Viet Nam 1 - Hanoi & Intrepid HALONG BAY...
After 3 days of showing Cameron my favorite places around Hanoi, we joined 10 other fun-loving backpackers for the beginning of our 2-week tour with Intrepid Travel, an Australian-based company. Our fearless leader was a 27-year-old Vietnamese guy named Ngan, who grew up just north of Hanoi. Ngan MADE our weeks to come, with his sense of humor and adventure, impeccable English and willingness to take us off the beaten path. We began by heading east to Halong Bay, my favorite place in Viet Nam (and my fourth visit!).
A famed UNESCO World Heritage site, Halong Bay is known for its old wooden fishing junks that have been turned into tourist cruising boats which glide between the tall limestone cliffs and the Gulf of Tonkin.
I was so excited to be back in the serenity of this place, and with a friend who was experiencing and appreciating it all for the first time. We sat back and relaxed on the wooden rooftop deck chairs after a delicious seafood spread of prawns, fish and squid (don't worry, I enjoyed the veggies and tofu). We stopped to explore the "Surprising Cave," which, for the fourth time, was not so surprising, but enjoyable nonetheless (as you can see from our photos!) - it is one of the largest caves in VietNam, full of stalactites and stalagmites in all sorts of shapes and sizes and displayed with ever so tasteful colored spotlights. We then hopped back onto the boat just in time to watch the bright orangy-pink sun go down between cliffs and after about 30 more minutes of cruising, we anchored for the night. The brave ones of the group put on our swimsuits and jumped off the roof, plunging into the warm and very salty bay. What a glorious way to spend the day!
Our dinner was more of the same seafoody mix, but we enjoyed getting to know our group members. We have become quite close with two British girls, Caroline & Emma, who have also just finished university and are doing a similar trip around the world. We were the only Americans, and joined by 2 singles from Sydney, a couple from Melbourne, a couple from Tasmania, and a couple from Nottingham. We young ones went to bed early and Cam & I had the best snooze as the boat rocked us to sleep around 8 pm.
After such a calm afternoon and evening, none of us were prepared for what was to come... We awoke the next morning around 7 to very ominous clouds and within minutes, a torrential downpour that came right into our cabin! Thank goodness we had already gotten up - otherwise it would've been quite a rude awakening! We dressed in the bathroom and could hear the crew scurrying around, yelling in Vietnamese and sounding frantic, although to the two of us water babies, we figured they were just over-reacting and we were merely experiencing an exciting storm firsthand. We jokingly squealed when our door flew open and we saw just how wild the storm was, but then realized that perhaps the rest of our group was not enjoying it quite as much... Just as we emerged from the bathroom, a deckhand saw us in the window and yelled for us to go up to the galley. We packed up our bags and ran up giggling, only to find the rest of our group bundled in bright orange life jackets and sitting sternly, looking at us as if we were crazy. It turned out that the crew had run around, forcing everyone to don life preservers and immediately gather in the galley - apparently the safest place to be should anything happen - and since we were not in sight from the window of our cabin, nobody knew to tell us to head upstairs.
Now, these old "junks" are not exactly the sturdiest of boats. They have many leaks (as we learned) and have little bow coverage should we hit a wave in the wrong direction. As the storm worsened, Cam & I wondered how extensively our captain and crew had been trained for situations like this, and thought that we just may know more about boat handling than any of our Vietnamese counterparts. We were being thrashed around in 4-foot swells and had dropped the "big" anchor, taking the waves head-on. Within minutes, however, we saw that the captain recognized the potential danger our group was entering, perhaps more than any of us actually realized, and took the storm very seriously. Fortunately, we survived unharmed, although most of the windows, pots and "crockery" (dishes) on the boat did not.
Just as the clouds were parting and we began underway again, Ngan told us that we would be picking up some more passengers on the way in - hoping it wouldn't inconvenience us. We all thought surely it would be no problem, and looked around for another boat from which they would be arriving. No boat was in sight, and as we scanned the water, we saw just what he was talking about: two orange blobs floating together, and a lone mast sticking out of the water half a mile away. Castaways! Our initial excitement to be a rescue team turned into worry as we saw that two older women were floating on life rafts and it appeared that someone was seriously injured. It seemed to be a mix of emotions as we got closer to the people floating in life preservers and a kayak - some seemed to be crying, some in shock, and when asked if they were okay, two girls yelled up "We hope there are smokers on this boat!" and showed us the unopened beer cans they had managed to rescue from their sinking boat. Chaos really had taken a toll on everyone, and almost everyone was in utter shock of what had happened. Some were bleeding and their leader had been knocked unconscious for a few minutes. It turned out that this was another Intrepid group who had been traveling together for two weeks - meaning that all of their backpacks, passports, wallets, cameras, etc. had gone down in their cabins with the boat. Only two of the "survivors," as we have called them, had their money belts on with everything including plane tickets.
