Day 45: 23/7/13
I had a great sleep last night- about six hours I'd say!! We were up early this morning to check out and for once breakfast was 'includesh/ incluje' , so we were all there!! We left around 8am for a four hour bus journey to Halong bay.
On the way our guide was telling us our itinerary and stuff. Then he taught us a little chorus of a song about Ho Chi Minh living forever. There'd be some fun teaching that at home! Then he was telling us about the longest car in the world being in Vietnam and had us all guessing- but it's a traffic jam car! Also, the best bank in the world is in Vietnam- the river bank! Boom boom!! He was on a roll today!!
We stopped at a reststop for the 'happy room'. It was also a centre where disabled people (mostly disabled by Agent Orange) can work and raise money to help many disabled people. They make crafts like hand-stitched embroidery, silk fabrics, ceramics, etc. all the stuff was gorgeous so of course I had to buy a few bits!! I have about a million pictures now- I don't know where I could possibly put them all!! The disabled people are aren't the worst of the disabled- some of them mentally aren't able for a working environment so there are some other centres for them or some just stay at home. Physically disabled people sometimes go to primary school and maybe a little bit of secondary school. Mentally disabled people just go to special centres. All the people we saw were very talented at their embroidery and we didn't see anyone with any legs or arms missing or anything, so they obviously have quite inconspicuous disabilities.
We passed loads of little villages and towns. It's a really pretty country. There are lots of buildings unfinished though and the guide said that lots of developers ran out of money and went bankrupt and the price of metal, etc is all gone up so they can't finish them. Same as home!!
Halong city has about 800,000 people but we just drove through there to go to the bay. There's a legend about how Halong Bay was formed. In ancient times when China invaded Vietnam the
King emperor in heaven was looking down and felt he should help the Vietnamese people so he sent a Mother and son dragon down to help. They dropped pearls in the ocean and they formed islands which crushed the attacking Chinese. They decided to stay on earth them and the name Halong means dragon descends. The son stayed aswell and there's another bay further up the coast that means son dragon. The mother dragon mated with the sea god to create the people (that seems a bit strange when there were people fighting already in the story, but that's what he said!). Some of the people stayed with the mother and some followed the father which is why there are different ethnic groups in Vietnam. They are different but treat each other like brothers. 85% of Vietnamese people are kinh and there are 54 ethnic groups in total.
Realistically the islands in Halong bay were formed by the movement of tectonic plates, just incase ye were worried about the presence of dragons! The bay is 1500 square kilometres and there are 2000 islands. It was declared a unesco site in 1994 and 2000 and was also named one of the 7 wonders of the world. The part of the bay recognised by Unesco has just 700 islands.The stone on the islands in the bay is 80% Limestone and 20% schiststone, whatever that is!! The bay has a unique Ecosystem of coral reefs and fish like red snapper, elephant shark fish and abalone. While the guide was telling us about that he thought of some foods that they eat here in Vietnam- Crocodile, ostrich, horse....... It sounds like we didn't see half as much unusual stuff on the street food tour as we could have!
At the port in Halong we got on a boat for our trip aroud Halong bay. It was fairly cloudy but the views were still good. They had lots of food ready for us when we got on- lots of shrimp and fish. I'm getting the hang of whipping the heads and tails off the shrimp and biting into them- these ones were really tasty!
After lunch we pulled up at an island in the bay to go walking through caves. Surprisingly, we had to climb up the island to get into the caves. I would have presumed that caves would be down but these ones were sort of inside the whole mountain. Inside they were all whitish rock with stalagmites and stalagmites and ones that are meeting- are they columns? There were some interesting shapes made from the erosion aswell such as a unicorn and an elephant type shape. In the cave they had different coloured lights so it really looked like fairy land! It was gorgeous!! When we got out the other side we were on a balcony overlooking the bay which was good. We took some group photos there and when we got to the bottom we realised you could see the balcony from the boat. It would have been a great photo from the boat!! It got really cloudy then and started lashing rain and there was a thunder storm and everything. There was a possibility of having to cancel the next part of the trip but it cleared up a bit, just enough to continue!
