When I woke up that morning I opened the door and found Xai standing outside my room, about to knock. And behind him, a giant cliff passing by.
Til today, that's still one of my very best travel memories. There's something magical about waking up in the middle of a gulf with friends and majestic cliffs around you. I recommend it to everyone.
For the rest of that day, all we did was sit on the top deck of the boat, listening to music and talking nonsense. It was the best moment of Vietnam for me.
The boat slowly sailed back to shore, where we had lunch with a group of other tourists who were from a different boat. Among the people at our table was a middle-aged German man with a young Vietnamese girl who didn't speak any English. Or German. Yeah, I don't have to tell you what we all suspected.
After lunch we spent a very long time waiting for a bus to take us back to Hanoi. I have a very clear memory of staring at a big group of mainland Chinese tourists squawking at each other. It was a pretty depressing moment, a very stark contrast from the peace and beauty we'd just experienced in Halong Bay.
By the time we got back to Hanoi, it was late in the afternoon. We met June, who had come from Hue, and who already hated the Thuy Lam guesthouse as much as I did. She said she'd walked around the city earlier that day and found a couple of nice hotels we could move to. I quickly agreed.
But first, we had to have dinner. It was our last evening with Xai so we had to make it a good one. We had a nice dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant and then we took a cab to Kinh Do, a bakery that was once visited by Catherine Deneuve. That doesn't really matter. What does matter is that the bakery serves really good pastries and yoghurt. We were really happy.
