Ha Long Bay

The view from Sung Sot Cave (Cave of Surprises) 

While we waited for Kim's work to start we did an overnight tour to Ha Long Bay. Ha Long Bay is a bit like Cradle Mountain, in that the geology is so remarkable that it is a 'must see' destination if you ever visit this part of Vietnam.

Ha Long Bay is an archipelago of almost 2000 islands or islets that jut vertically out of the sea. The islands are mostly limestone, so there are many caves here, and earthquakes over the millennia have collapsed some of these, leaving the high points, and eventually the area was flooded by the sea. Ha Long Bay has had human habitation since about 18000 BC and has been the setting for a few wars over the years, most recently the Vietnam (American) war, where the area was mined, which even today still pose a threat to shipping.

Ha Long Bay is a World Heritage Site and has recently been named as one of the seven natural wonders of the world. So, its pretty flash!

Among the islands

The bus trip out there from Hanoi takes four hours, which sounds like a long time, but it was only a relatively short trip compared to some we've had lately. We get off the bus and walk over to the wharf area where there are literally hundreds of boats taking tours and tourists everywhere. Here we get on a small boat that takes us all out to a larger boat which has cabins and dining facilities. We put our stuff in our room then go up for lunch and they started brining out food, then more food, then even more food. As you don't really know what to expect, you tend to eat a fair bit more of the first courses then are too full to even try the later ones.

Out the back of the boat

Then the boat heads out among the islands and we are looking out the window, taking photos and taking it all in. Eventually we get taken to a huge cave which was possibly my favourite part of the whole place. It was massive, lit up with colourful lights and probably just as spectacular as the islands themselves. Our guide De Cheng showed up many of the features or similarities to other things in the rock. There are words for this, apophenia or patternicity, like the man on the moon for example. So we saw what were snakes, dragons, monkey, and in the back of our minds we thought, "really??", but the classic of all classics was the "happy finger", which was perhaps intended to be a polite description for something else... I'll let you guess.

The happy finger

After about an hour in the cave we went kayaking. Kim and I had had a gut-full of kayaks after 6 hours of getting "dragged off" by all the young-uns in Laos. This was a much more relaxed though and you could take the kayaks inside some smaller caves. After that we were invited to go swimming. I haven't been swimming for the sake of swimming for years, and as you could imagine I am no body builder, so wasn't too keen to be walking around scantily clad in public. But it was pretty hot and humid and everyone else had gone in. So I did a big dive head first from the deck, which was probably 2-3 meters high. It seemed to impress a few people because everyone else had jumped. It was just like in the "olden days", when I was a kid spending all my spare time at the Burnie Olympic pool.
We had been told by the crew not to buy beer from the people coming up to us in small boats, or if we did we would be charged a surcharge. It has something to do with keeping the profits on the boat we were on. However, I did buy a couple of cans for about 1/4 of the cost on our boat. I bought one beer from upstairs and bought the same brand of the  lady on the row boat. No one ever knew, except Kim, who I shared the beers with :)

A fishing boat heading out

Then it was tea time and once again they brought out plate after plate of food. This time I paced myself a bit better and got to try most things. The evening entertainment consisted of squid fishing out the back of our boat or joining in the karaoke. No surprises that I spent a lot of time trying to catch a squid. I did see one and it chased the lure for a second then swam away. No one else caught a squid either. I talked to a couple from Switzerland that had spent some time camping in Australia while they also tried in vain to catch a squid.

The other happy finger

Kim was in at the karaoke and I went in to see how she was going. They offered me the microphone at one stage and I politely declined. But Kim did sing Down Under, the old Men at Work classic and did a pretty good job. What else do you sing when you are one of only two Australians? I did contemplate Helen Reddy's "I am woman" but chose not to disclose those thoughts to anyone in case I got pressured into singing.

In the morning I dragged myself out of bed before the sun came up hoping to get a good photo, but it was really cloudy and we never did get to see the sun. But still it was nice just to stare at the beauty of the place in silence.

Eventually we had breakfast and the boat headed back. Often our guide would show us islands that were supposed to look like other things, including another 'happy finger'. We sort of grinned and thought "yeah, right oh".

Luang Prabang to Hanoi

From Luang Prabang we rode a took-took to the airport. It was pretty hot, a little dusty and the occasional truck billowing out the black diesel fumes, so wrapping up the face in the Cambodian head scarf as a precaution was the go, even if I did look pretty stupid. Out of the took-took, at the airport under the blazing sun, with no wind, you sort of try to put the heat out of your mind and head into the terminal. Here we had the usual airport checks and went to wait in the lounge, where briefly, the air conditioning made it feel cool. There were maybe 150 other people in the room, which wasn't much bigger than the terminal in Wynyard, so pretty soon, even with the air conditioner going, we had the beads of sweat rolling down. We had to wait here for about two hours.

However, the monotony was broken when suddenly 3/4 of the room went up and crowded around the window. Military vehicles and army types in uniforms started gathering outside. Then a plane landed, and based on what was written on the plane, I guess, it was the King of Thailand that got out. He walked out with his wife onto a red carpet with the military types providing a guard of honour on both sides of the carpet. They got into a big flash black car on the runway and drove off. After that they lackeys unloaded massive amounts of suitcases. Then they drove off and we were left thinking "that's hav'na, I wonder who that was". Most other people in the terminal were French speakers, so we will never know.

It was really good to get on our plane. We almost had the plane to ourselves, with only about 10 other people on it. The air conditioning was working really well this time and gradually the sweat evaporated and we felt cool again.

A couple of hours later and we were in Hanoi. We had multiple entry visas for Vietnam, so had no hassles or delays getting through. Also, we are getting good at beating the scammers and had arranged for our hotel to pick us up from the airport for free, rather than pay the usual ridiculous fee that seems to be charged to anyone that doesn't look Vietnamese. We were taken to our first hotel in the historic old-quarter of Hanoi.

We spent a couple of nights here waiting for Kim to be called by her contacts in GeoVisions, who were brokering her teaching. Soon we met up with them and had a big night out, and they arranged for a different hotel for us nearby. 

The second hotel was to be our new home for the next couple of weeks. Much of the time here we just spent walking around the city and Hoan Kiem Lake. The old quarter looks nice, but is pretty much full of tourists, scammers, too much traffic and crammed impassable footpaths, so you end up having to walk in the traffic. It takes a bit of getting used to being dodged by motorbikes doing maybe 30-40 ks/hour and missed by maybe 15 cms. While it is a good place to visit, it was starting to get a little tiring saying no to almost everyone that wanted to talk to us. While here we went on a 3 day tour to Halong Bay, which is a spectacular area of large vertical islands jutting out of the sea.

Once Kim had her work lined up we found an online broker that found accommodation for us 5 minutes walk from where Kim was working. Here we leased an apartment for 3 months at $125 US per week, which includes blazing fast Internet (compared to my pathetic ADSL 2 back home), housekeeping 3 times per week and washing. It has been great living here and getting to know people and joke with them. More on our street in later posts.

Luang Prabang

After recovering from our ordeal on the bus, we ventured out onto the streets of Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang used to be the Capital of Laos and is steeped in history with Buddhist temples and French Colonial architecture. The city is World Heritage listed. We hired bikes while we were here and that let us have a good look around. This video shows some of the sights.