Globetrotting Adventures: Vietnam: Hanoi & Halong Bay

Hanoi & Halong Bay 27.05- 30.05

The day of travel from Guilin to Hanoi was one of the worst we’ve had so far. Firstly we had to rush around in the morning trying to find some US dollars to pay our visa-on-arrival with when we got to Hanoi airport. No banks opened until 9am and our flight left around midday so this meant getting to the bank when it opened, hurriedly getting our dollars then sprinting for the bus to catch the airport bus! We made it ok but felt horribly sweaty to begin our day. As soon as we got on our first flight to Guangzhou, Nina started to feel really ill and it became very clear that she had picked up some bad food poisoning. It was the worst possible day to get food poisoning as we had about 7 hours of travelling to do with two flights. She spent the whole second flight perched ready to go to the toilet if she needed to be sick. One cabin crew member just thought she didn’t fly very well and offered her travel sickness medicine! We eventually arrived in Hanoi airport and got our visa without issue. We then hopped in a cab and finally got to the hostel so that Nina could go to sleep and get some rest. A pretty terrible day but thankfully that was the worst of it and she started to feel better from then on.

In Vietnam we had organised to meet up with our friend Chris. Chris had just finished his fifth year medical elective and had some free time to travel with 2 other medics from his year, Ruth and Dave. Dave’s girlfriend Juliette and Ruth’s friend from home Tom also flew out to join us. There were 7 of us in total and we headed down the Vietnamese coastline together! We had arranged to meet in the 8 bed mixed dorm of the Hanoi Backpackers hostel and luckily we all managed to get there in one piece and took up 7 out of the 8 beds. The first night we were all so tired from our respective travelling that we just decided to get a quick dinner and head for bed. We had heard a little bit about the scamming in Vietnam from some travellers in China and experienced this first hand at dinner. The waiter showed us the menu and we ordered a few beers and some food only to find when the bill arrived that everything was 5000VND more expensive than it had been in the menu. We called over the waiter to show him the problem and he explained that it was in fact the 2012 menu, but as we were in 2013 he had totted up the current prices! We only paid the menu price and from then on were on guard about being overcharged.

The next day we spent most of the morning going between the 6 or 7 travel agents located on our road to try and book a Halong Bay tour and an open bus ticket to take us down the coast. This involved some ridiculous haggling and claims from the salesman. One guy claimed he was the only person in Hanoi who could book the ‘Lemon Cruise’ despite the shop next door offering it for $10 less. All of the different agents were slagging each other off saying that their boats were better and the other ones would break etc. We finally decided to book it with a woman called Rose because she seemed the most genuine and we managed to haggle the price down to $90 each for our 1 night/2 day boat cruise and our 6 stop open bus ticket from Hanoi all the way through to Ho Chi Minh City. It came out in conversation just after we had booked that all of the 6 travel agents on the road were owned by the same family and we had just spent the whole morning haggling with Rose’s brothers, uncle, sister and father!

The rest of the day we walked around the Hanoi old quarter, had some nice Vietnamese food (although Dave had a Margherita!) and visited a market. In the evening we went to see the Water Puppets show. Ruth, Tom, Dave and Juliette went to walk around the lake first so Chris, Nina and I decided to get some dinner and meet them there. The 8^th bed in our dorm was taken up by a friendly guy from the Netherlands called Melvin who also joined us. At first Melvin seemed like a really nice guy and we all got on with him well but he produced a ridiculously awkward moment at dinner when he refused to eat the soup he had ordered because it had such a “slimy consistency”. The owner of the restaurant then asked him why his food was untouched while Chris, Nina and I tried to avert our eyes. It was interesting to see the water puppets show as it is a very cultural thing to do in Vietnam. However, after a while we found that the puppets’ movements were quite limited and the best thing about the show for us was the traditional music that accompanied the performances.

Chris, Tom and Nina

Chris in the market

The Water Puppets

We got up early the next day to go on our tour of Halong Bay. We were picked up from the travel agency around 8am and taken by bus to the harbour in Haiphong to board our boat- “The Imperial Junk”. On the bus our guide introduced himself to us and turned out to be quite a character. He had chosen the English name ‘Kevin’ due to his love for and apparent likeness to Kevin Costner. He went on to say how many people had told him he had a “handsome face” and “big muscles” before flexing his biceps for us and reeling off his favourite Kevin Costner films which seemed to be pretty much every Kevin Costner film. He then got us to introduce ourselves to the rest of the group who we would be spending the next two days with. There were 19 of us in total and we got to know everyone pretty well over the course of the trip. On our way to the harbour, there was also a compulsory break at a big building which turned out to be a large shop. The bus dropped us off on one side and picked us up on the other side meaning we were forced to walk through the shop. We came across such great deals as “Buy 7 boxes of chocolates, Get 1 free” but were told off by the staff when trying to take a posed picture.