Luckily, the sun came out just as quickly as the storm had come and gone, and before we knew it we were pulling into the dock to disembark. As soon as we arrived, little Vietnamese women selling souvenir t-shirts and shorts boarded our boat and came up to donate their goods to everyone who needed dry clothing. We snapped some group photos of everyone in their Halong Bay gear, exchanged email addresses to share photos of the raging storm (and survival), and bid our new friends farewell. The first hour of the bus ride home was spent re-hashing the morning's events. Everything had happened so quickly that we were all so incredulous and thankful that everyone had survived. We later learned that 5 other boats had sunk in Halong Bay, there had been several motorbike accidents on land, and many people had died as a result of the storm. Needless to say, we were very very thankful to have been in such good hands; Ngan told us that if we had left 15 minutes earlier that morning, our boat would have been in the same unprotected spot, and probably would have gone down, too. Someone was really looking out for us that day.
On our way home we wearily got out of the bus for the planned tourist stop at a ceramics factory. It was interesting to see how pots and ceramic wear were mass-produced - from the molding to the decorative painting - but there was something very anti-climactic to this after what we had been through only two hours before...
Back in Hanoi, we continued with the planned Intrepid itinerary: a cyclo tour through the Old Quarter in the evening, followed by a classic water puppet show. My second round at this event was equally as confusing yet enjoyable as it had been in 2004; the story was sung and performed with traditional Vietnamese musical instruments and was utterly impossible to understand. Nevertheless, the performance itself was neat because the puppeteers stand behind a curtain and somehow maneuver large wooden and lacquer water "puppets" through a little stage full of water. Perhaps the favorite part of the performance were the complimentary paper fans each guest was given upon entrance; they have come in MOST handily throughout the rest of our trip!
All in all, I really enjoyed going back to Hanoi, a city which I am proud to consider a sort of home to me. Being there during APEC was interesting to see just what a show that place can put on when it wants to. The usually calm green park surrounding Hoan Kiem Lake in the center of town was loaded with illuminated billboards sponsored by Canon with photos of Hanoi saying "Welcome to Hanoi, APEC," and most of the propaganda posters with "Uncle Ho [Chi Minh]" were covered with more welcome banners.
It was fun to re-visit my favorite restaurants and shops, although a bit sad to find that a great silk store and the wonderful young woman who worked there were gone, and my favorite art store had been torn down, where my friend Huong worked. I had been looking forward to finding him, and kicked myself for never exchanging e-mail addresses or anything with him. I did smile as I passed the same old man with thick tortoise shell glasses, sitting on a tiny plastic stool outside his souvenir shop, and I noticed he'd traded his white ponytail for a trendy buzz cut instead. I also had the pleasure of taking Cameron to my old neighborhood: A-2 Bach Khoa. The primarily student-filled area had barely changed since I left in 2004, and I even stopped by my old dorm room. The internet cafe I once "enjoyed" (with fluorescent lighting, turquoise walls and throngs of teenage boys looking at pornography) was still there, and had even added computer monitors for enhanced computer game enjoyment. The "crap stand" (food stall) where I once enjoyed a styrofoam container full of steamed rice, spring rolls and roasted peanuts for 30 cents was there, although my friend Tim (who is now studying and living in Bach Khoa) told me that he learned they re-use their rice! All hopes of sharing THAT experience with Cam went down the drain right then and there... I even saw the same little xeom (motorbike taxi) driver who seems to still sit across the street from our dorm gate, waiting to give students a ride into town. The other day in the Bangkok airport, I picked up a book by Pam Scott called
Life in Hanoi, which describes much better than I can just how life goes around that wonderful city. I think Cam has gotten a good taste of Vietnam in general, both the good and the bad parts, and I loved being able to show her around the places most special to me.
Labels: Halong Bay, Hanoi
