I stirred in my bed when I heard Eric get up and spend the whole morning in the toilet. It was (supposedly) the baguette taking effect. Smart Eric didn't bring ANY medication to Vietnam and depended on my miracle pills to sooth his tummy. And so today was the day to make a trip to Ha Long Bay which is a candidate for a natural wonder but the service we received left much to be desired. We had a lot of waiting courtesy of our tour guide but I shall focus on other things here.
We finally boarded our Chinese junk which wasn't that great. It had no deck chairs, we couldn't check-in to our cabins until 4pm and had very poor service. The service was so irritating that they kept interrupting our chinese chess games by moving our pieces for us! Service in Vietnam can really be improved. I think Ha Long Bay can be a really nice place, if someone actually bothered to show us and explain the history of the bay, the different islands and stuff but we had none of that. The cabin was really dark and the electricity only came on at 5pm and was gone in the morning. That was stupid cause if you need to use the toilet and you close the door, it's pitch black cause you can't switch on the light. We had 2 cabins for the three of us cause the 3 British girls offered to sleep together on a double-bed. We gave the sick Eric the sole cabin and YS attempted to sleep on the deck in the freezing wind but eventually came back to the cabin.
It was very windy on the first day and I managed to read a good portion of my book against the wind and we went kayaking for about half an hour to forty-five minutes. But more than anything, we met very unique individuals on the boat.
We met these two Irish guys. The guy on the right works with the UN in bangkok on humanitarian efforts and the other guy is doing some arty thing but works at a pub for income. The UN guy plays a wicked super mario tune on his guitar! And the other guy supports Arsenal.
What was very apparent was how much all of them smoked and drank. They must have had at least 5 cans of beer that day! And there was no special occasion, they were just drinking it in place of water. They smoked a lot as well which led us to hypothesize that investing in sin companies (alcohol and tobacco) may be a profitable proposition. The people on the boat were largely different from us. Many of them didn't seem to have much of an idea of what they wanted in life and where they were headed. It felt more like a drifting kinda thing which, has its own merits, but I don't think I'm suited for. It's difficult to have a family and to settle down if you're a drifter but, to each his own. I must say it IS interesting to meet such people cause they have a lot of stories to tell. One thing I did manage to talk to the Finnish girl about was auroras. I had an entry on auroras a long time ago. Hopefully I'll get to see them one day.
So while Eric retired early to his cabin to recover from the baguette, YS and I ended up on the deck looking at the stars. Romantic huh. We were talking about reconciling science with religion and whether there were other lifeforms in the universe. Tricia would have been proud! Stephen Hawkings said recently that, given the size of the universe, it's highly unlikely that we are the only lifeforms in the universe. I think it's very possible too but I've learnt over the years that there's no point pondering to hard over certain things cause you'll never know the answer.
Other than that, nothing much happened in Ha Long Bay. It was a peaceful trip aside from the long waiting from our inefficient and inexperienced guide. Got back to Hanoi at about 5pm and had a train to catch at 10pm. Here's a pic of Ha Long Bay.
After Ha Long Bay, our expectations for Sa Pa were pretty low which made Sa Pa all the better!
We finally boarded our Chinese junk which wasn't that great. It had no deck chairs, we couldn't check-in to our cabins until 4pm and had very poor service. The service was so irritating that they kept interrupting our chinese chess games by moving our pieces for us! Service in Vietnam can really be improved. I think Ha Long Bay can be a really nice place, if someone actually bothered to show us and explain the history of the bay, the different islands and stuff but we had none of that. The cabin was really dark and the electricity only came on at 5pm and was gone in the morning. That was stupid cause if you need to use the toilet and you close the door, it's pitch black cause you can't switch on the light. We had 2 cabins for the three of us cause the 3 British girls offered to sleep together on a double-bed. We gave the sick Eric the sole cabin and YS attempted to sleep on the deck in the freezing wind but eventually came back to the cabin.
It was very windy on the first day and I managed to read a good portion of my book against the wind and we went kayaking for about half an hour to forty-five minutes. But more than anything, we met very unique individuals on the boat.
We met these two Irish guys. The guy on the right works with the UN in bangkok on humanitarian efforts and the other guy is doing some arty thing but works at a pub for income. The UN guy plays a wicked super mario tune on his guitar! And the other guy supports Arsenal.What was very apparent was how much all of them smoked and drank. They must have had at least 5 cans of beer that day! And there was no special occasion, they were just drinking it in place of water. They smoked a lot as well which led us to hypothesize that investing in sin companies (alcohol and tobacco) may be a profitable proposition. The people on the boat were largely different from us. Many of them didn't seem to have much of an idea of what they wanted in life and where they were headed. It felt more like a drifting kinda thing which, has its own merits, but I don't think I'm suited for. It's difficult to have a family and to settle down if you're a drifter but, to each his own. I must say it IS interesting to meet such people cause they have a lot of stories to tell. One thing I did manage to talk to the Finnish girl about was auroras. I had an entry on auroras a long time ago. Hopefully I'll get to see them one day.
So while Eric retired early to his cabin to recover from the baguette, YS and I ended up on the deck looking at the stars. Romantic huh. We were talking about reconciling science with religion and whether there were other lifeforms in the universe. Tricia would have been proud! Stephen Hawkings said recently that, given the size of the universe, it's highly unlikely that we are the only lifeforms in the universe. I think it's very possible too but I've learnt over the years that there's no point pondering to hard over certain things cause you'll never know the answer.
Other than that, nothing much happened in Ha Long Bay. It was a peaceful trip aside from the long waiting from our inefficient and inexperienced guide. Got back to Hanoi at about 5pm and had a train to catch at 10pm. Here's a pic of Ha Long Bay.
After Ha Long Bay, our expectations for Sa Pa were pretty low which made Sa Pa all the better!