I forgot to mention about the lake in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. It has huge tortoises living it (>300kg's), but I haven't seen any yet. It's a very nice lake, with a temple and a tower on two separate islands in teh lake, and at night, the lake and the streets and buildings surrounding the lake look magnificent.
We got up at 6:00AM, showered, checked out, and waited. Bought some fresh baked bread and water from a woman on the street. The bread here is wonderous.
The tour guy came and picked us up, and we walked to the bus, which was parked along a busy street, along with a multitude of other buses. It was about a 4 hour bus ride to Halong City, stopping about 3 hours in for a "souvenir shopping break". Had lunch at Halong City, then a 5 minute bus ride to the dock, and we got on a boat ("junk", I think is the name) and started through Halong Bay.
Stopped at an island that had very touristy caves, all lit up with lights, and with stairs and pathways through them, and lots of opportunities to buy souvenirs. Yawn, pretty boring after doing some real caving with headlamps and crawling on your belly to get inside a cave.
Continued on in Halong Bay, very nice, but very touristy. Lots of people on our boat. Some beautiful views of mountains jutting out of the ocean. (Ack, I hate this keyboard!!!!)
It was cool and cloudy this morning, in the afternoon, the sun started to come out, it was kind of a light cloud cover.
We then stopped at another cave, that was not part of the tour price, so anyone who wanted to see it had to pay extra. Court and I didn't do it, we've seen enough caves.
It was a long boat ride, arrived at Cat Ba island about 5:30, then had to wait for a bus to take us to the hotel. We played cards on the boat to pass the time.
The hotel is nice. Court and I got a huge room, a double bed and a single bed, a rotating fan, a ceiling fan, and an air conditioner, and hot water shower, and a TV (only two stations, no CNN or BBC). We're up on the 5th floor, so it was quite a workout to get to the room every time.
We had supper (all meals were included in the tour), then walked around Cat Ba town. Dana and Court and I (Dana from now on refers to Dana from Israel) bought some ice cream from a lady along the waterfront, and it was very tasty, so Dana and I went back for seconds.
There's a group of kids all trying to sell postcards and "shuttlecock" hackeysack-type things. They all speak excellent english, and they kind of persistent, even after saying "no", so I told one girl I'd "sleep on it", and she laughed. She knew exactly what I meant by that phrase. Then she said to me, "Ok, when you to bed tonight, you go like this (as she put her arm across her forehead) and you think about it, ok?" I had to laugh!!! It was funny. Another girl was very upset that we didn't buy anything from her, and was saying things like: (bad words warning...)
"So suck yourself."
"Go f*ck your mother and have 20 babies"
"You're white. Go back home, whitey's"
What a way to make a sale, eh??? She was totally rude.
We walked around, and went to a small lounge, and had a drink, then to a dance club for a while. Mostly locals at teh dance club, and can they dance!!
Court bought some postcards from a kid (boy) on the street, 10 of them for 7000 dong, so I decided to buy some as well, the same price he tells me. As I'm digging for my money, he makes a remark about 8000 dong, and I got confused, and said 8000 dong, and ended up handing him 8000 dong, at which point, he grabbed the money and ran about 10 feet from me, and Court turned to me and said it was only supposed to be 7000 dong. The kid was laughing and saying to me, "Hahaha, you say 8000 dong, hahaha". Needless to say, I didn't get my 1000 dong back. It was only 10 cents.
And that was the day.
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