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Lou's Trip
Hi from Vietnam. Think last time I updated was in Chang Mai so still need to fill you in on Hanoi/Halong Bay as it was quite eventfull. Hanoi was nice, very hectic, lots of traffic, we liked it. First impression of vietnam I liked it more than thailand cause it seemed very real and less touristy. Not really much to say about Hanoi - the photos say it all.
Halong bay trip was a bit of a distaster. its meant to be one of the world's natural wonders, but due to the monsoon weather it might be a bit of an understatement to say we didnt get to see it in its best light.
Just to explain the pictures - everyone who goes to hanoi does the halong bay trip. We booked it from one of the local travel agents round from our hotel. We booked the one night - two day trip as we didnt have much time. The weather was pretty rubbish when we booked it but we werent prepared for what we faced when we arrived. After not seeing very much from the boat, we arrived at the nature reserve island of Cat Ba where we were staying. But when we got off the boat our tour guide told as all to wait as there was someproblem with flooding and the bus was having a problem getting to the port. When it did come we thought all was well it started to take us through the island which looked beautiful. But then we reached a flooded area which was too deep fr the bus to go through, it cut out half way through and started to smoke! So was had to all get out and wade through the water with out skirts/trousers hitched up -we got off and got on another bus which took us to another flood, which was much deeper and we practically had to swim through it! But when we got to the other end there were a few big coaches waiting to take people to hotels. We asked which was uor bus and the tour guide just said no and randomly pointed. (They are so horrible in Hanoi, so rude and unfriendly and unhelpful everything you ask them they answer it with no, eg if you say should i go this way or this way - they just say no! so annoying) Anyway so the wee idiot just left us, abandoned us, and went off on another bus himself all nice and dry! We didt have a clue where we were, how far to the centre, and what the name of our hotel was. After realising he wasnt coming back and that no other buses were likely to be able to get throguht the ever rising flood water we decided to ask one of the other buses to take us, which they agreed to (for a fee!) We never saw that guide again! He was meant to be staying with us for the whole two days ad showing us cat ba island. As we later found out by another tour guide from our company who was taking this other guys place, there was nothing planned for that night or the next day except the trip back, so it was pointless staying there in the horrid hotel fr the night and paying the extra.
Anyway just when we thought it couldnt get any worse it turned out it had rained to badly the night before that the floods were evenm worse. We didnt know this till we got some way accross the island again. We thought the day before was a on-off and were in no mood for wading again. If only we'd known! We got to what i thought was the same big puddle again which the bus tried to get through but cut out again. we were again faced with another wade and the bus had to be pushed through the water. poor us. It was clear that was as far as the bus was going to take us so there being no guide to tell us what to do we all just decided to start walking. Eventually we came accross a bus which stopped and let us at another point in the road that had turned into a river! There were about 30 people already there just standing and thats when we knew this wasnt just a wee puddle. Then we saw the wooden boats that were to be our form of rescue off the island! It was horribe we had to wait for about an hour, after about ten minutes the day turned to night and we just waited for the inevitable! Never experienced hail stones like it (sorry spelling..) I just had to stand there and not move as if i was under a shower. We had ponchos but had to use them to cover our bags rather than ourselves as everything would have been ruined! Some people decided the situation was so dire that they couldnt wait any longer and decided to swim - with their bags on their heads!! We were all tapping our fingers to out heads at them but then gave them big cheer when we finally passed them all standing on our big army truck later on. One of the french woman from another tour group actually got her swim suit on and swam with the boat! Wouldnt have been me. The water was full of water worms and all sorts of horrid things. Never been so gratefull for my havanainas!
The whole thing was ridiculous though, the reason it took so long to evacuate us was cause there were only 2 boats and they were being used for us, AND to bring other tourists onto the island! Madness! You can imagine their faces when they got off the makeshift leaking rescue boats and saw the state of us. I dont know what possessed them to keep bringing people on cause the floods were rising really fast!
Anyway, it was all a bit of a disater but we got off in the end soaked to the bone. You just had to laugh, or course it would have been much worse if we'd been on our own!
Have a look at the pics and youll see. ill have to do another journal for Hoi An later cause this is so long!
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