Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Our hotel was being really funny with us that we hadn't booked our halong bay tour with them so the next morning we waited for our mini bus to pick us up outside. we wited for 40 min and it still didn't turn up so we had to call them and they said that beacuse it was a public holdiay in vietnam that we had to walk to their office and get picked up from there- slightly annoying with all our bags.
We eventually got picked up over a hour later than we were meant to and got on the mini bus. The bus was pretty full and not with any young people as the travel agents had said. So at this point me and Tess were not too happy, then we saw 2 people more our age geton which made things slightsly better.
It was meant to be a 3 hour journey to Halong Bay but- it took 4 hours as the roads were so busy, when we arrived it was bumper to bumper traffic so we had to walk a little way to the place we were going. It was all very busy and hectic and we were told to wait for 10 minutes. Then some people from our bus got taken to a boat and we didn't. We didn't have a clue what was going on and no one was telling us. Then we were demanded to give our passports with no explanation which we eventually did. and 45 minutes later we were taken to a boat. When we got to the boat we had to climb on one boat to get to the other and it was pretty difficult to get across, especially with our big bags on. I attempted to climb across and then realised that there wasn't enough room, but it didn't stop the man trying to push me- I thought I was going to fall in.
When we were all on the boat safely it was time for lunch and by this time we were all starving and lunch was disappointing. We had spring rolls, rice a whole fish and some nuts. So we were all feeling very hungry.
Next it was off to the caves- they were very very busy with lots of local people taking lots of photos. After the caves we all got back on he boat and some people went kayaking- me and Tess gave it a miss as the water was pretty horrible and it was only for about 20 minutes. Then it was time for another wonderful meal of rice and bland food. Its always funny to see all of us westerners eat all of our food while all of the local people leave lots of food. That evening we didn't really do much, just relaxed and played some cards.
In the morning it was a pretty early start, but we were all awake before anyway because there was lots of noise on the boat so we all seemed to be awake from 5. When we woke up we went for breakfast, which to our amazement was bread and eggs and not rice- wooo.
After breakfast we just had to wait on the boat, our guide was getting off and we had to stay on whilst more people got on, then it was 1 hour until we got off the boat. When we got off the boat we had to sit and wait for 1 hour for another guide to come and collect us. We were with a lad with ginger hair and there was a group of locals blatantly taking photos of him. When we eventually got picked up by our new gudie we went for lunch which was ok and then we headed back to hanoi. The fun didn't stop in Hanoi, we were meant to get dropped off at the place where we booked the tour so the night bus we were getting on could pick us up from there. Instead they just dropped us off randomly- so i had to shout at the man to take us to where they said they would and they did- lol.
Then it was time for our overnight bus to Hue, there were bunk beds but they were more like seats that reclined a lot- we didn't get too much sleep as we were on the top bunks and kept feeling like we were falling out.
- comments