Mal and Laura

DAY 1
6:30 am. Showered, dressed and packed for 7:15 am. Served a relativelty disappointing baguette with jam and butter to get us through the morning on the bus. Yes, we're off on a field trip.
Ha Long Bay is a 2,00 sq. km. area of the Nort East coast of Vietnam and home to some of the most impressive karsts (there's that word again) in the world. UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organazation) has declared the bay a World Heritage site but we'll come to that in a bit. Firstly the trip. The minibus picked us up at 8:00 from the hotel and we were packed in with a very varied group. An Aussie backpacker who has spent 6 out of the last 10 years travelling the world, an Aussie family with 2 young girls and a boy, two french girls who have spent the past 6 months teaching English in Ho Chi Minh city and three business men from Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan respectively who were on a group getaway from work in Singapore. The 180 km trip took over three hours due to the fact that there is a 60km/h speed limit on most of the roads. This was also prolonged by our stop at a 'tourist warehouse'. This pretty much does what it says on the tin. Its a big warehouse full of touristy crap that you don't want or need and the tour buses stop there for an indeterminate amount of time. To imagine it, think of what John Lewis would look like if it were established in Communist Eastern Europe about 20 years ago. When we did arrive we were greeted by some British weather, rain, which sounds bad but was quite refreshing given the heat wave of the last few days. Next we had to find out what boat we were on. All of the tourist boats were dressed up and painted in various bold colours to make them more impressive than the next. We were guided down the docks to ours and led into the main seating area on the middle deck. We were joined by another tour group and were served lunch. The table I was sat on was mainly European and there was only me and a Vietnamese woman who were using chopsticks. I only mention this because when the Vietnamese women asked for chopsticks they were fine with it but when I asked they were confused and seemed to wonder why I couldn't just use a fork.
We set out to sea and with a small detour into a small cave we spent most of the afternoon exploring the bay. The views were stunning but the bad weather put a dmpner on it. One of the guides sat with us out on the deck and told us what some of the karsts were called. He then informed me that I looked like some one famous which I was pleased with. I was less pleased when he told me that I reminded him of Pipin from Lord of the Rings, I was less impressed. He wasn't sure I I was amused by this or not so he pulled a funny face and walked away.
That evening was the best part, we dropped anchor out in the bay and they lowered the ladder out into the water. In about six seconds flat half of us had already dived off the lower deck into the water. As we swam around and enjoyed the beautiful view, a small boat rowed up. It was absolutley heaving with cakes, biscuits, cigarettes and drinks. We were told by the captain of our boat that if we bought anthing from the boat lady that we had to pay a 30% charge to our boat! This seemed a little absured so we passed. We stayed outt in the water until the sun went down and just as it set we got a quick shot of the bay.

Dinner was served at 7 pm and we were treated to more Vietnamese food which was mostly seafood. We ended up spending the rest of the evening drinking overpriced super strenght beer and we got into a very serious political discussion with the Taiwanese man ?(Mr. Li) over the History of the Chinese government, British politics and the rise of capitalism in communist countries. For a 64 year old Taiwanese businessman he had a staggering knowledge of English and Irish history and put both of us to shame. By that same token he was surprised that I semed to know so much about Chinese culture and society so it was an interesting trade off. After a few beers and some anti-Chinese sentiment from Mr Li we retired to our cabin and wiped out from the busy day, we were asleep by 10 pm.

DAY 2
We were up at 6 am and wathcing the boat already moving. At 7 am we were served an unusual breakfast of one fried egg, tonnes of bread, butter, jam and a banana. We decided upon one egg sandwich and one jam and banana sandwich. With that out of the way we found out we were heading for the docks on Cat Ba island. Arriving an hour later we found that the dock was much higher than our boat due to low tide so we had to climb 2m up a gang plank to get off the boat. After this we were lead to a small minibus and taken across the island. Before heading to our hotel in Cat Ba town, we had a hike through the national park to complete. A very dull fifteen minute video in the hut at the edge of the park introduced us to the place then we were out on the trail to the foot of the mountian we were to climb. Along the way our tour guide showed us a strange plant by the path side whose leaves folded over and curled up as soon as you put your finger on them. It was an interesting little plant to watch but we had places to be. In five minutes we were outside a small shack waiting to go up the mountain. Our guide waited at the bottom and a small lady began leading us up the steps.