The bus came next morning at 8am and the trip took three hours to get to Halong City. There were 12 of us on the bus and our tour guide Quan. It was sunny and beautiful in Halong City when we got there. In my email home concerning this part of the trip I had named the subject line “the sun also rises.” I named it this for three reasons. One was because a good experience was had on the heels of a bad one. Also, the sun actually did rise that day for the first time in over a week. Ever since I have been in Northern Vietnam it has been cool and overcast. I did not mind this much as I needed a break from the heat. The third reason was in homage to the book by Ernest Hemingway. It turned out to be very lucky that it was getting sunny as I had met many people while traveling north in Vietnam that had come from Hanoi and had said that Halong Bay was disappointing because it was so foggy. We really lucked out with the weather as it was clear and beautiful.
I had lost my sun glasses the day before and my eyes were hurting from the brightness. I had been looking all over the place for a pair of cheap sunglasses, but I could not find anything. I figured I could buy one in Halong City before debarking on the boat. Alas, I could find none. I was sitting around in the parking lot waiting for the boat with a severe case of sunglass envy as every tourist in the place was donning a nice pair. I finally asked Quan if he knew of a place. He said yes, but they would be expensive. He brought me to a place that was selling glasses for 18$. I was not going to pay 18$ for sunglasses here when I could wait and get them somewhere else for 3$. Quan asked me later if I bought the glasses. I told him that I would not pay 18$ for glasses. He told me I could barter and get them for around 12$. I told him I was a terrible bargainer. He took me back to the shop and bargained for me and I purchased them for 12$.
We boarded the boat and it was quite luxurious with a really nice lounging area up front. The boat was very spacious for 12 people. The first person that came around to our home for the night was a server with Tiger beer. I was hanging out talking with Vineet from India and a couple of guys from England. Then an Aussie named Neil came by and introduced himself.
Whenever you are on a tour with 11 new people it is kind of weird at first because you are feeling everybody out at first since you do not know anyone. I was looking for the drinkers because I had a bottle of whiskey and did not want to return with a half drunken bottle as it would be a travel quandary. I would then have the tough decision of traveling with a half filled bottle, which would be a little inconvenient and add more weight to my load or would I just dump the rest out, which would be a painful decision also. I also did not want to drink the whole god damn bottle by myself. Neil looked like a good prospect as he was Australian and he and his buddy Glenn were already on their second beer when the sign up sheet came around where we had to mark the number of beers we had. They kept track this way and paid for our beer at the end.
We cruised out into the bay and the scenery was spectacular. The Halong Bay area is made from Karst topography. I have no idea what Karst topography is, but in the Ted Nelson school of geology it means “cool fucking shit.” I think Karst may have been a geologist who in the early days of geology went around the world looking for cool fucking shit, and when he came across it he would pen his name to it. May be I should travel around the world and find some cool fucking shit that Karst may have missed and then pen my name to it. It would be Ted topography. These cliffs came up straight out of the water reaching a couple hundred feet and the tops were covered in trees. There are over 2,000 islands like this in the area.
Our first stop was this huge cave that was called the surprise cave. The cave could have housed a city. It was mammoth and just kept going and going. I am not a big cave aficionado, but this place was pretty cool and Karst would have been proud to know his name was again linked to some cool fucking shit.
After 45 minutes here it was back on the boat to an island for some kayaking. The Indian fellow Vineet and I took out a kayak for about a half hour and cruised around one of the sensational islands. The only problem was that the paddle was the size of a toothpick and water kept dripping all over me. Vineet was telling me quite a bit about his country. India really intrigues me and it may be my next adventure.
We returned to the island our boat was on, and I was wet and cold and not sure what to do. They had a beach, but it was too cold to swim or hang out. They also had a hilltop you could climb, but I really did not feel like climbing it. I did what any rational person would do in a situation like this. When in doubt return to the boat and have a beer. Neil and Glen from Australia had already seized this idea and had a beer in hand when I returned. We were sitting there drinking and one of the deckhands walked in with another case of Tiger beer. Neil made the joke that they realized he was on the boat and had to get reinforcements. I was now quite sure that Neil would make a great ally in the battle of finishing the whiskey bottle.
We then cruised around the bay some more and watched a beautiful sunset with many hawk like birds flying around in the distance. We then had dinner and hit the deck for some more drinking and bay viewing. I figured now was a good time to produce the bottle and see what effect it would have on the group. Neil took one look at this and his eyes got wide and he said “Ted, you’re a legend!” I then passed around the bottle and we all took a drag. Each time another person walked out on to the deck I passed it around again. I took it upon myself to be in charge of the front deck hospitality committee.
Eventually, to my delight, the bottle was gone and I was happy, as were we all. Neil then got it into his head that we were going to do some fishing. What then transpired was the most drunken, idiotic, lamest attempt at fishing in the annals of angling. The tour guides gave us this bamboo pole with about 8 feet of line with a small hook. We then put on the hook the remnants of our dinner including squid. The problem was that we were talking very loudly on the deck holding the poles, which surely scared every fish within a hundred feet of our boat away, so there was no way our 8 feet of line would even come close to some hungry fish’s mouth.
At one point Neil was trying to put some squid on his line and cursed the dark.
I went back to my room and got my head lamp flashlight and shone the light on his attempts at baiting. He looked up and me and said “you are restoring my faith in Americans mate; first a whiskey bottle and now a torch.” We ended up having a great time drinking beers on the front deck and talking until around a little after midnight.
