls but ones that they make themselves in pearl farms that they have along the waters edge. We had to wait a while to get back on the boat but none of us could understand why we had to wait so long.
Finally back on the boat & sailing away from the harbour we were then told that we were sleeping on the boat & that they were giving us our keys & showing us to our rooms. The look on peoples faces about us sleeping on the dirty horrible boat was the same as ours - we were all shocked. We also got told that we would be kayaking today too - we asked the tour guide why the kayaking was today when we got told it would be tomorrow & that it's silly to have it today as it was getting dark quickly. He didn't respond or answer us he just kept saying kayaking today - once again we weren't too happy.
We grabbed our bags & then headed to our room. Our room was right by the engine & generator room so the noise was deafening, this tour can't be real. Actually in the room there was two beds shoved together & the room was extremely cramped. We had our own bathroom but it was grim & there wasn't even a lock on the door, I had to hold the door shut whilst Ana went to the toilet. We tried to get a better look of the room by trying to turn the light on. We pressed the switch up & down but no joy. Hang on - why is there no electricity? I went back up in deck to ask about the lights or rather to complain about the lights. The response of the tour guide was that there was no electricity until 5pm! This can't be serious - no electricity! I wanted to throw him over board. I went back to the room to tell Andy & Ana the bad news about the electricity.
Devastated by being stuck on the worse tour ever & not being able to get off we sat in the room with the door open so at least we could have a bit of light. Andy had not been feeling very well so he decided to lie in the bed & he tried to go asleep for a while. Me & Ana took a little walk around the boat & went up to the top balcony, the view was amazing but the furniture wasn't very safe so we quickly headed back to our horrible room to chill. After about 5 minutes of being in the room the tour guide came & shouted us for kayaking. Ana didn't want to do it so me & Andy got our swimming stuff on & headed to the front of the boat.
The boat pulled in to this little water village where there was lots of house boats & pearl farms. We pulled up to this platform where all the kayaks where & it was crazy. We got on to the platform & it was also a house that had a massive pool table too. How can a floating house in the middle of the sea miles from shore have a pool table? - madness. We got our little life jackets on & got in to the kayak & using our oars we pushed off from the platform. Surprisingly the water was warm as we splashed about.
Kayaking around the water we passed lots of house boats & we could see how the people lived & how they coped in such confined small places. Some of the people had children on board & it was fantastic to see. We rowed around some of the mountains that where sticking out of the water & we passed lots of other kayakers. We eventually plucked up the courage to get the camera out & we started to take pictures. We rowed a little further & we saw two little boys on a small boat, they must have been aged about four & they looked like they were up to mischief. As we rowed past they started to row behind us like they were going to crash in to us. We stopped to take a picture of them being naughty & pulling faces at us but as the boat jerked my oar fell in to the water & my first reaction was to grabbed the oar from falling. As I grabbed the oar from falling I had forgot that I had my camera in the same hand & as I scooped the oar out of the water the camera took a refreshing dip!!! Ooops the camera was well & truly soaked but there wasn't a thing I could do - it was just instinct & natural reaction that took over, what more can I say?!
With the camera soaked & the oar rescued out of the water I wasn't happy with myself at all. Andy was mega fuming & was calling me all the stupid every things under the sun. All I could do was apologise but it didn't seem to be enough. I had totally ruined the whole kayaking experience in Ha Long Bay so we decided to row back to the platform & we did so in silence - I could totally understand that Andy was angry & upset with me so fair enough if he didn't want to talk to me.
Back on the boat & in total devastation of having no camera for the rest of the tour there was nothing we could do either as our main big bags we had left in Hanoi. We made out way back to the room & I explained to Ana what had happened. We took the camera battery out & the memory card in the hope that it might just dry out & that our photographs that we had taken had not been destroyed. After quickly getting changed out of out wet clothes & in to some clean dry ones there was nothing else we could do apart from sit in the room. This tour was getting worse by the minute. We all just lay on the bed & never really spoke to each other until Tom Bruise came banging on the door again saying that tea would be served shortly. We weren't looking forward to tea at all but it couldn't get any worse than the dinner we had to suffer. It hadn't been two minutes till the guide knocked again shouting us for tea. I was furious, could he not leave us alone for a few minutes.
We finished getting ourselves ready & headed up on deck & the food wasn't even served yet. I was getting so annoyed. I decided to get my little fold away cup out which I brought in my little bag & I went to the room & filled it with an extremely healthy measure of vodka & lemonade before coming back up to eat. When I sat down Andy had told me that the guide had been over to the table to comment that he is always waiting for us. He said he was waiting for us when we arrived to do the kayaking & again for tea. Andy told me that he told the tour guide that we weren't five years old on a school trip & if he wanted to moan then to take his attitude elsewhere. The guide was so lucky that I weren't at the table because I would have marked his numbers for sure.
Tea was a quick affair because it wasn't very nice & there wasn't a lot of food between five people. The vodka on the other hand was going down quite nicely & I soon returned to the room for a refill. We continued chatting to the other people that we had met on the boat when the guide came back up to the table to ask if we minded him sitting & drinking with his boat pals & that the boat we were on was his friends boat - ermmmm like we had a choice. I got up to the cd player that was futher down the room & I found a Tiesto cd in the wallet of cds so I put it on & started to play it loudly only for it start jumping. Silly me hadn't realised it was scratched so I put on another dance music cd instead.
Ana had decided that she would like to go back to the room as she was finding it mentally draining trying to listen & understand our conversation with the other people. I went back to the room with her but only to refill my vodka. Me & Andy sat chatting to the two lads. We chatted about the places they had been & things they had seen. They had been travelling for 20 months but they met a year ago & have been travelling together ever since. The said they were going back home for Christmas & were devastated to not be travelling anymore.
As the night closed in we decided to head back to the room where we found Ana sleeping with all the lights on & dressed in all her clothes. We tip toed around so we did not disturb her but she still woke up. She advised us that she was sleeping lightly as she had found a cockroach on her bed & the room was disgusting. That was it, we started to inspect the room more closely. Andy had his head lamp torch out & was looking under the bed - I looked & I couldn't get my words out - grim, grime & disgusting would be an understatement.
We had decided to sleep with the lights on so the cockroaches would stay in their dark places. We also slept fully clothed as there was no way we would be sleeping in them dirty sheets which had clearly not been changed. Let's see what tomorrows part of the tour brings........
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