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Three and a half weeks in and I've finally seen a beach!
Have spent the last few days in Halong Bay; a UNESCO World Heritage site in Northern Vietnam. The bay is dotted with around 3,000 islands, great rock structures jutting out of the water, and its very popular with travellers. I joined a trip through the hostel I'm staying in, in Hanoi, which worked out really well - we had a great group of people, we all clicked and had a laugh. The first day was spent travelling North, then joining the big wooden junk boat (sounds horrid but it was lovely; all the boats there look very traditional, with big 'Swallows and Amazons'-style sails) and setting sail for the bay itself.
Kayaking proved to be interesting as there were a lot of big boats cutting through - I quickly became adept at steering and moving out of the way! Then we headed up into a huge cave, with crazy stalegtite formations casting odd shadows onto the walls. We spent the night on our boat, sharing stories and sneaking contraband vodka into our soft drinks.
Day two took us to Cat Ba Island, (a big poster at the entrance declared it to be one of the 7 natural wonders of the world but having tried to come up with a definitive list of the wonders of the world I'm a bit dubious...). I took the scenic route and went cycling, stopping to visit one of the oddest tourist attractions yet.. a hospital in a cave.
Hospital Cave was built (carved out?) during the American War (its not the done thing here to refer to it as the Vietnam War) as the area was so intensely bombed that a normal building could not have withstood the impact of the many blasts. So here, in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of soldiers were cared for, hidden away in the rock. My guide spoke some English, and proudly told me the history of Hospital Cave, showed me the cinema, the swimming pool, doctors quarters (as its no longer furnished it was essentially all a cave..) and then pointed up to where a large red sign ominously read "Forbidden Place". "Do you want to go up there?" he asked. "Why not" says I! So clambering up a perilously damp and somewhat steep set of 'stairs' (um, lumps of concrete) I arrived in - yes, another cave. This one had a claim to fame though - Ho Chi Minh, Uncle Ho himself, had slept there apparently. It was really interesting, if all a bit strange - but then I'm getting used to strangeness in Vietnam.
A note on cultural differences; no-one here likes to say no. A straight answer is rarely given, instead they like to suggest that perhaps you'd maybe, possibly, best do something else - like what they tell you. They really do wear those pointy conical straw hats, and buffalo really do help farm the rice paddies. Spitting in the streets is de rigeur. Yuck. Reactions to us as Westerners have been quite mixed; the Vietnamese seem to welcome the money brought in by tourists, find us vaguely entertaining in some cases, treat us like slightly daft cattle at times, and otherwise pretty much ignore us! Ah well, it was fun being a celebrity in Laos but it couldn't last forever.
I digress, back to Halong Bay - we spent last night in a gorgeous wooden bungalow on Monkey Island. Equipped with a nice beach bar, on our own private beach, it was all mod cons. And a very loud rooster with a poor sense of timing, to wake us up at 4am. Ouch. But it was gorgeous there, and fun times were had by all. A nice sunny day greeted us and we spent the boat trip back to the mainland sunbathing on deck, making the most of it and finally getting started on that tan.
Off out for dinner with our little band of merry travellers from the boat trip now, fingers crossed for something fresh, delicious, cheap and not incorporating dog meat (shudder).
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dave fleming What is the local food like?