Well I haven't been keeping up with this blog of late, so let me fill everyone in on what's happened in the last week or so.
I made it to Halong Bay, most importantly, but plans changed once I got there. A group of about 12 people piled out of our minibus to take the shuttle to our boat - the Halong Phoenix Cruiser. As the little shuttle boat slowly puttered up to it, I was immediately impressed. The rooms on the boat were excellent, the boat itself was great - it had three levels, with a restaurant and bar on the second, an upper level with seating and canopy with another bar, and a sundeck on top with deck chairs for laying in the sun. The first level as well as part of the second were for rooms. We immediately set off and ate lunch while the boat made its way into Halong Bay.
The reason I say that plans changed is because once I got there, and realized how stunningly beautiful the landscape and atmosphere was there, I decided to pay for a second night on the boat. I got to do a bit of kayaking and cave exploring on the first day, then had a great dinner that evening. The sunset in the bay was indescribable, and hopefully some of my pictures on facebook give you an idea of what it looked like. Jumping off the boat into the bay after the sunset was great fun, though they wouldn't let me jump from the third deck =( The second day was filled with kayaking, this time with only 4 people - those of us that were doing the 2 night stay - and involved paddling through a floating village, through several caves and out into gorgeous inlets and hidden lakes. I'm probably going to run out of adjectives by the end of this post, so please bear with me. I also saw a pearl farm that day, and had bbq lunch on a small boat.
We were given some bad news on our way back to the boat from our full day trip on the second day. Apparently, there was an engine problem on the main boat, and we had to be transferred onto the Phoenix 2 - a smaller boat - I wasn't even aware that they had more than one boat, but the second one was definitely a downgrade. They gave us a free bottle of wine to share between the four of us, which I guess was a decent gesture, but we were still kind of bitter. So myself and an Australian guy I met ignored the boat crew's warnings not to buy things from the rowboat merchants that came around from the floating villages, and we bought a nice bottle of whiskey. They later charged us a service fee anyway, so I guess our attempts to hide it were in vain. We got drunk on the boat and he practiced how to say "I love you" in Vietnamese to the girls in the rowboats. The last day was spent hiking up one of the islands to a viewpoint at the top. 500 steps in the heat definitely made me break a sweat. We had a cooking demonstration of how to make spring rolls as we headed back to the mainland.
The interesting part of this trip was the reason for why we were downgraded to a different boat that second night. So I got back to Hanoi, and found out from my friend Rebecca (who didn't extend her stay like I did) that the ship had quite an issue while I was out on my day trip. It's funny that one person said there was engine trouble the day before, then another just said "management". The engine actually did have a problem - it caught fire. So everyone was on the boat, having lunch, when it started to fill with black smoke. The staff started panicking and running to the back of the boat, which, of course, set off all the tourists. They were rushed onto a smaller boat, and thus marked the end of their trip. They were already heading back to the harbour anyway, but I'm sure it ruined everyone's day. One poor couple was on their honeymoon. Everyone got a free drink at the restaurant on the mainland for the whole ordeal. Whoopdie doo. After doing a bit of research, I discovered that there was a serious accident in Halong Bay in February of this year. About a dozen tourists died because the boat just sank that quickly. Guess which company owned that boat? HALONG PHOENIX! So yeah, upon filling out the customer feedback form after the trip, I happily (or angrily?) ticked off "Would not recommend to a friend"
After one more evening in Hanoi, I woke up at 4:30am to head to the airport to catch a flight south, into Ho Chi Minh. I got on a bus shortly after the flight landed, and started heading west to Cambodia.
