Day 3 – 05.10.2016
We woke up early today to start our day off with a little kayaking tour while the rest of the bay was still asleep.
It was very serene! We stopped off at a floating island where we rented the kayaks. Then we headed out under a little cave passageway to another part of the bay where we could find several monkeys jumping from branch to branch.
We were only 4 kayaks and so everything was really calm and quiet. I loved it!
We then headed back through the cave and headed out to more „open water“. From here you could see all the tankers and large cargo ships anchoring outside of the big merchant harbour in Halong Bay. Only here you one really comprehend how large these limestone formations really are.
It was a lovely morning workout but we were glad to head back to out boat and enjoy breakfast.
After that we quickly packed to head back up, paid our bills from the cocktaile escalation the night before (It was still so very cheap! I paid what I would have paid for 2 drinks back at home and I had had about 6-8....) and then headed up on deck to enjoy the last views of the bay. Here is a quick photo of the „hotel“ room on the boat. Sorry for it beeing messy, I always remember to take photo after we stayed in the room...
Before we arrived in the harbour we were lucky enough to witness a vegetable carving session, where we learned from the cook to carve potatoes, turnips and most importantly the carrot net from dinner the night before. (I might try this one back at home!)
We eventually got back to the harbour and were back on the bus on our way to Hanoi. It started to rain and all of a sudden all motorbikes pulled out their rain capes and just continued driving along.
Here is a small photo of just a small example of what we regularly see on the streets. This man was carrying a whole lot on his motorbike. Some people even transport live waterbuffalos with their motorbikes. (I saw a proof postcard!)
We stopped over a centre were handicapped and orphans are supported by the community and by the tourists, providing them a place to stay and a place to work. They produce beautiful and intricate art work and jewellery that they then sell straight from the centre.
All along the walls of the centre were marble statues and our tour guide gave us a quick explanation oft he meaning of some of these statues. For example the statue below is not like many of us thought a temple guard dog but actually a unicorn.
A vietnamese unicorn is one that is a mixture of several animals all joined together. For example this statue has the nose of a water buffalo, the claws and teeth of a lion, but the hair or mane as the hair of buddha (as you can see in the next photo).
This unicorn is there to protect the people and is a very spiritual symbol for the buddhists.
Below you can see some of the tappistry they intricately produce at the centre.
Instead of buying art here, I chose to opt with the cheaper postcards including stamps to „anywhere in the world“!
I was on the verge of buying an expensive ring at the centre but gladly opted out o fit last minute, seeing as jewellery isnt really an investment and second of all I probably would have worn it as regularly as I should have considereing the price I would have paid for it.
We had a quick lunch at the centre (a fried rice) and were back on the bus to continue our journey to Hanoi.
During the ride we started telling each other different travelling stories – some of these were just too funny for us to cope and I need to write two of them down.
So the first story happened along a trip in Africa. Their group were driving along the road in a bus and accidently ran over a cow. Cows are sacred here and of course there had to be some sort of reconciliation. So everyone chipped in and gave the owner of the cow money so that he could buy another one. As soon as the money had been passed to this farmer and they were back in the bus, the cow got back up and left the street. We wondered whether this was some sort of stunt cow or cow actress that would throw itself infront of tourist busses to bring it’s owner some more income....
The second story was one that apparently happened in Ho Chi Minh City. Here a man was run over by a car and seemed dead. The driver of the car that had run him over didnt stop to help him out, call the abulance or anything like that, but instead threw some money on the man’s body and bolted off.
If you combine the two stories, this might really be a feasible option if we should run out of money on the trip.
We were seriously debating as to which animal costumes would bring in the most money. Maybe not just a cow and a donkey costume, but in the coastal region a costume of a dolphin?
The next thing we new was that we had arrived in Hanoi. We got changed, organised and repacked out bags and chose to head out on a little shopping spree.
Unfortunately I had packed the wrong charging cable for my gopro and so the mission was to find a shop selling these cables. The cable cost me about 4 €, where as in Germany you would already pay this for shipping...
Another mission of one of my travel companions was to find padded underwear. So the vietnamese and other Asian countries sometimes wish they had a more defined bottom. Hence, they produce „push up underwear“ to make it look like some has more junk in the trunk. The reason why my travel companion Renee chose to buy this underwear was more for comfort – on long bus or plane rides the bum can get sore and when you already are wearing your cushion, you are at an advantage!
After the successful purchase of the underwear, we had a little more time to kill and opted for a little bit of icecream and an ice tea with passionfruit sorbet. Delicious!
We then headed back to the hotel to try out our new purchases – yes even the padded underwear!
Before our trip on the overnight train we had some Pho Bo (the noodle soup this time with beef) at a local restaurant.
Here one of our travel companions read us a horror e-mail of her friends who had just done the same train ride with Intrepid the night before. It included dirty compartments, several mosquitoes or bed bugs (who knows), no toilet paper, unbelievable heat and just a very bad time. This obviously upped our moral tremendously and we were overly excited to board this train. (After having completely annihalated the stock of toilet paper – „just in case there was none left“)
We left the hotel by bus and boarded the sleeper train accepting our fate.
There are always 4 beds to a cabin and they were suprisingly good, given the e-mail we had just heard. It was in no way dirty, the air conditioning was functioning and there were no bugs. As we managed our own supply of toilet paper, we were sorted in that sense too.
We got cozy in any way possible and let the bumpy bumpy ride begin.
Mid way unfortunately the air conditioning did stop working and cabin started heating up – more so on the top bunks obviously... Eventually it came back on and the frantic undressing to stop the heat was reversed. We fell asleep and moved closer and closer to Hue.