We stopped at some houses/buildings in the middle of the bay then to do kayaking. It seemed like people may live there, even though the little houses were tiny. We saw two kids under an umbrella sailing off on a rowing boat to their house- not a bother on them! There are two people in a kayak- the most experienced is supposed to sit in the back so Ann-Marie went in there and I sat in the front. They just pulled the kayak up beside the jetty, you sat down on the jetty and then hopped in. We kayaked down along the islands and then under a cave to bring us into a kind of lake with the big cliffs all around us. That was lovely. We stopped paddling there and spent a few minutes just floating and taking in the scenery. That kind of kayaking suits me perfectly!! After that though, even though the views were still good we didn't really get a chance to stop and admire them- we were paddling, paddling, paddling!! It started raining aswell which didn't help and for some reason our boat would not go straight. It just kept veering off to the right, which meant we ended up way behind everyone else. Even Hannah and Steph came back to see if we were okay and when we tried to keep with them on the way back their boat went straight and ours just went right! I would have really enjoyed it if I could have sit in the kayak and got someone else to row it! My arms were getting sore and it wouldn't do what it was supposed to! Very frustrating! When we got back then you had to try to stand up in the kayak to step up onto the jetty. Try to stand up in a kayak without making it wobble!! As you can tell I didn't really enjoy the actual kayaking but the views there were gorgeous, so I'm glad I did it, even though we had no cameras incase they would get wet! Probably some of the best views of the trip and no camera! I presume on google other people will have put up photos of the kayaking trip and our guide took photos of all of us in the kayak so that was good.
When we were back on the boat then it started to clear up a bit so we were able to take loads of photos! it is a really beautiful place. I'd love to see it with the sun shining but apparently it's almost always cloudy. It was okay though, the clouds make it look mysterious. There were lots of little fishing boats too and little huts that looked like people lived in them. Every few seconds further looks different too as there are different islands popping up everywhere. They are all like big cliffs really- tall and dramatic looking rocks with green bushes and ferns on them.
The boat took us to the ferry port on Cat Ba island, one of the islands in Halong bay. The island is 300 sq km and has 15,000 people. So it's fairly big. There was only a tiny slip road from the ferry up to the main road. Our bus was waiting there for us. The road at one stage had water on both sides of it and even on it! I'm glad the driver knows what he's doing!! The island was quite picturesque, full of green mountains and tiny windy roads going up the side of them, just like Peru. It was quite foresty there and there's a type of monkey that lives there called the langur and it's endangered. Later we saw posters for t-shirts and things you could buy to support them. When we got to the town, it looked very much like any town in Vietnam- small streets, lots of people and mororbikes, lots of electrical wires!! It was raining though shortly after we got there so the whole place was soaking wet!
The hotel we were staying in was really small and had a very narrow elevator!! You wouldn't want to be claustrophobic! We just about had time to have a quick shower! The shower didn't have a curve at the top of the shower head so when you turned it on the water just hit the opposite wall, unless you were seven foot! Obviously I'm not!! In most hotels the shower is just a hose on the wall- there isn't any door or anything, so the whole bathroom gets flooded when you shower. Here again, we had a flood!
We went for Dinner in a restaurant called Green Mango which it seems was the only one we could be brought to! They don't have many Western style restaurants. Even on the way to the restaurant we just passed cafe type places with buckets of live seafood outside them! I don't think I would survive there!! Luckily the food in this place was really, really good! One of the women even got good mashed potatoes- she was very excited! I got really good curry and the best drink I've had since I came to Asia at least- Malibu sunrise! The food and drink seemed to take ages so by the time we were finished it was late and we went straight back to the hotel. The beds in the hotel are absolutely rock hard!! A plank of wood would probably be more comfortable- I'm sure I'll sleep though because I'm wrecked!!