We eventually made it to the harbour and boarded the Imperial Junk. To our surprise, it actually looked somewhat like the pictures in the brochure and we hadn’t been completely ripped off. We were immediately served a fresh seafood lunch on board. It became clear that 7 of the 19 didn’t speak English as there was a Vietnamese family of 5 who ate together and another couple who sat on their own table. That left the remaining 12 of us sitting on two tables getting to know each other a bit. Despite the different amount of people, the staff still served the same amount of food to each table! This meant long after we had finished lunch the couple were still ploughing their way through 6 peoples’ portions of seafood, rice and vegetables. All credit to the man though who we nicknamed “big guy” as he didn’t even seem to break a sweat as he finished everything on the table every meal time!

The rest of the afternoon was spent with an excursion to a cave, an hour of kayaking amongst the mountains and chilling out on the top deck of the junk enjoying the scenery. There were some nice formations of stalactites in the cave but by this point we were all feeling the heat. We then went kayaking for an hour around the area where the cave was. We decided to have some races which inevitably led to water fights with our paddles. All of us left the kayaks absolutely soaked apart from Dave who it seemed had been doing most of the soaking. Although the water looked extremely beautiful, it was actually quite dirty and after we got out of the kayaks it felt a bit slimy on our skin. Luckily we all had showers in our cabins and could refresh ourselves before dinner. The cabins were all just above sea level so you could lie in bed and stare out of the window at the amazing karst mountains. Dinner consisted of some more seafood and vegetable dishes which were really fresh and delicious. The squid especially tasted so good! Once again the big guy polished everything off!

Halong Bay

Up on deck

From left: Me, Chris, Dave, Ruth, Juliette and Tom

We joined to make a mega-kayak!

The splash fights begin...

Nina in our cabin


Halong Bay

After dinner we had the opportunity to do some squid fishing ourselves as the crew switched on a light at the back of the boat to attract the squid and gave us some fishing rods. It proved extremely difficult, but some small squid were caught! We then went on to the top deck to have some beers, watch the sunset and play a game called ‘Mafia’. Mafia is a game all about deception, where there are a certain number of mafia members within the group of players whose objective is to ‘kill’ all the civilians. The civilians and a number of other special roles like ‘detective’ and ‘doctor’ have to try and work out who the mafia are before they are killed but anybody can claim to have any role. We ended up playing all night and all 12 of the English speakers joined in and got really into it. While we were playing, it became clear that our ‘guide’ Kevin was getting progressively more drunk below deck! He kept asking me for a hug and saying how much he loved the crew because they gave him free drinks. We all found it ridiculous how our ‘guide’ could be stumbling around the boat completely drunk in front of all the customers he was supposed to be looking after. At one point he came over to where we were playing our game to show us his muscles and repeatedly ‘cheers’ us in Vietnamese. We all just had to say ‘Bye Kevin!’ and wave at him so that he would leave!

The next morning Kevin acted like nothing had happened and carried on as usual. He welcomed some people onto the boat who we were picking up from an island and taking back to the mainland and proceeded to do the whole ‘Kevin Costner’ spiel again! On the way back to the harbour we were given a cooking lesson in how to make Vietnamese Spring rolls. We all watched Kevin do the first one then lined up to try one out ourselves. Every time one of us finished he would say well done and then shout to the whole group on the boat ‘from UK, UK!’ and get everyone to clap. When it came to Juliette, he didn’t seem to understand that she was French and so she just had to accept being ‘from UK!’ and get a clap anyway. Tom struggled with his Spring roll rolling method to which Kevin seemed quite annoyed. Needless to say it was not announced that Tom was from the UK, nor did he get a clap. Finally, Kevin put us on a bus back to Hanoi so we could get on our sleeper bus to Hue that night. On the way back we stopped at exactly the same break/shop and once again bought nothing apart from our new favourite ice cream, a Celano, which we were to buy once a day without fail for the rest of the trip.

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