Historical Ramblings

Halong Bay, Hanoi, and more

When I was about 10 years old, I had a fear of dying. At about age 11, the fear disappeared, only to manifest itself as mild hypochandria about the age of 22. So imagine my reaction when, jumping into beautiful water under enormous limestone cliffs, I land on a jellyfish.

Luckily, after a few minutes of deciding either my wrist was going to explode or that poison was quickly inhabting every part of my body, I learned that the jellyfish that inhabit beautiful Halong Bay, Vietnam are neither venemous nor especially harsh. The sting on my wrist stopped hurting after about two hours and has now returned to normal.

Halong Bay, Vietnam is about three hours outside of Hanoi. It's a UNESCO World Heritage site, meaning its been revered for its natural beauty. We'd booked a tour through Kangaroo Cafe in Hanoi which would take us out to the bay overnight on a nice Vietnamese-style boat with about 8 other travellers. The bay's beauty is hard to describe; it's as if someone took enormous cliffs made of a salt and pepper mix and pushed them straight up out of the bay. We visited one of the larger caves, probably half a kilometer in total with all the parts, wandered through and looked at the stalagtite formations. That evening, we went swimming off the side of the boat, and then had a relaxing night sleeping out on the bay, in an A/C room on the boat.

We returned to Hanoi the next evening and caught the famous Hanoi water puppet theater, which is literally a puppet theater where a body of water is used to cover up the poles and cords that power the puppets. Pictures will be up as soon as I get my laptop online.

The following day, after a late discovery that the day train to Hue, our next stop, took 18 hours, we booked a flight on Vietnam Airlines. Economy class was full, or so our friendly desk staff (who works, of course, on commission) told us, so we ended up in Business Class. Luckily, in Vietnam, this means the difference between a $60 plane ticket and an $80 plane ticket, so no major loss was involved. And despite my worries, Vietnam Airlines runs safe, modern, and well-equipped planes. The Airbus A320 we flew on looked newer (and safer) than the United Airlines plane we flew over from Tokyo...

We arrived in Hue and were met by a driver for our guesthouse. Let's Go, our travel book, uses this phrase to describe Hue: "Hue is delightful." And so it is. It's a relatively small town and, for all intents and purposes, is rather friendly. We ate an excellent seafood dinner at a restaurant where we clearly confused the locals. Restaurants in Vietnam, like some in Thailand, are generally 'outdoors', meaning their open-air and often don't even have front walls. In this case, the seats were all outdoors under a large roof. The seats were small, close to the ground, and plastic. The two girls who were our waitresses spoke no English and, after several attempts to speak with us in Vietnamese, gave up and got the owner, whose English was rather good and who we just asked to bring us what she recommended. We ended up with a plate of incredible mussels and a plate of huge shrimp. It was some of the best seafood I've ever had.

The day next we rented bikes and rode through the countryside, looking at old royal tombs and hidden Buddhist monestaries and pagodas. Along the way we passed lots of small, family stores. They sold food and water. There were small shacks that doubled as dressmakers stores. There were restaurants, literally small concrete buildings that held maybe three or four small tables and a similar number of small, plastic chairs. And there were kids everywhere, most of whom yelled "Hello!" at us, smiling and waving, as we rode by on our bicycles.

That evening we ate dinner in a restaurant run by a deaf family (written up in Lonely Planet) and wandered around for a bit. The next day we took a train to Da Nang, a taxi to Hoi An, and we're now in Hoi An. But I'm also out of time, so more on that tomorrow.

We hit Saigon tomorow, so I'll be able to post pictures and more blog entries, hopefully.

Posted by aglazer at June 29, 2005 12:07 AM | TrackBack