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Halong BayPosted at 11:56 AM on August 7, 2007
The trip to Halong Bay was great. We were on a junk (traditional boat), which was quite pretty - all carved wood and potted plants for decoration. I even had a comfortable cabin to myself.  (junk from a distance)There were only 6 other passengers - a Spanish couple, Dutch couple and French couple. They were all pretty young and nice. We had all our meals together family style, so we definiitely got to know each other! I particularly got to know the french girl. It was fun to talk to another girl, but she had didactic streak that got a little old. That is, she felt it was her duty to explain things to me – the french legal system (interesting), various restaurants in Hanoi (not so interesting), what tapas are (particularly uninteresting because I already know what they are) ... She also started to annoy everyone else because she was always made everyone else wait for her - i.e. she was always the last one for everything. Perhaps she acted that way because she was so pretty she had always been allowed to get away with it? Anyway, regardless, it was fun to have a friend for 2 days. Halong bay is famous for limestone rocks that stick hundreds of feet straight up out of the water. They look like small mountains and they are covered with jungly plants wherever the rock isn't sheer vertical. It is a really stunning landscape. There are also lots of caves - both sea caves and land caves. The first day we went through a sea cave into a little bay surrounded by limestone cliffs on all sides. We could see monkeys swinging from the trees and hawks soaring overhead. The French couple and I jumped in and swam around the bay. The water was as warm as a bath.  (sea cave to get into the hidden bay) We spent too long in the little bay (mostly because the French girl decided to go swimming at about the moment the guide wanted to leave), so it was almost sunset by the time we got to Titop Island. In addition, the sky looked like a storm was approaching. Titop Island is another sheer limestone cliff like the other Halong Bay islands, but it has steps carved into the limestone all the way to the top so that you can climb it. I wondered if the name derived from 'tip top' but it turned out that it was named after Titov, a 'Soviet pilot hero.' As usual, no one in our group but me understood our guide when he explained this. Vietnamese speakers seem to have trouble pronouncing the ends of English words and getting the vowel sounds right. (God knows I could probably never learn Vietnamese properly!) Understanding our guide was difficult for me, but a nightmare for those who spoke English as a second language (everyone else). So, after the guide said anything, they would ask me to explain. This made the guide frustrated. We generally seemed to make the guide frustrated - especially the French girl. I don't know if we were an unusually difficult group or if the guide was an easily frustrated person. But I digress.Immediately after we started climbing the steps, the storm rolled in and it started pouring. All storms seemed to be like that in Vietnam – the type of dramatic summer storms that I love on the east coast. Huge black cloud scud from across the horizon. Within minutes, the light has faded to deep twilight and lightning begins to flash. Suddenly, there is a torrential downpour. Then, the whole thing packs it in, disappears and the sun comes out. Despite the rain falling in droplets that seemed the size my head, I decided to continue climbing to the top. I reconsidered, however, when I got within sight of it. By this point, lightning was striking fairly close by and the space at the top was entirely taken up by a small, open kiosk with a pointed roof. It occurred to me that this was exactly the sort of thing that lightning would hit. Then the french couple turned up and passed me. 'What about the lightning?,' I called after them. 'It will hit the roof, not us,' said Sebastian. Things always seem safer when someone else does them, so I followed them right up. It was a fantastic view. We could see the rain sweeping over the limestone and jungle islands in great sheets while lightning forked through the sky. I felt a little better when Sebastian pointed out a radio tower behind the kiosk. Of course, the radio tower (if it was a radio tower) was shorter than the kiosk. Finally, we headed back down. About halfway, lightning struck incredibly close. The light and noise were simultaneous and so loud I nearly tripped down the steps. I still don't know if the lightning hit the kiosk, but what else would it have hit?! Isobelle and I were terrified, but Sebastian used it as an opportunity to be manly: 'Too bad we were not at the top - ha ha ha!' he said. I told Isobelle her boyfriend was crazy. The next day we went ashore to one of the islands to go inside the biggest cave. The rest of the time, we just sailed around the rocks and looked at them.  (beautiful Halong Bay)  (me emasculating the french guy by jumping off the boat from the top deck)<- Last Page | Next Page -> |
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